WYNG, John

Although Wyng was an insubstantial man, ranking as a mere yeoman, he was at least local to the first of the two Wiltshire boroughs he represented in the Commons. It is just possible (although improbable) that it was this John Wyng who served as John Fillol’s* bailiff of Woodlands (Dorset) in 1446-7: Nottingham Univ. Lib., Willoughby mss, Mi 5/167/38. The manor of Rowden from which he hailed had been acquired by Walter, Lord Hungerford†, in 1434, and since the peer also possessed the other principal manor in Chippenham he held considerable sway over the borough’s parliamentary representation. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 691. It is almost certain that Wyng owed his first return to the Commons to Hungerford patronage, although the exact circumstances of his election are unclear. The first Lord Hungerford had died in early August 1449, and although the writs for the autumn Parliament were issued on 23 Sept., the heir, Robert, Lord Hungerford, did not apparently receive a summons. This left Walter’s grandson, also called Robert (who had received a personal summons as Lord Moleyns, in his wife’s right, since 1445), as the family’s only representative in the upper House. CP, vi. 617. It was Lord Moleyns whom Wyng would later serve as a feoffee of his estates, and it is possible that he had already established a tie with him by 1449. By contrast, the borough of Downton for which Wyng returned to Westminster a second time in late 1450, was controlled by the bishops of Winchester. William Waynflete, who had been preferred to the see by Henry VI in 1447, frequently made the borough’s parliamentary seats available to placemen, and it was alongside an esquire of the royal household, Walter Bergh* (who some years later also established Hungerford connexions) that Wyng was returned to his second Parliament.

Following the second Lord Hungerford’s death in May 1459 the family estates were united in Lord Moleyns’s hands with those of his wife, but it was not until he returned from France (where he had languished in captivity since the disastrous battle of Castillon in 1453) that he was able to dispose of them. His paternal inheritance was already mortgaged to raise part of his substantial ransom of £6,000, and for the same purpose he now settled his wife’s property on feoffees who included Bishop Waynflete and Wyng. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 451-2; CIMisc. viii. 316-24, 326-7, 329-30, 333-5; C1/1/147-8. However, political events now overtook the Hungerfords’ concerns over the payment of the ransom. Following the Yorkist victory in the summer of 1460 Hungerford was driven into Florentine exile, but returned to join Queen Margaret’s forces in the north. In November 1461 he was attainted in Edward IV’s first Parliament and stripped of his estates. His wife’s lands were legally exempt from the forfeiture, but she nevertheless spent much of the early 1460s defending her rights. Wyng’s fate in the wake of his patrons’ misfortune is unclear, but it seems that he maintained his connexions with the Hungerfords after Lord Robert’s execution in 1464. In December 1468 when one of the numerous rumours of conspiracies that circulated at Edward IV’s court had led to the arrest of the Hungerford heir, (Sir) Thomas* (who was executed early in the following year), Wyng took the precaution of suing out a general pardon. C67/46, m. 11. In 1470 and 1471 he acted for the remaining Hungerford feoffees as an attorney to convey seisin of parts of the estate, and he was apparently still alive in November 1472, when some of them released their right to the manors of Datchet and Thames Ditton to Edward IV. His subsequent fate is obscure. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 646-8; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 267-8; E40/670.