WYNTER, Edmund II

Admitted a freeman of Ipswich in September 1446, Wynter had a brother, William, also a burgess of the town. Add. 30158, f. 10; Amor, 10. Of unknown antecedents, There is no evidence that Edmund was a younger son of Edmund Wynter I*, as suggested by HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 959. It is also impossible to prove that he was the ‘Ed. Wynter’ listed as ‘ambidexter’ on the dorse of a memorandum of 1451 detailing the misdoings of various individuals in E. Anglia: Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 216. they were closely associated with Ipswich’s parish of St. Peter, and both came to specialize in pewter, seizing the opportunity presented by the growing popularity of this metal alloy. In his early years as a burgess Wynter supplied ironwork for the town’s mills but he had turned to pewter by 1453, and thereafter he and William flourished as manufacturers and retailers of the commodity, an occupation in which they Wynters became predominant at Ipswich. Amor, 10, 175, 221-3. Even so, Wynter’s business interests were not confined to the pewter trade since he was also known as a mercer in his later years. E13/167, rot. 28. Nicholas, one of Wynter’s younger sons, was another pewterer, as was John Wynter, either the MP’s youngest son or grandson. Nicholas became a freeman of Ipswich in 1471, having served his father as an apprentice. It is likely that he had widespread trading interests, given his testamentary bequests to churches in London, Middlesex and Leicestershire. His father certainly had business dealings with other parts of the country. For example, Edmund features in the records of the Pewterers’ Company of London and in 1473 he sued a fellow pewterer, John Keggyll of Bilstone, Leicestershire, for debt. Amor, 221-3, 266; Add. 30158, f. 29v; PCC 32 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 254v).

Thanks to his prominence in commerce and ensuing local status, Wynter enjoyed a full role in borough affairs, in which he had begun to play a part before entering the Commons since he was elected to his only known Parliament during his second term as chamberlain of Ipswich. The formal indenture attesting his election to the Parliament of 1453 bears the date of 27 Feb., although the borough had already chosen its MPs four days earlier. The prosperous Wynter undertook to meet his own costs while attending the Commons, the only known occasion in Henry VI’s reign when an MP for the borough who was a resident burgess (rather than a gentleman outsider) agreed to forgo his wages. Bacon, 110. Following the Parliament of 1453, Wynter served no fewer than six terms as bailiff of Ipswich, four of them in Edward IV’s reign. In December 1461 the borough court undertook to secure him and John Walworth, his fellow bailiff of 1459-60, against the claims of the by then deposed Henry VI’s queen, Margaret, and others regarding a sum of £28, probably a portion of the town’s annual fee farm which she had received since 1453. Add. 30158, f. 23v. Some six years later, Walworth (or perhaps the latter’s son, another John Walworth†) sued him over an episode which occurred during his fourth term as bailiff. Walworth said that he had sworn an affidavit at Ipswich before Wynter and John Gosse, the other bailiff of 1466-7, requiring them to take sureties of the peace from his ‘mortal enemies’, John Wymondham*, the priest William Warner and John Salamon, yeoman, from whom he feared bodily harm. Despite this, they had failed to ensure his safety, and within ten hours of arriving at Ipswich Wymondham and his associates had assaulted him and his servants and left them for dead. The purpose of Walworth’s bill was to bring Wynter and Gosse to account for their failure to keep the peace, but with what outcome is unknown. C1/10/231. Wynter’s fifth term as bailiff was likewise followed by a dispute relating to his period of office. In November 1472 (Sir) Gilbert Debenham II*, a member of the Household and an East Anglian landowner closely connected with Ipswich, sued him and Robert Hall, his fellow bailiff of 1470-1, in the Exchequer. Debenham accused them of having deliberately and unjustly allowed a defendant whom he had been suing for trespass at Ipswich to go at liberty. E13/158, rot. 60.

It was perhaps during his fifth term as bailiff that Wynter pursued an action of his own in the Chancery. He brought his bill, of about 1470, against Thomas Ellis† of Norwich and (Sir) Thomas Brewes*. It concerned a dispute between him and Ellis, at whose suit he had been arrested at Stourbridge fair near Cambridge in September 1468. The quarrel had gone to arbitration but, owing to its complexity, the arbiters, John Sulyard*, Richard Yaxley and Roger Aylmer, had failed to make an award by the following November, as originally intended. The parties had subsequently agreed to cancel the bonds of arbitration (bearing a £100 penalty) which they had made out to each other, to set 2 Feb. 1469 as a new date for the award, to accept James Hobart† as an additional arbiter and to replace Brewes, the original umpire, with William Harleston. Despite this agreement, Ellis had failed to enter a new bond of arbitration with Wynter and Brewes had taken it upon himself to make an award in which he had ordered Wynter to pay Ellis 55 marks and costs of 100s. by 25 Mar. Although the bill, intended to bring Ellis and Brewes to account for their actions, gives Wynter’s version of events, it is supported by a copy of Sir Thomas’s award, dated 29 Jan. 1469 and drawn up on the Brewes manor at Topcroft in Norfolk. C1/44/241-2. C1/45/344 is another copy of the bill. The sum which Brewes ordered Wynter to pay is given as 50 marks in the bill but as 55 marks in the award. It is not known, however, how far this Chancery suit progressed, since the bill and indenture are the only evidence to have survived from it.

A few years later, Wynter was quarrelling with a fellow burgess, Thomas Denys*. He had leased out a tenement in the parish of St. Nicholas for 6s. p.a. to the latter but by 1473 he was alleging that Denys had failed to pay him this rent. Amor, 266. Wynter himself was a lessee as well as a lessor at Ipswich, for he obtained at least two leases of ‘common soil’ from the borough. One of these plots lay next to the River Wensum; the other was in the parish of St. Nicholas, near a tenement of his called the ‘Woad House’. Add. 30158, f. 20v; Bacon, 125. On two occasions Wynter was associated with Gilbert Debenham I* (father of Sir Gilbert) in land transactions. They were among those to whom John Pypho, an Ipswich fuller, conveyed his lands in St. Augustine’s parish In November 1459, and he, Debenham and others received a demise of property in Burstall, just west of Ipswich, nearly two years later. CAD, ii. A3334, A3474, A3717.

Wynter remained active in Ipswich affairs until the late 1470s. Several times during that decade he helped to audit the borough’s chamberlains’ accounts (as he had once done nearly 20 years earlier), Add. 30158, ff. 20v, 29, 30, 31, 31v. and he completed his final terms as a bailiff, justice and escheator in 1477. His brother had died the previous year, Suff. RO (Ipswich), Archdeaconry of Suff. wills, IC/AA2/2/293. but the date of his own death is unrecorded. He was, however, still alive in the early 1480s, since in June 1482 he appeared in person in the Exchequer to bring a couple of suits there against Sir William Knyvet†, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1479-80. Both of these actions related to his arrest and imprisonment at the hands of Knyvet’s under sheriff, John Newporte, in the spring of 1480, following an outlawry he had incurred for failing to answer an earlier suit that Peter Frostell had brought against him at Westminster over a debt contracted at Norwich. According to Wynter, Newporte had arrested him at Ipswich on 26 May that year, and he had remained in prison for six days until he had paid a fine of 40s. In one suit, he alleged wrongful imprisonment and claimed damages of 20 marks; in the other, he alleged that Knyvet had kept the fine for his own use, in breach of a statute against misconduct on the part of sheriffs and other office-holders passed by the Parliament of 1445. Through the second action, he made the same claim for damages and, in accordance with the statute, sought a half-share of the penalty of £40 that Knyvet should incur for his corruption, as a reward for bringing the matter to the Crown’s attention. E13/167, rots. 19d, 28; PROME, xi. 487-8. Wynter died within seven years of presenting his bills against Knyvet, for he was certainly dead when his son Nicholas made his will in February 1489. Nicholas’s will reveals that the MP had been buried in St. Peter’s church, Ipswich, since he asked to be interred next to his father there. PCC 32 Milles.