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OXNEY, William II, of Great Yarmouth, Norf.
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Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
s. of William Oxney I*.
Offices Held
Bailiff, Yarmouth Mich. 1412-13, 1422-3, 1426-7.1
Controller of customs and subsidies, Yarmouth 26 Feb.-8 May 1415.
Biography
William and his brother, Bartholomew, were mentioned in 1388 in the will of their grandmother, Joan Oxney, and in the codicil she made in 1393, as having a reversionary interest in certain properties in Yarmouth which she was leaving to their father. She also made them bequests of £10 each. William had evidently not yet finished his education, for there was still then a possibility that he might enter the Church, but by 1410 he had decided to follow his father’s course as a merchant, thereafter trading in such commodities as wine, cloth, iron (from the Baltic), timber and herring. It was during William Oxney senior’s lifetime that the younger man was first chosen bailiff of Yarmouth and, in the course of his term of office, he was returned to Parliament. He had been named as co-executor with his brother of their father’s will, made in 1412, and as entitled to a further share in the Oxney estate after the death of their stepmother, Christine, but the increase in his material prosperity was not to happen until more than ten years had elapsed. As bailiff in two later terms, Oxney shared responsibility for making the returns to the Parliaments of 1423 and 1427. His final year of office was as one of just two bailiffs, following the complete reorganization of the government of the town, which halved their number. He is not recorded thereafter.2