Wyche’s family hailed from Wich-Malbank (Nantwich) in Cheshire, and he seems to have been the youngest of at least four brothers, all of whom came to London in the early fifteenth century. Little is recorded of his parents other than their names, mentioned by Wyche in his will. While his brothers Thomas and William became fishmongers, Hugh followed the eldest of the four, Richard (d.1424), in joining the more prestigious Mercers’ Company, and was apprenticed in 1413-14 to John Boston.
Within the Mercers’ Company Wyche swiftly rose to a position of prominence. He issued from his apprenticeship in 1422-3, and obtained the freedom of the city soon afterwards. His admission to the livery took place in the customary three stages between 1427 and 1430, and in the later year he took on the first of his many apprentices whom he trained and who doubtless assisted him in building up a successful business. In 1438 he was chosen as one of the wardens of the Company, an office in which he would serve another term in 1444-5, before being elected its master on four further occasions. Along with Geoffrey Feldying*, Ralph Verney* and John Middleton* he became one of the most prominent members of the Company, a fact reflected in the collective choice of these men to act as feoffees of the Mercers’ quitrents in 1457. That same year they were asked by the Mercers’ court to enter into discussions with the Company’s legal counsel, Thomas Burgoyne*, in connexion with their undertaking.
There is no doubt that Wyche was able to use his influential friends within the Company to build up an impressive network of business contacts. From the early 1430s he was extremely active as an exporter of cloth through the port of London: in May and June 1433, for instance, he took five shipments across the Channel in different vessels.
On occasion Wyche was accused of malpractice in his dealings with Italian merchants and financiers. In the autumn of 1454 he was the subject of a Chancery petition from the Florentine Rinaldo Baronzelli, who was engaged in a dispute with a fellow Italian, Jacopo de’ Bardi. The matter was submitted to the arbitration of another Florentine, but while de’ Bardi was absent abroad it was claimed that Wyche had pretended ‘by grete covyn and subtyle ymaginacion’ to be his factor and attorney. Thus, when the arbitration award was made, Wyche had apparently managed to gain possession of the bond entered into by Baronzelli with the arbiter to perform the award or else face a financial penalty.
The proceeds of his exports of wool and cloth enabled Wyche to purchase a wide range of goods on the continent for distribution throughout England. Linen, broad cloth, paper and dyestuffs were among the commodities noted in customs accounts in the mid 1440s as being brought into the port of London by him.
Wyche’s success as a merchant enabled him to acquire property in London and elsewhere which, as early as 1436, was said to be worth £21 p.a.
A number of Wyche’s own holdings came to him as a consequence of his three marriages. The guardianship of his first wife , Denise, one of three daughters and coheirs of a chandler named John Beaumond, who died in 1416, passed initially to Beaumond’s executor, William Middleton, who subsequently married her sister, Juliana, and then after his death to Juliana’s second husband, the draper Philip Malpas*.
By the autumn of 1434 Wyche had married as his second wife Joan, the daughter of a London salter and widow of Robert Colbroke, an ironmonger who had served as one of the wardens of London Bridge. As well as taking on the guardianship of her children by Colbroke, Wyche received a grant from the city government of an annual rent from property belonging to the Bridge.
The date of Wyche’s third marriage, to a daughter of a Norfolk landowner, is not known, although it is likely that it occurred a short time after the death of her former husband, the mercer William Holt, in 1464. Alice held a life interest in property in the parish of St. Dionis Backchurch, where Holt was buried, as well more in Southwark that she disposed of in her will;
Wyche’s long civic and administrative career began in the mid 1430s with his election in 1436 as one of the four auditors of London, the usual stepping-stone to higher office in the city. The previous year he had attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first time and was to do so again during his term as auditor, and indeed on a further eight occasions. The usual appointments to civic committees followed, interspersed with other duties. In January 1440, for example, he was appointed to adjudicate in a dispute between Henry Frowyk and a prominent grocer; and in the summer of 1442 he was one of the collectors of a levy which was to assist the city in its dispute with the citizens of Bayonne in Gascony.
By then the political atmosphere was becoming increasingly tense, leading to the armed confrontations at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge in the autumn of 1459, and the summons of a Parliament to meet at Coventry, where the Yorkist lords suffered attainder. Shortly before the Parliament was due to assemble Wyche, by then serving once again as master of the Mercers’ Company, was chosen as a member of a delegation sent by the Londoners to see the King at Coventry and to assure him of the city’s continued loyalty.
By the time he made this loan Wyche had drawn up his will, dated 17 May 1467, although he was in fact to survive for at least another 18 months. He requested burial in the church of St. Margaret Lothbury under a tomb ‘late by me newe made with myn owen propre coste’, suggesting that he had been making arrangements for some time. Services held for his soul were also to remember those of his parents, his former master John Boston, and his wife’s first husband, William Holt. At a cost of 200 marks a chantry was to be established in the chapel of Our Lady and St. Nicholas in the same church ‘where I was wont to sitte’, where prayers would be offered for 20 years after his death. He also sponsored an obit for ten years in St. Andrew’s church in St. Albans, for the benefit of the soul of his kinsman, William Wyche. Further anniversaries were to be held in St. Albans abbey, Syon abbey and the Charterhouse, while he made detailed arrangements for the administration of funds for similar religious services in St. Margaret’s in London. Wyche left ten marks to the fraternity of the parish clerks in London, requesting that their priest should sing masses for his soul for 33 days, as had been done for his second wife. His charitable bequests included £33 6s. 8d. for russet cloth and gowns for poor people in his native Nantwich, and £50 for the relief of poverty in three London parishes. Another £100 was left for repairs to ‘foule and noyous’ highways within 40 miles of the capital. Relatives mentioned in his will included his sole surviving brother, John, who received £20, and Margaret Wyche, a nun of Catesby abbey in Northamptonshire who was to have £10. As Wyche had no surviving children, the bulk of his estate was left to his widow, who was to have £3,000 worth of money, jewels and household goods. His clothes and personal effects were to be sold and the proceeds used to buy vestments, chalices and other ornaments for poor churches. Wyche chose as his executors his widow, Ralph Verney, and a fishmonger, William York. A note appended to the will recorded that he formally approved its contents before witnesses on 13 Apr. 1468, but he had little longer to live for it was proved a month later on 12 May.
Alice’s remaining years saw her preoccupied with her fellow executors in disposing of Wyche’s estate and settling his business interests. Even so, when she drew up her own will in June 1474 she asked to be buried next to her first husband, Holt, in St. Dionis Backchurch. The will was proved on 16 Nov., and just over a year later its provisions were read and confirmed by the court of aldermen, probably as part of arrangements for the purchase of two annual rents in the city which were to be used to fund a chantry for her soul and those of her husbands.