page_title: Edmund Withypoll
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Withypoll / Career
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Christchurch Mansion à Ipswich.
context_page_description: Edmund Withypoll, Esquire, of London, of Walthamstow, Essex, and of Ipswich, Suffolk, was an English merchant, money-lender, landowner, sheriff and politician, who established his family in his mother's native county of Suffolk, and built Christchurch Mansion, a distinguished surviving Tudor house, as his Ipswich home.
context_section_description: Edmund was educated by the humanist scholar Thomas Lupset, who taught him Latin, and who in 1529 (while staying at Wolsey's palace at The More, Hertfordshire) wrote in the form of a letter dedicated to Withypoll An Exhortation to Yonge Men (published 1535). This remarkable text gives many insights into the character of the young man.
  In around 1535 Edmund married Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Thomas Hynde, prominent Mercer and Merchant Adventurer of London, and his wife Margaret (daughter of the Mercer William Browne, Lord Mayor of London 1507–08): Hynde, who died in 1529, had provided for a dowry of 200 marks for his daughter. The eldest son and heir, Paul Withypoll, was born around 1536, and others followed in close succession.
  In 1540 Edmund purchased lands at Withypole, Shropshire, from his uncle John Withypoll. In 1544 he apparently accompanied the King's expedition at Boulogne: a beautiful manuscript folio of the Letters of Cicero, now in Canterbury Cathedral Library, carries his inscription noting that he took it from the Church of Our Lady at "Bulleyn" in September of that year. With his father, in 1544 Edmund purchased the fee of the manor of Mark at Walthamstow, and briefly held that of Walthamstow Tony.
  In the following year father and son together purchased the manor of Christchurch at Ipswich, including the site and the possessions of the dissolved Priory of the Holy Trinity, Ipswich. Upon Paul's death in 1547 (he was buried in St Lawrence Pountney), Edmund succeeded as heir and began the building of "Withipoll Howse" (as he named it in his will of 1582), the building now known as "Christchurch Mansion". The date 1549 appears on a stone bearing a Latin motto above the porch of the Mansion. The adjacent church of St Margaret's, Ipswich, soon became the family's habitual place of baptism, marriage and burial, commencing with his son Peter, who was baptised there on 20 March 1549.
  Withypoll soon ran into difficulties over his development. He was alleged to have demolished a priest's house and a churchyard wall, to have plundered materials from a church window, and to have denied access to the churchyard, and was ordered to pay arrears owing to parishioners. Edmund is described as "gent., of Gwipiswiche" in deeds of 1554 granting the rental of his properties of the Bear and the Dolphin Taverns, in Southwark. He was elected a member of parliament (MP) for Ipswich in 1558. He sat on the bench as a Justice of the Peace for Suffolk from 1561 to his death and was appointed High Sheriff of Suffolk for 1570–71.
  In 1567 Withypoll confronted the Town Bailiffs over their attendance at the "Holy Trinity Fair" (granted to the Priory by Henry II) held annually in Tuddenham Road beside Christchurch. He objected that it had been customary to lodge the town's ceremonial maces with the Priory for the fair's duration, which in default of their having done, he advised them not to attend. The Councilmen instructed the Bailiffs (as Clerks of the Market, and Justices of the Peace) to disregard his message, and Withypoll blocked various highways and opposed their entry. He brought a suit in Star Chamber, which the Bailiffs and Commonalty resolved to defend and oppose fully, at the town's expense. Loans were sought from the Portmen, councilmen and burgesses, and scot and lot was imposed upon the householders to raise £200 for the town's debts and for this suit, upon pain of distraint, seizure of property, disfranchisement and imprisonment for default of payment.
  
  Full records of the affair were preserved by the Borough, which brought counter-suits claiming that Withypoll had illegally enclosed lands, highways, conduits and other amenities, and had committed various other infringements of rights. Conversely, at his manorial Courts Baron held at much the same time, Withipoll had difficulties in obtaining due payment of fines and adequate repairs to properties: in taking control he incurred at least one suit in Chancery which was not resolved until 1579. There is a note of exasperation in Withypoll's rejoinder:
  "As towchinge John Damero
caption: Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
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