Simon (Kyme) de Kyme (abt. 1154 - 1220)

Born about 1154 in Sotby, Lincolnshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

Although he was not a surety baron, and technically not even a baron, he was an important member of the rebellious "northern" baronial faction who resisted King John already before 1215, and came to the south to get Magna Carta. Holt (p.55ff) saw Simon of Kyme as an important type of knight who could "probably surpass many of the smaller barons in power and influence" and "would require and deserve respect, not least from the lord of the honour"...

Simon of Kyme, one of the most prominent men in Lincolnshire in the reigns of Richard and John, personifies this kind of tenant. In all, he held approximately thirty fees. Of these, two, at most, were held of the Crown. The rest were held of twelve different baronies, range from the great secular baronies of Gant, Chester, Peverel, and Mowbray, and the ecclesiastical lordships of Durham and Lincoln, down to the small Yorkshire barony of Arches.

[...(He was also a tenant of the honours of Gloucester, Percy, Brus, Aincurt, and de la Haye.)...]

Such men provided a living demonstration of the absence of any sharp social distinction between the knightly and the baronial. This was as true in war as in was in family relationships.

[...]

Among men of this kind there were wealthy, energetic landowners and active, daring adventurers in the no-man's-land between business and politics. [...] Simon of Kyme and Thomas of Moulton were engaged in such a hectic round of business and political speculation as to leave a long, involved story of litigation and debt on a baronial scale in the rolls of the justices and the Exchequer. As a result, Thomas suffered imprisonment, in 1208, and Simon fell into the hands of the Jews. But both were quite unrepetentant, and success ultimately came to Thomas at least. With Simon's aid he purchased the widow and heiresses of Richard de Lucy of Egremont for himself and his sons, thus establishing the Moultons as barons in Cumberland.

Farrer gives various records from his life including some showing that he was adult before the death of his father, when he got in legal trouble for a duel. Also:

He died in 1220, when the sheriff of Lincoln was directed to take into the king's hands all Simon's lands except the manors of Croft, Baumber, Sotby, Immingham and Asgarby (' Asemardeby ') which were of the fee (sic) of Ranulf earl of Chester and Lincoln and had been demised by Simon to the said earl for a term not yet ended, for his redemption. His son Philip giving £100 for his relief, then had livery of his father's lands. Rohaise, Simon's relict, obtained a writ against William de Kime to render to her i fee in Elkington and Cairthorpe (' Caletoft') which she claimed as her inheritance. She was living in 1228.

Sources

• Richardson Royal Ancestry Vol.3, p.61
• Farrer, Honors and Knights' Fees, Vol.2, pp.118ff
• J.C. Holt, (1961) The Northerners
• Keats-Rohan, "de Kyme, Simon Filius Philipi" in Domesday Descendants, pp.533-4.