HAYMAN (HAYMOND), Peter (by 1500-53/54), of Sellinge, Kent.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1500. m. (1) Elizabeth, da. and h. of Richard Till, 2s. 6da.; (2) Mary, da. and coh. of William Tyrrell of Beeches in Rawreth, Essex, 3da.2

Offices Held

Servant of Thomas Cranmer, abp. of Canterbury by 1544; commr. sewers, Kent 1539-47, relief 1550; j.p. 1547.3

Biography

Peter Hayman was a servant of Archbishop Cranmer. In 1544 he and Thomas Hales were instructed by Cranmer to act speedily in the collection of the tenths and subsidy money due from the clergy of the diocese; in June 1545 Hayman was imprisoned for a few days for a matter of £40 still owing, and was only with difficulty saved from the Fleet. In 1549, as Cranmer’s surveyor, he was made responsible for the orderly demolition of a redundant church in Romney. The archbishop had recently given up to the King the lands in Romney formerly held by his see, but he probably retained enough influence there to procure Hayman’s election to Parliament. From his seat in the Lords Cranmer may have assisted the bill for the re-edifying of houses in Romney marsh which was passed unanimously in the Upper House on 12 Mar. 1549, but if Hayman was expected to do the same in the Commons the result was disappointing, for after being given a first reading the bill was lost through the prorogation. In the same session Hayman was one of a number of Kent landowners who obtained a private Act (2 and 3 Edw. VI, no.40) freeing their lands from the disadvantages of gavelkind tenure.4

Hayman had a considerable estate in Kent but also a large family to provide for; when he made his will on 20 May 1553 he mentioned two sons and eight daughters, and another daughter was yet to be born. He appointed as executors his sons Ralph and William, his son-in-law William Hammond and Edward and Thomas Hales. The date of Hayman’s death is a matter of approximation and surmise. On 1 Dec. 1553 he sued out a general pardon, being described as of Sellinge, Kent, and styled esquire alias gentleman, a conjunction suggestive of a legal attainment of which no other indication has been found. Unless he was already a dying man, the dropping of his name from a commission of sewers issued a week later for the area between Appledore and Gravesend looks like a consequence of his attachment to the archbishop, now in disgrace, and perhaps also of his connexion with Cranmer’s ex-chaplain John Ponet, who had married his daughter and was now in exile. Three months later his name was absent from the new commission of the peace for Kent: by that time he may have been dead or he may have lived long enough to suffer a further deprivation. Evidence of his death is forthcoming only on 12 Oct. 1554, the day on which his will was proved.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Hatfield 207.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference, 1521, LP Hen. VIII, iii. Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. lxxiv), 63; C1/943/32-37; W. D. Belcher, Kentish Brasses, ii. 1.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII, xiv, xvi, xix, xx; CPR, 1547-8, pp. 79, 85; 1553, pp. 355, 401.
  • 4. LP Hen. VIII, xv, xix, xx; Arch. Cant. xx. 156; W. Lambarde, Perambulation of Kent (1826), 533.
  • 5. PCC 10 More; CPR, 1553-4, p. 456; Coll. Top. et Gen. iv. 91.