GAYNESFORD, John II

Gaynesford was the eldest of three sons of John I, all of whom became fellows of Lincoln’s Inn like their father and sat in Parliament. Relatively little is recorded of his early career, a reflection primarily of his father’s high profile in their home county, manifested in service to the Crown as a royal commissioner and a j.p. of the quorum, and his prominence as an estates-steward and feoffee. It is striking that none of the three brothers were appointed to the Surrey bench until after their father’s death in 1450. An exception to this relative inactivity was the returns to Parliament in 1431 and 1433 of first William and then John II for the borough of Bletchingley. Their elections were almost certainly facilitated by their father, who was then steward of the Surrey estates of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, feudal lord of the manor and borough of Bletchingley.2 Staffs. RO, Stafford fam. mss, D641/1/2/231. Little else is recorded of the younger John at this time, although it may be the case that his first marriage, to Anne, daughter of the Sussex lawyer Richard Wakehurst, had taken place before his election.3 C139/176/23. The connexion between the two families was strengthened further by the marriage of his sister, Agnes, to Wakehurst’s son and heir, another Richard. The latter’s death in 1454, while his father was still alive, meant that the heirs to the substantial Wakehurst estates in Surrey and Sussex were his and Agnes’s daughters Margaret and Elizabeth. Following the death of the elder Richard the following year the girls’ inheritance became the subject of lengthy suits in Chancery when, following Agnes’s second marriage, to Sir John Culpepper (d.1480), they were abducted and married by Sir John’s brothers, Richard and Nicholas Culpepper. Naturally enough, both Gaynesford and his brother William were drawn into the disputes because of their status as trustees of the Wakehurst lands and as guardians of the rights of their nieces.4 C1/26/304, 27/218-19, 29/1-3, 31/281-4.

The quarrel over the Wakehurst inheritance emerged several years after the death of Gaynesford’s first wife, for by the summer of 1447 he had married the widowed Katherine Stalworth, daughter of the Middlesex landowner Walter Green. This match took place against the background of the Gaynesfords’ succession to the manors belonging to their kinsfolk the de la Poyles. In 1438 the manor of Hampton Poyle in Oxfordshire had been settled on Robert Warner* for life, with reversion to the older John Gaynesford and his son, our MP, and this reversionary interest fell in after Warner’s death in the following year. The Gaynesfords were confirmed in possession of Hampton Poyle, together with the manor of Poyle in Surrey in the summer of 1440. The prospect that our MP would inherit the de la Poyle manors as well as his own family estates, made him a potentially lucrative catch in the marriage market, and one readily apparent to Walter Green, who had married the widow of Henry de la Poyle (d.1422). As part of the marriage settlement our MP obtained a royal licence enabling him to release his right in Hampton Poyle to his father, and for the latter to then settle the manor on him and his second wife in jointure.5 CP25(1)/292/69/215; CPR, 1436-41, p.151; 1446-52, p. 66; W.D. Gainsford, Annals of the House of Gainsford, 8-10.

Other property, including a messuage and some 500 acres of land at Horne in Surrey, had also been conveyed to Gaynesford by his father in the early 1440s. Such transactions enabled him to gain some experience of running the family estates. These were extensive and the cartulary begun by John I eventually came to contain copies of more than 200 deeds relating to their acquisitions in Surrey and Sussex. Even without the de la Poyle manors the Gaynesford inheritance of our MP was worth over £60 p.a.6 Harl. 392; Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM 1719. By his father’s will he inherited a substantial quantity of goods from the manor-house at Crowhurst, which John senior required him to pass on to his own heir.7 PCC 12 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 95); Gainsford, 13; O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 362. By succeeding to his father’s estates (in July 1450),8 C139/144/39. he was able to emulate to some degree the role played by him in the administrative affairs of the county of Surrey. In the following month he was chosen as a commissioner for assessment of the tax on land granted in the previous Parliament, while in October the same year he attested the county election at Guildford.9 C219/16/1. Indeed, the decade between his father’s death and his own in 1460 saw him and his two younger brothers becoming far more active, whether as commissioners and j.p.s or as feoffees in the transactions of prominent local landowners. In December 1452 both he and William made their first appearances on the county bench, and early the following year he was returned to Parliament once more, this time as a knight of the shire and with his brother Nicholas joining him in the Commons as a representative for Bletchingley. While the Parliament was in being both the brothers were both admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, Nicholas on 25 Mar. and John on 5 May, on condition that the latter would undertake to deliver to the fellows a buck in the autumn and a doe at Christmas every year for the rest of his life. The two of them joined presumably at the instigation of their brother William, who was then serving his fourth term as one of the four governors of the Inn.10 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 22; L. Inn Adm. 12.

Further commissions in both Surrey and Sussex followed, and Gaynesford was one of those appointed in May 1454 to arrest the troublesome Robert Poynyngs, alleged to have been the rebel Jack Cade’s sword-bearer. In March 1456 he shared with Thomas Acton* and others custody of the manor of Stanwell in Middlesex, which had formerly belonged to Miles Windsor, whose wife Joan, another daughter of Walter Green, was Gaynesford’s sister-in-law. Green, concerned for the interests of his young grandson Thomas Windsor†, guaranteed on their behalf payment of 200 marks for the wardship.11 CFR, xix.151; Early Holborn ed. Williams, nos. 1206-8; E159/232, recorda Easter rot. 6d. Later that year Gaynesford was chosen as one of the executors of his father-in-law’s will.12 PCC 15 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 116v).

Unlike his father, Gaynesford did little to enlarge the family’s estates, and there is no evidence from the deeds or rentals contained in the family cartulary of any significant acquisitions made during the 1450s.13 Gainsford, 20-21, 34; Harl. 392. His activities as a feoffee in these years were similarly low-key, although one of those for whom he acted was John Arderne (another of Walter Green’s sons-in-law), who named him as a trustee of his manor of Flaunchford in Reigate in 1453, and in the autumn of the same year he acted in a similar capacity for Ralph Amondesham concerning property at Ripley, Woking and West Horsley. Of greater significance, early in May 1455 he and his brother William were among those entrusted with the honour and rape of Hastings, following the death of Thomas Hoo I*, Lord Hoo.14 Surr. Arch. Collns. xi. 146; CP25(1)/232/74/6; Add. Ch. 23802; E159/235, brevia Mich. rot. 16. He was also connected with various other individuals from Sussex, including Thomas Bellingham* for whom he provided bail of £40 to guarantee the latter’s appearance in the court of common pleas in the summer of 1456.15 CP40/779, rot.125.

Gaynesford’s service as a j.p. and as a commissioner in Surrey continued, and from 1457 onwards he was regularly included on commissions of array, including that appointed in December 1459 following the attainder of the Yorkist lords at the Coventry Parliament. Evidently, he was considered to be loyal to the Lancastrian regime, which in April 1460 directed him to make inquiries into the escapes of prisoners from gaols in Surrey. It may have been the escalating crisis of the civil war, with the Yorkists poised to return in force from Calais, which prompted Gaynesford to put his affairs in order at that time. On 8 May he obtained the King’s licence to grant the manor of Poyle to a body of feoffees headed by his brothers,16 CPR, 1452-61, p. 599. and on 30 May he made his will. This was deliberately modelled on that of his late father (particularly with regard to bequests of household goods and livestock at Crowhurst), and like him he asked to be buried in Crowhurst church. John’s eldest son and namesake was still under age, so he made arrangements for his moveable possessions to be held in trust by his executors until the young man attained the age of 24. No specific bequests were made to George, his elder son by his second wife, Katherine. The latter was left clothing and all the chattels that she had brought with her on her marriage, and was named as one of his executors along with his brothers William and Nicholas and a family friend, John Ellingbridge*. Although the will was not proved until May 1464 it is clear from the inquisition post mortem held in November 1460 that Gaynesford had in fact died on 7 July that year.17 PCC 4 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 27); C139/176/23; Surr. Arch. Collns. xxvii. 27-30. Significantly, this was just a few days before the battle of Northampton, at which the Gaynesfords’ lord Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, was killed fighting on the Lancastrian side. There is therefore a strong possibility that our MP had ridden out in arms to join the duke’s retinue. His tomb in Crowhurst church recorded his burial with his first wife and was a more ornate affair than that constructed for his father.18 Gainsford, 34; Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 42.

Some uncertainty exists over his heir’s age in 1460, for while the inquisition recorded that he was at least 30 years old, Gaynesford’s will makes it clear that the younger John was not yet 24. A reference in the household book of John Howard* (later duke of Norfolk) from the early 1460s adds to the confusion with its note ‘to remember that Gaynesfordes sone, that dede is, is ward to my Lord Scales’.19 Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 187. An important connexion between the Gaynesfords and the Wydevilles was then being forged by John’s brother Nicholas, who became an usher of the chamber to Queen Elizabeth, Scales’s sister, but the identification remains uncertain. It is clear, however, that Gaynesford’s heir John was old enough by January 1466 for the manor of Poyle to be formally settled on him.20 CPR, 1461-7, p. 423. This seems to have heralded the partitioning of the de la Poyle inheritance, for Hampton Poyle, which had remained with our MP’s widow, Katherine, as her jointure and been taken by her to her marriage to Edmund Rede* in about 1461, was settled on the Redes for life with reversion to George Gaynesford, her son by her marriage to John II. Katherine survived our MP by nearly 40 years.21 VCH Oxon. vi.161; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 237-8. Rede was Katherine’s third husband and not her first as stated in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 231-2.