Payne’s father, a Household officer of Staffordshire origin, settled in Wallingford. Payne himself attracted the patronage of the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Fortescue*, who secured the escheatorship of Berkshire and Oxfordshire for him in 1593.
Payne was returned to the first Parliament of the new reign during his fourth mayoralty, despite the fact that mayors, being returning officers, were technically incapable of sitting. At the second reading, on 3 Apr. 1604, of the bill ‘for the better execution of sundry statutes touching purveyors and car-takers’ he launched into a bitter attack, stating that the bill would grant purveyors fewer rights than common thieves, who at least would have the benefit of clergy, and he accused the House of ‘go[ing] about to hang some of his [the king’s] servants’ by making purveyance a felony. He concluded by asserting that this was symptomatic of a general disrespect for proper authority in the proceedings of the Commons, instancing the Buckinghamshire election dispute, where, in denying Fortescue the seat, he argued, his colleagues’ had impugned the Privy Council, the judges and the king himself.
The Commons proceeded to commit the bill and then turned its attention to Payne, who was called to the bar. According to an account of the case in the papers of Sir John Holles*, Payne was taken out of the chamber while the Commons debated his eligibility to sit before being brought back to answer for his speech. However, other accounts indicate that it was only after Payne was examined for his words that the legitimacy of his election was raised. All the sources agree, however, that Payne confessed to being at fault in accusing the House of dishonouring the Privy Council and the judges. He nevertheless denied having accused the Commons of dishonouring the king, insisting that he had merely said ‘that the king’s pleasure was somewhat touched’ by its proceedings. Ostensibly he received a full pardon for his speech, but until the question of his eligibility was decided it was agreed to sequester him from the House and refer the matter to the committee for privileges.
On 25 May Francis Moore, one of the Members for Reading, moved ‘touching the case of mayors’, but the question was ‘deferred till the House were fuller’. On 25 June the House ruled that ‘from and after the end of this present Parliament’ any mayors who were elected would be barred from sitting.
Payne served five further terms as mayor, and was still active as an alderman on the eve of the Civil War. His date of death is unknown, but he does not appear on a list of the corporation dated 25 May 1648.