John Roysse

Infobox Person
name = John Roysse


caption =
birth_date = 1500 / 1501
birth_place = Abingdon, Berkshire
death_date = 1571
death_place = London
other_names =
known_for = Benefactor of Abingdon School
occupation = Mercer, benefactor & financier
nationality = British

John Roysse (1500/01–1571) was a Mercer, (a textile / wool trader), who was born in 1500 or 1501 and raised in Abingdon, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He is best known as being the benefactor of Abingdon School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Biography

He was educated in the grammar school in Abingdon by John Tesdale or Clyffe. Tesdale, a Yorkshire man, was the last schoolmaster appointed to the school by the monks of Abingdon Abbey. Roysse moved to London and was apprenticed to a radical protestant mercer, Robert Pakyngton, who was murdered in 1538, although Roysse himself was religiously conservative.

In 1526 Roysse was granted bachelor membership of the Mercers' Company and became active in the company's affairs acquiring former monastic property in Cheapside for conversion into a hall or chapel on behalf of the Mercers. Strangely he did not rise to the mastership of the company, but this could have been because he was developing a practice as a moneylender: Roysse’s will refers to a number of debtors, ranging from various tradesmen up to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Rowland Hayward, and the Lord High Treasurer, William Paulet the Marquess of Winchester, who was indebted to him £44.

With the dissolution of the monasteries leading to the destruction of Abingdon Abbey in 1538, the town of Abingdon suffered severe economic and social hardships and the burgesses of the town approached a number of possible benefactors to revive the town’s fortunes. These benefactors included Sir John Mason, Secretary of State and Chancellor of the University of Oxford as well as John Roysse. Roysse gave a legacy from his will for the benefit of the grammar school that was in financial difficulties at the time. He also arranged that at the time of his death the Corporation of Abingdon should receive a number of named possessions, including three properties, in order to fund the move of the school into property in the centre of Abingdon that had previously been almshouses attached to the Abbey.

This indenture was connected to 31 ‘Lawes and Ordinances’ relating to the school, including prayers and memorial observances to be undertaken. This school was known for some time as Roysse’s School, before changing it’s name to be now known as Abingdon School: the school bears Roysse’s colours of cerise and white. The school continued along the same vein until the early seventeenth century when the headmaster was Thomas Godwyn (1586/7–1642), who used the bequest of another Abingdonian, Thomas Tesdale to re-invest in the school and to found Pembroke College, University of Oxford in 1624. Thomas Tesdale was from the same family as Roysse's old schoolmaster, John Tesdale

Roysse died on 27 July 1571 at his property on Lombard Street in London and was buried in St Helen’s Church, Abingdon on 2 August 1571.

References

* "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", M. St John Parker, ‘Roysse, John (1500/01–1571)’, online edn, first published Oct 2006, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95246
* "The Martlet and the Griffen", Thomas Hinde and Michael St John Parker (1997)