Lineage:Kynnersley
The Kynnersley family took its name from a small manor near Carshalton, where they had settled by the early 13th century, if not before, and it was in this part of Surrey that Thomas Kynnersley held most of his estates. He also owned a tenement in the London parish of St. Martin in the Vintry, which was occupied in 1363 by Bartholomew Kynnersley, who was perhaps his father. Although a fairly affluent man with many influential local connexions, he none the less remains a shadowy figure about whom little documentary evidence has survived save in his capacity as a witness and feoffee-to-uses. He is first mentioned in March 1372, when he attested the first of a long series of deeds for members of the Carew family, whose manor of Beddington lay near his home, and with whom he remained on close terms until his death.2 Meanwhile, in August 1372, Kynnersley received royal letters of protection pending his departure overseas as a retainer of John of Gaunt. During the next ten years he also became associated with Richard, Lord Poynings, whom he would have accompanied to France in 1382 had not the proposed expedition been cancelled. From this date onwards he was closely involved in Poynings’s property transactions, so that by the latter’s death in May 1387 a substantial part of his estates had been conveyed to him in trust. Kynnersley subsequently helped to protect the interests of Lord Poynings’s young son and heir, Robert, being present as his ‘attorney and friend’ in the following November when an assignment of dower was made to the widowed Lady Poynings.3
