WILLIAM CANYNGE

See also:

• WILLIAM CANYNGE CANYNGES (c. 1399-1474)

CANYNGES (c. 1399-1474)  , English merchant, was born at Bristol in 1399 or 1400, a member of a wealthy family of merchants and cloth-manufacturers in that city . He entered, and in due course greatly extended, the family business, becoming one of the richest Englishmen of his day . Canynges was five times mayor of, and twice member of parliament for, Bristol . He owned a fleet of ten ships, the largest hitherto known in England, and employed, it is said, 800 seamen . By special license 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, obtaining a large share of their business . In 1456 he entertained Margaret of Anjou at Bristol, and in 1461 Edward IV . Canynges undertook at his own expense the great work of rebuilding the famous Bristol church of St Mary, Redcliffe, and for a long time had a hundred workmen in his regular service for this purpose . In 1467 he himself took holy orders, and in 1469 was made dean of Westbury . He died in 1474 . The statesman George Canning and the first viscount Stratford de Redcliffe were descendants of his family . See Pryce, Memorials of the Canynges Family and their Times (Bristol, 1854) .