William II Canynges
William II Canynges (c. 1399–1474) was an English merchant and shipper from Bristol, one of the wealthiest private citizens of his day and an occasional royal financier.
His tomb effigy in St Mary's later inspired the boy poet Thomas Chatterton to write the romantic poem "The Storie of William Canynge".
William's eldest brother Thomas Canynges was Lord Mayor of London in 1456–7, having been elected Alderman for Aldgate ward in 1445, and was a Grocer.
Thomas Young served as the other of Bristol's two MPs during his half-brother William II Canynges's terms as MP in 1450 and 1455, and before 1450 entered into the household of Richard, Duke of York (d. 1460), the Yorkist contender for heirship to the Throne then occupied by Henry VI (1422–1461).
William and Joan had two sons, who were encouraged by their father to become members of the Gloucestershire gentry, yet both predeceased him, and thus ended the Canynges dynasty in Bristol.
In 1436 he served as Constable of the Merchants of the Staple, a key post in the wool export trade, and became a Grocer in 1441, like his half-brother John Young.
By special licence from the king of Denmark he enjoyed for some time a monopoly of the fish trade between Iceland, Finland and England, and he also competed successfully with the Flemish merchants in the Baltic Sea, obtaining a large share of their business.
[3] William's half-brother Thomas Young, whilst serving with him as the Bristol MPs in 1450, had proposed a motion in Parliament for the recognition of his Yorkist royal patron Richard, Duke of York (d. 1460) as heir to Henry's throne, for which action he was imprisoned.
Canynges appears to have shared his half-brother's support for the Yorkist cause as in 1450 during his third term as mayor he prevented the sale in Bristol of gunpowder intended for use against the Duke.
Whilst mayor in September 1461, following Henry's deposition in that year, Canynges received in Bristol the Duke's son, the new Yorkist King Edward IV (1461–1483), to whom he loaned 500 marks.
He first obtained the post of rector of St Alban's, Worcester, and was admitted by the bishop on 19 September 1467 to the order of acolyte, and ordained priest by him on 16 April 1468.
Canynges died on 17 or 19 November 1474 and was buried in St Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, where a canopied stone tomb was erected in the south aisle in his memory containing his effigy in red velvet mayoral robes, next to that of his wife Joan.
