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KYNNYLLYN, Thomas (1487/88-1544/58), of Monmouth.
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
b. 1487/88. m. at least 4s.2
Offices Held
Subsidy collector, Monmouth 1544.3
Biography
Little has come to light about Thomas Kynnyllyn, whose election to the Parliament of 1542 as the first Member for Monmouth Boroughs is known only from the chancery case in which he sued the contributory boroughs for wages of £15 6s.8d. Describing himself as ‘burgess of the Parliament of and for all the boroughs and towns in the shire of Monmouth’, he sought payment from Abergavenny (£4 10s.), Caerleon (£3 3s.4d.), Chepstow (£1), Newport (£3 10s.) and Usk (£3 3s.4d.) on the ground that he could not ‘lie here any longer without his said wages and fees be unto him paid’. This action, brought either during the second or the third session of the Parliament, was probably one of many, although the only one to survive, arising out of the provisions of the Act of 1536 (27 Hen. VIII, c.26) whereby the contributory boroughs in Wales and the marches were required to help to pay the Members but were not formally authorized to join in their election: in Kynnyllyn’s case Monmouth itself, the shire town, seems to have paid its quota. An Act of 1544 (35 Hen. VIII, c.11), after noting that the sheriffs and borough authorities had been ‘negligent and lax’ in collecting wages, reaffirmed the obligation but added that the contributory boroughs should have ‘like voice and authority’ in the election of Members as the shire towns.4
In 1538 it was noted in an augmentations dispute that the grant of a corrody from Gracedieu abbey had been drawn up by Kynnyllyn, who had thus probably had some legal training; no other trace of this has been found but it is suggestive that his will of 20 Sept. 1535 is in Latin. He left various properties in Monmouth and small sums of money to his four sons, one of whom, John, may have been a bailiff of Monmouth in 1555 and 1557. The will was proved on 3 Sept. 1558.5