# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mayne, Simon

​MAYNE, SIMON (1612–1661), regicide, baptised at Dinton, Buckinghamshire, 17 Feb. 1611–12, was the son and heir of Simon Mayne of Dinton Hall, Buckinghamshire, who died 13 July 1617, aged 40, and was buried in Dinton Church, where a large monument was erected to his memory. His mother was Coluberry, daughter of Richard Lovelace of Hurley, Berkshire, sister of the first Lord Lovelace and widow of Richard Beke, who died in 1606. She died 10 Jan. 1628–1629, and was also buried in Dinton Church. The family property came to Simon on his father's death, and to qualify himself as a magistrate he became a student at the Inner Temple in November 1630. Mayne was related to many of the chief families that adopted the cause of the parliament, and among his near neighbours were Arthur Goodwin and Sir Richard Ingoldsby [q. v.] He threw in his lot with them, was one of the grand jury of Buckinghamshire which presented an address to Charles I for the dismissal of his army (1642), and acted on the parliamentary committee for Berkshire. On 14 June 1645, after the battle of Naseby, Cromwell stopped at his house, Dinton Hall, and about September 1645, when the then members were ‘disabled to sit,’ Mayne was returned for the adjoining borough of Aylesbury. He was appointed one of the judges for the trial of Charles I, attended on most days, and signed the warrant for the king's execution. In the ‘Mystery of the Good Old Cause’ he is said to have been a ‘great committee man, wherein he licked his fingers;’ and although the latter part of this statement is untrue, he served during the protectorate on the committee for Buckinghamshire. As a regicide he was expressly excepted from the general act of pardon, and he surrendered himself in June 1660 to a serjeant-at-arms. He was tried at the Old Bailey on 13 Oct. 1660, and after a spiritless defence, in which he pleaded that he was ill and acted under coercion, was found guilty and attainted. In the second volume of ‘Somers Tracts,’ 3rd collection (1751), pp. 196–7, is a pamphlet of ‘Considerations humbly tendered by Simon Mayne to show that he was no contriver of that horrid action of the Death of the late King, but merely seduced and drawn into it by the persuasion of others.’ So far back as 1635 and 1636 he and his wife had received licenses, ‘for notorious sickness,’ to eat flesh on fish-days, and after his committal to the Tower of London his illness became fatal. He died there on 13 April 1661 ‘from gout, with fever and convulsion-fits;’ the requisite inquest was held next day, and Sir Edward Nicholas [q. v.] thereupon gave the lieutenant of the Tower a warrant for the delivery of the corpse to his wife ‘for interment in the country without ostentation.’ Mayne was buried in Dinton Church on 18 April 1661.
The faculty office of the Archbishop of Canterbury granted a license on 21 May 1633 for his marriage to Jane, eldest daughter, then aged 19, of John Burgoyne of ​Sutton in Bedfordshire, by his wife Jane, daughter and heiress of William Kempe of Finchingfield, Essex, the marriage to be celebrated at St. Anne, Blackfriars, or St. Faith, London. She died in 1641, and Mayne subsequently married a widow, whose surname is unknown. She survived him many years, and was buried at Dinton, 10 Aug. 1694. The dean and chapter of Rochester and two of his majesty's servants petitioned for parts of his property, and in January 1660–1 Sir Richard Lane obtained a grant of the remainder of the lease of the rectories of Haddenham and Cuddington in Buckinghamshire, which he had forfeited. His son was permitted to enjoy the family estate at Dinton, but his grandson alienated the property.
[Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vii. p. 2; State Papers, 1660–1, pp. 343–4, 497; Students of Inner Temple, 1877, p. 264; Marriage Licences (Harl. Soc. 1886, vol. xxiv.), p. 33; History of Croke Family, pp. 630, 667, and pedigree No. 34; Smyth's Ædes Hartwellianæ, Addenda, p. 247; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, ii. 138–40, 147–52; Noble's Regicides, ii. 64–8; Gibbs's Buckinghamshire Occurrences, i. 127, 164, 205, 208; Visitation of Bedfordshire (Harl. Soc. 1884), p. 88; information from the Rev. John Bond, vicar of Dinton.]
W. P. C.