Pynsent of Chudleigh
The surname has been variously spelled but for continuity throughout the spelling as above will be used, this variant as used in their lineage in Simon Burke’s ‘Extinct and Dormant Peerages and Baronetcies’ (1838).
The Devon Subsidy Roll of 1524 does not have a Pynsent name (or variant) within the list for Chudleigh parish and it may be that the name came from Bovey Tracey at which there were persons of that name from an early date. The Chudleigh parish records commenced in 1561 at which time one of the two young men (altar) wardens at the church was a Robert Pynson.
The 1581 Subsidy contains the name John Pinsent.
The Overseers of the Poor records begin in 1600 and in that year we find the four overseers named as Thomas Huntte, gent, John Pynsent, Christopher Austen and John Cottell. This John Pynsent is named again in the records of the parish in 1613 when he was ‘renting the markets for £100’. It is more than likely that this is the John Pynsent that was the father of the John Pynsent who established the grammar school in the town. In 1640 a John Pynsent, a yeoman is listed in an agreement as one of the ‘four men’ in respect of work required to the pot water leat. From Burke (1838) we know that John Pynsent of Chudleigh was indeed the father of John (his eldest son) and also of Humphrey (second son) of whom more follows.
Humphrey Pynsent features in the parish records a number of times, mainly in connection with the rent of the markets and through the twenty-two year period 1642-1664. He seems to have been closely involved in secular matters in the town and he may well have been a church warden but the accounts for this period have not survived. He was described as ‘farmer of the markets’ in 1642 and in 1649 ‘gave up the markets to John Bennett of Harcombe for £55’. The following year he reacquired them for £73 selling them the next year for £71. In 1652 he repurchased the rights for £81 and held them until 1656. He had acquired the rights once again in the year 1677 but as that is the last year of the account book we do not know how long he held them for. The church warden accounts begin in 1679 but these have not been perused for subsequent details. Humphrey Pynsent was mentioned in the records of 1660 as one of those paying the church rate and in 1664 he was one of the four named overseers of the poor. In the Poll Tax Assessment of 1 October 1660 he is included and paid £20. He died about 1678 and his will (in which he was styled ‘Gentleman of Chudleigh’) was proved on 6 December 1680. From Burke (1838) it suggests he was not married and that he left no issue at his death.
A few years before his death in 1674 we have a copy of the Chudleigh Hearth tax return. In it we find Hump Prisent (sic) with seven hearths, and so quite a substantial dwelling (most on the return only have between one and two). Additionally there is a Joren Pensent with one hearth.
Returning to John Pynsent of Chudleigh we know that he had married Joan, daughter of William Downman. Burke (1838) states the Downman’s were of Colhampton, Devon which in fact is probably Cullompton. Their marriage was likely to have taken place about 1600/03 as their eldest son John was born about 1605. Their three other sons were Humphrey, William and Robert and their daughters, Elizabeth, Grace and Eleanor.
Of the early years of John Pynsent, the eldest son little is known, and of his early education nothing is recorded although we know from the tablet on the front of the Old House that he attended Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four Inns of Court in London. It was here that he studied for his career as a lawyer. He married Mary Clifford about 1625, she being the second daughter of Simon Clifford of Boscombe, Wiltshire and Cecily (nee Williamson). Although her father was styled as of Boscombe, Wiltshire this branch of the Clifford family also held Ware Barton in the parish of Kingsteignton and she was baptised at Chudleigh on 26 February 1604. Probably it was as a result of Mary’s dowry that John Pynsent became a man of means. By the early 1660s he had a town house at Bartlett’s Court, off Fetter Lane, Holborn, London, a country estate at Croydon called Combe, property in Oxfordshire and at Carlton Curlieu, Leicestershire.
John and Mary Pynsent had three daughters, Grissell, Elizabeth and Anne, born in the period 1625-1640. His eldest daughter Grissell had married John St Barbe of Broadlands, Romsey (c1645) and had four sons, two of whom died young. The surviving two, John and Edward became the responsibility of John Pynsent on the death of both their father and mother of ‘a sweating sickness’ in 1658. They are both buried in Romsey Abbey where they have a very grand monument to their memory.
The two young St Barbe children were tutored at the Pynsent home by John Rawlet who later became reasonably well known as a poet and preacher (and a signatory on John Pynsent’s will). John Pynsent later purchased a baronetcy for the young John who grew up as Sir John St Barbe, inheriting Broadlands House and dying there in 1723. He, along with Sir Thomas Clifford, knight and nine others became the first trustees of the Pynsent Free School in 1668. His brother, Edward died as a young man in 1674.
John Pynsent, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn and a Prothonotary [chief clerk or registrar of a court] of the Court of Common Pleas lived through both the plague and Great Fire of London and in 1667 declared to his nephew, Sir Thomas Clifford, knight of his intention to provide a free school at Chudleigh, the place of his birth. The building of the schoolhouse was duly commenced but unfinished at the time of John Pynsent’s death on 29 August 1668.
His will was dated 28 June 1668 and due to delays in the administration of his estate by his executors the charity to run the school was not commenced until 1682. Masters were then appointed by the charity as and when required and the school continued to function for the next two hundred and thirty one years, finally closing in 1913.
John Pynsent was buried in the parish church of St John the Baptist at Croydon where a large black marble monumentl was placed on the north wall. The inscription read-
“Here lyes the Body of John Pynsent, Esq; one of the Prothonotaries of his Majesty's Court of Common-Pleas, who departed this Life, the 29th of August 1668.”
Croydon Church was almost completely destroyed by fire in the early 1870s and although rebuilt the Pynsent monument was unfortunately lost. It is therefore fortunate that the memorial was described in a subsequent history of the county of Croydon in 1792.
The Pynsent baronetcy was created on 13 September 1687 when William Pynsent of Erthfont, Wiltshire, the uncle and heirs-male of John Pynsent was knighted by James II. Following the death of Sir Robert Pynsent in 1781 the baronetcy became extinct.
The Pynsent family have a coat of arms, consisting of a red shield with a white chevron between three white stars. On what is now called The Old House in Chudleigh the arms are depicted in those colours but in reverse, i.e. the shield being white and the chevron and stars being red.
The Pynsent name has long since gone from Chudleigh but it is recalled by the inscription on The Old House –
“John Pinsent of Lincoln’s Inne, esquire, boren in this Pish hath erected this for a Free School and Endowed it with £30 per annum for ever 1668.”
The name also lives on at Pynsent Court, a small development of modern houses (1990s) that are located off Great Hill, Chudleigh.