Family and Education

m. Margery, ?2s.

Offices Held

Jurat, Hythe Feb. 1374-6, 1378-9, 1383-4, 1386-90, 1391-2, 1408-9, 1410-11, 1412-d.2

Bailiff, Hythe c.1396-24 Dec. 1399; dep. bailiff Oct. 1402, Jan. 1405.3

Biography

Between 1373 and 1395 Dyne owned land in the Kentish hundreds of Hayne, Folkestone and Worth (all in the neighbourhood of Hythe), on which as a Portsman he claimed exemption from taxation. His holdings included property which Alexander Appleford* conveyed to him in 1388, as well as 26 acres in Hythe itself. Before 1411 his wife inherited a share with her two sisters in land lying between Canterbury and Sandwich, at Wickhambreux, Wingham and elsewhere. No doubt this contributed to Dyne’s prosperity, enabling him to acquire chattels which by the end of his life were valued at £35.4

Some of Dyne’s income derived from his interests in shipping. At the beginning of his career, in about 1373, he sold Hythe 1½ cwt. of iron to make nails for its common barge; and between 1375 and 1377 he supplied materials and provisions for the new vessel it was building: nails and boarding, oil ‘pro malo rosinando’, peas and beer. A little later, when the barge was under reconstruction, he purchased its old mast for £5 6s.8d. Dyne was party to the capture at sea of certain vessels freighted with goods of John Utenbrooke of Flanders; and when the latter obtained an award for compensation from the commissioners for enforcing the truce with Flanders, the warden of the Cinque Ports was ordered in April 1379 to compel Dyne and his fellows to pay the sum assessed.5

Meanwhile, in July 1377, Dyne had attended Richard II’s coronation as one of the barons of the Cinque Ports sent to bear the royal canopy, only to spend 10s. more than Hythe had allocated to him for his expenses. At some unknown date before Archbishop Courtenay died in July 1396, he appointed Dyne as bailiff of Hythe. At first he accounted for such issues of the town as were due to the archbishop (amounting to about £3 p.a.), but later he reached an agreement with Courtenay’s successor, Archbishop Arundel, to farm them as from Michaelmas 1396, at 66s.8d. a year.6 He apparently retained the office under Archbishop Walden and, although removed from it on Arundel’s return from exile in 1399, he subsequently acted as deputy bailiff to another of Arundel’s nominees.

In 1403, as John Dyne ‘senior’, he witnessed a conveyance on behalf of a younger namesake and his wife Emota Herne, but it seems probable that it was he rather than John Dyne junior who served in later years as a jurat of Hythe and witnessed other deeds there in 1405 and 1409. In May 1412 he was one of the delegates sent to Dymchurch to discuss with the archbishop’s steward the possibility of constructing a new harbour for Hythe, and in the following month he attended a special Brodhull convoked to arrange for the Cinque Ports’ ship-service to the Crown.7 He died before May 1413, by which date the churchwardens of St. Leonard’s church had already received a legacy of 13s.4d. from his estate. His widow, who held for life 93 acres of land at Dymchurch, which on her death would revert to his son Thomas, survived until after July 1419.8

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: A. P.M. Wright

Notes

• 1. The return has not survived. Dyne and William Hampton† were paid 48s. towards their wages at the Parliament ‘de grotes’. It might be supposed that they attended Edward III’s last Parliament (which granted the 4d. poll tax), but as two others are recorded as serving in that, Richard II’s first Parliament seems the most likely alternative: Hythe accts. box 27, ff. 59, 61.
• 2. Hythe Reg. 1, ff. 8, 10-15, 23, 27; jurats’ bk. C, f. 1.
• 3. CIMisc. vi. 231; Reg. 1, ff. 21, 23, 26.
• 4. E179/225/7, 16, 237/57; CP25(1)112/276/561; jurats’ bk. C, f. 37; Reg. 1, f. 12.
• 5. Accts. box 27, ff. 56, 59, 61; CCR, 1377-81, p. 184.
• 6. Accts. box 27, ff. 56-57; CIMisc. vi. 231.
• 7. Reg. 1, f. 22; HMC 6th Rep. 516; jurats’ bk. C, ff. 24, 25.
• 8. Arch. Cant. x. 247; jurats’ bk. D, f. 23; CP25(1)111/288/232.