MUNDY, Vincent (by 1510-71), of Markeaton, Derbys.; Islington, Mdx. and London.

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 1510, 1st s. of Sir John Mundy of Checkendon, Oxon. by Juliana, da. of William Browne of Flambards Hall, Essex and London. educ. M. Temple. m. by 1544, Juliana, da. of Thomas Gadbury of London, 1s. 1da. suc. fa. Aug. 1537.1

Offices Held

Subsidy collector 1536; escheator, Notts. and Derbys. Jan.-Nov. 1542, 1551-2; surveyor of victuals, Calais Sept.-Dec. 1545; comptroller of victuals, Boulogne Dec. 1545; commr. relief, Derbys. and Derby 1550, goods of churches and fraternities, Derby 1553; j.p. Derbys. 1554-58/59; clerk of the treasury of ct. of c.p. by May 1564.2

Biography

The son of a prominent London alderman, Vincent Mundy was to pursue a varied career which took him finally to an administrative office in the court of common pleas. Trained at the Middle Temple, he became free of the Goldsmiths’ Company by patrimony in 1533 and by 1536 was in the service of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk. He and Chancellor Audley’s servant Smith were appointed by Audley and Norfolk to collect the first and second payments of the peers’ contribution to the subsidy granted in 1536: he was probably the servant whom Norfolk used as messenger to Cromwell early in the following year and he was acting for the duke at its close.3

On his father’s death Mundy inherited an estate which included the manors of Markeaton and Mackworth, near Derby, and to this he added in March 1542 the site and house of the late commandery of St. John of Jerusalem at Yeaveley. If this stake in the shire qualified him for one of its knighthoods in the Parliament of 1545, as a newcomer there he doubtless needed and received outside support. Apart from his old master Norfolk this is most likely to have come from his fellow-Londoner Sir William Paget, whose numerous offices included that of custos of Derbyshire and whose colleague in the secretaryship, (Sir) William Petre, had recently married Mundy’s aunt: his fellow-knight Richard Blackwell, whom he may have known since their days at the Temple, appears to have been a friend of Paget. They were elected on 8 Jan., but the Parliament was prorogued from that month until November, and two months before it met Mundy was appointed to a victualling post at Calais: this he may also have owed to Paget, who was much involved in affairs there. Mundy could well have attended the month-long session before Christmas, during which he was given the post of comptroller of victuals at Boulogne, but he was at Boulogne in the early part of 1546, being given leave to return to England in May.4

The rest of Mundy’s career is poorly documented. He may be presumed to have divided his time between Derbyshire and London: it was as of Markeaton and Stydd (next to Yeaveley), and late of London, that he sued out a pardon on the accession of Mary. His appointment to the bench in 1554 and his re-election as knight of the shire in 1555 suggest that he supported the new regime, as does the omission of his name from the list of Members of that Parliament who voted against one of the government’s bills: in any case, if he was again patronized by Paget, then struggling to recover favour, Mundy would have done well to avoid such an indiscretion. His eventual removal from the Derbyshire bench under Elizabeth points in the same direction, although it may only mean that he no longer spent much time in the county: he was not included in Bishop Bentham’s report on religious sympathies there in November 1564. He was by then occupying his last office, the clerkship of the treasury (or records) of the common pleas. This he had received from the court’s chief justice, (Sir) James Dyer, a member of his own inn; in May 1564 he declared his readiness to surrender it but was allowed to retain it on payment of an increased sum. Its duties had to be executed in person, so that Mundy must by then have been living in or near London.5

Mundy described himself as of Islington when he drew up his will on 30 May 1571. He appointed as executor his son and heir Edward and as supervisor Richard Harpur, a justice of common pleas, to whom he bequeathed £10 ‘as well for the great friendship I have found in him heretofore’ as for his pains as supervisor. Mundy died seven days later, and the will was proved on 23 Oct. 1573.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: C. J. Black

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., E150/749/12; C142/60/14. The Gen. n.s. viii. 21; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. cix, cx), 50; Harl. 5809, f. 57; C142/160/28; PCC 32 Peter.
  • 2. LP Hen. VIII, x, xx; CPR, 1550-3, p. 395; 1553, pp. 352, 362, 417; 1553-4, p. 18; Wardwick Lib., Derby, parcel 225.
  • 3. Beaven, Aldermen of London, ii. 23; W. S. Prideaux, Mems. Goldsmiths’ Co. i. 48; LP Hen. VIII, x, xii-xiv.
  • 4. J. C. Cox, Derbys. Churches, iv. 289; Wardwick Lib., Derbys. deeds 1726; LP Hen. VIII, xvi, xx, xxi; C219/18C/28; APC, i. 239.
  • 5. CPR, 1553-4, p. 426; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 43-44; M. Hastings, Ct. Common Pleas, 107-8, 140-1; Wardwick Lib., parcel 225.
  • 6. PCC 32 Peter; C142/160/28.