GAYNESFORD, Nicholas

This MP was one of the sons of John Gaynesford I, who by the time of his death in 1450 had established the family as one of the most prominent in Surrey. Although the eldest of them, John II, inherited the bulk of the lands acquired by their father, it was Nicholas, the youngest sibling, who eventually enjoyed the most successful career, whether as a royal official in Surrey or as a valued member of the households of both Edward IV and Henry VII. His early career is difficult to reconstruct, although it was he who was appointed controller of customs in the port of London in October 1449. Little else is recorded of him before his father’s death nine months later, following which event the principal Gaynesford estates as well as the substantial manor-house at Crowhurst passed to John II. Nicholas appears to have inherited little in the way of property from his father, but far from hindering his career this may have spurred him to seek his own path to fortune. This was greatly facilitated by the favourable position in which the family found itself in the mid fifteenth century. Just as John II was a natural choice as a commissioner and j.p. in Surrey, so too did Nicholas find success relatively easy to come by. His admission to Lincoln’s Inn in 1453 took place during the governorship of his elder brother, William, and came just a few days after the parliamentary elections at Guildford which had seen John II elected as a shire knight for Surrey and Nicholas himself returned as one of the representatives of the borough of Bletchingley. William and John II had both sat for this borough in the early 1430s, when their father had been steward of Bletchingley for its lord the earl of Stafford; perhaps Nicholas owed his return to John Ellingbridge*, a family friend and successor to the stewardship. Nicholas attested the shire indenture recording his brother’s election.8 C219/16/2. In the spring of the same year he was made a feoffee of the lands in Essex which William had acquired by marriage, and during the Parliament’s second session at Westminster he and his co-feoffees obtained a royal pardon for entering the manor of Ashwell without licence. He remained a trustee of these holdings for many years, and was still seised of Ashwell on the death of his nephew Richard in 1484.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 86; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 622.

It was probably in the mid 1450s that Gaynesford acquired his manor of Stone Court at Carshalton. Though perhaps not as impressive as Crowhurst Place, where he grew up, the house at Carshalton was substantial, and by the sixteenth century the lands belonging to his branch of the family included a swannery and a mill.10 BL Harl. MS. 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, ii. 83; VCH Surr. iv. 182-4. This property provided Gaynesford with a seat appropriate to a man who was beginning to rise up the administrative cursus in his native county. His progress was initially slow, for it was his two elder brothers who were appointed to the county bench in the 1450s and to many of the royal commissions that were held in Surrey prior to the deposition of Henry VI. Indeed the only Crown office to come Gaynesford’s way during this period was that of escheator, which he held for the term beginning in November 1457. Despite his membership of Lincoln’s Inn he showed no inclination to follow the career of a lawyer; rather, his path was that of administrator and courtier. The opportunity for achieving a higher profile in Surrey came with the death of his brother John in July 1460, an event which enabled both Nicholas and William to become more active in the county, whether as Crown officials or as feoffees in the transactions of their fellow gentry. Arrangements for the smooth transfer of the family estates to the heir, their nephew John Gaynesford†, had been set in train two months earlier when John II obtained a licence enabling him to convey the manor of Poyle in Surrey to his younger brothers in association with a number of other feoffees-to-uses, including Bartholomew Bolney* and John Ellingbridge. In John’s will William and Nicholas were named as executors with Ellingbridge, and as such were responsible for conveying the contents of Crowhurst Place to the heir once he had attained the age of 24.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 599; PCC 4 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 27).

There remains a possibility that John II died while serving in the retinue of the duke of Buckingham, who was killed resisting the Yorkist earls at the battle of Northampton. Yet the new impetus given to Nicholas’s career came immediately after that Yorkist victory. Indeed, his earliest appointment after the earls’ triumph was as a commissioner of arrest, charged that same month with preventing the escalation of disorder in Sussex. Clearly, he welcomed the change of regime. In September he was returned to Parliament once again, this time as one of the two shire knights chosen to represent Surrey at the assembly destined to consider the claim to the throne asserted by the duke of York. Two months later, while Parliament was in session, he was appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, a mark of his growing reputation which had clearly come to the notice of those who now controlled the government. There is no record that he fought in any of the major battles between December 1460 and March 1461, yet his selection by the new King, Edward IV, to be an usher of his chamber within weeks of his accession, suggests that he had played a significant part in rallying support for him in the southern counties. His reward was a grant of the posts of constable of Odiham castle in Hampshire, and keeper of the park there, to which was subsequently added the farm of this important lordship.12 CPR, 1461-7, p. 21; CFR, xx. 13, 55. Gaynesford had also forged links with the King’s allies, the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, and in July he was appointed by John, the third duke, as steward of his manor of Reigate and constable of Reigate castle, offices which, granted to him for life, came with an annual fee of ten marks.13 DL29/454/7313.

Like more longstanding Yorkist servants Gaynesford benefited from the misfortunes of those whose lands and goods were seized by the Crown in 1461. In July that year he was appointed to survey the lands of John Penycoke, and a few months later he was granted Penycoke’s holdings in the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, worth £12 p.a., as well as the manor of Shalford Clifford in Surrey, forfeited following the death and attainder of John, Lord Clifford.14 CFR, xx. 35; CPR, 1461-7, p. 91; VCH Surr. iii. 109. Other rewards coming Gaynesford’s way in 1461 included the keeping of the lands formerly belonging to John Michelgrove* and the marriage of his infant grand-daughter and heir.15 CPR, 1461-7, p. 96; E101/411/13, f. 36v; 15, f. 19; 412/2, f. 36v. Despite these indications of the regard in which Gaynesford was held, he clearly felt it prudent to obtain a royal pardon for any misdemeanours committed during his time as escheator in Henry VI’s reign. In the pardon, dated 16 Feb. 1462, he was described as an esquire formerly of Cuddington in Surrey.16 C67/45, m. 38. Gaynesford was now a j.p., an position he was to occupy more or less continuously until his death, except on those occasions when political considerations prompted his removal from the bench. His tenure of the lucrative offices at Odiham continued, although by the autumn of 1464 it had become apparent that he had not in fact received any wages due to him. Early the following year the farmers of Odiham were ordered to pay him arrears of his entitled 11d. a day, but these were only back-dated to the previous November.17 CPR, 1461-7, p. 373; CCR, 1461-8, p. 219. Financial constraints had in the meantime been debated by the Parliament which met at Westminster in 1463. The Act of Resumption passed in the session early in 1465 included some 288 clauses of exemption, one of which related to offices held by Gaynesford.18 C49/58, no. 25; RP v. 535.

A significant factor in Gaynesford’s successful acquisition of offices in the 1460s was a close personal relationship with the monarch. An insight into this is provided by a letter written in about 1465 by the King to John Wenlock*, now Lord Wenlock, ordering him ‘to lay at our trusty and well beloved servant Nicholas Gaynesford’s house beside the Bernes a tun of good Gascon wine that we in our sporting which we make in hunting for the hare at this season may have it ready there for our drinking’.19 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 286-7. Firmly established as one of a close-knit group of royal servants whose company and hospitality Edward enjoyed outside the confines of the court itself, Gaynesford reinforced his ties to the King following the latter’s marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville. Among the estates acquired by the new queen was the lordship of Odiham and thus from the autumn of 1465 it was to her that Gaynesford accounted in his capacity as farmer.20 A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 267. His connexion with the queen was probably instrumental in his own marriage, to one of the gentlewomen of her chamber, Margaret Sydney, probably a member of the Sussex family of that name. Together with Margaret he held the Surrey manors of East Sheen and Westhall as well as property in Mortlake, Wimbledon, Pottenhithe and Hampton, which had all previously been held Thomas Burghill*, although no link with Burghill has been discovered. The couple sold them in 1473.21 SC6/1094/1, 2; Surr. Arch. Collns. xxvi. 30-31; CP25(1)/232/76/1.

Gaynesford received a number of other rewards and appointments during the 1460s, among them a patent of February 1466 confirming his tenure of Shalford Clifford and the estates in Lincolnshire which he had been granted four years earlier. An exemption clause specifically excluded these grants from the provisions of the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1467-8, even though shortly before the Parliament met he had conveyed the lands on the Isle of Axholme to the Carthusian priory there, in return for a ‘notable sum’ of money.22 CPR, 1461-7, p. 484; 1467-77, pp. 157-8; RP v. 586. Perhaps the interests of the Gaynesford family in this respect had been safeguarded by the return to the Commons of Nicholas’s nephew John, whose election at the county court at Guildford he had attested. Nicholas’s appointment to the shrievalty of Surrey and Sussex for a second time followed in November 1468. Shortly after he left office he and Thomas St. Leger†, a fellow Household man with whom he was frequently associated, were granted the wardship of the estates of the late John White during the minority of the latter’s son and heir, Robert. The estates raised at least £48 p.a. in revenue, so it is perhaps not surprising that, some years later, Gaynesford took advantage of his position in order to arrange the marriage of one of his daughters to the young heir.23 CPR, 1467-77, p. 182; CCR, 1468-76, p. 434; Surr. Arch. Collns. xxvi. 30-31; C140/32/25. Similarly, in about 1470 he acquired the wardship of Joan Moresby, the sister and heir of John Moresby (d.1465) of Allington castle in Kent, to whom he later married his son and heir, John.24 Archaeologia Cantiana, xxviii. 354; xxix. 161-3.

A feature of the careers of both Nicholas and William was their involvement with the families of the two wives of their elder brother. Following the death of Walter Green* (father of John II’s second wife, Katherine), Nicholas not only acted as a feoffee of the manor of Cowley Peachey in Middlesex for his widow, but, remaining a valued trustee for the family for many years, he was still in possession of the manor on the death of Green’s grandson, Edward, in 1493.25 PCC 15 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 116v); CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 952; E. Williams, Early Holborn, 1212. A more difficult relationship existed between him and the descendants of Richard Wakehurst† (d.1455). The close connexion between their families, forged by the marriages of John II to Wakehurst’s daughter Anne and of their sister Agnes to Wakehurst’s elder son, led to the brothers’ involvement in the disputes with the Culpeppers over the inheritances of their nieces. In addition, Nicholas was drawn into a serious quarrel over the manor of Bysshe Court in Surrey which Wakehurst had settled on his younger son, John, who in 1452 enfeoffed William Gaynesford and John Wody* to the use of his own son and namesake and the latter’s wife Alice. In 1464, with the permission of his co-feoffee, William conveyed it to Nicholas, but nearly 20 years later Alice alleged in a petition in Chancery that our MP had defrauded her of the profits of the manor. Because of his ‘grete powear’ she had agreed to accept just £8 p.a. from him, even though the yearly value of the estate was 20 marks. She said that he owed her arrears covering a period of 16 years, as well as other sums which brought the debt up to £128, and that he had persuaded his nieces’ husbands the Culpeppers to seize possession of some of the lands using a feigned title. This alliance seems to have been successful in repelling the suit brought by Alice, for the Culpeppers duly gained possession of Bysshe Court.26 Add. Chs. 7633, 7637-40; C1/171/22; VCH Surr. iv. 293.

In March 1470 Edward IV gave his personal attention to a grant of pardon to Gaynesford of fines incurred in his capacity as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex.27 CPR, 1467-77, p. 210; CCR, 1468-76, no. 509. This was a period of continuing political uncertainty, following the earl of Warwick’s rebellion of the previous year and his summary execution of the queen’s father, Earl Rivers. The consequences for Gaynesford of Henry VI’s readeption in the autumn of 1470 proved to be limited to his temporary removal from official duties, and in this respect he fared no worse than many of his fellow gentry. Whether he played an active military role in the restoration of Edward IV in the following spring does not appear from the records, although he quickly once more took his place in the royal household. In the autumn of 1472 he was returned to Parliament for the third time, on this occasion as one of the representatives of the borough of Guildford. Presumably he had stood aside from contesting the county seats, which were taken by the King’s kinsman Thomas Bourgchier† and Thomas St. Leger, lover of the King’s sister. He attested the indenture recording their election. In November, during the first session, he was appointed to a third term as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex; and once again, while in the Commons, he was able to secure exemption from the Act of Resumption.28 C219/17/2; PROME, xiv. 173-4.

Gaynesford’s increasing involvement in affairs in Kent partly emerged from his nomination among the feoffees appointed by Archbishop Bourgchier to oversee the purchase of parcels of land at Sevenoaks for the enlargement of the archbishop’s estate at Knole,29 Cat. Lambeth Chs. ed. Owen, 74, 76-77, 115-6; Archaeologia Cantiana, lxxxix. 8. and his links with the Wydevilles and their relations, including Sir William Haute, with whom Gaynesford acted as a co-feoffee in 1473.30 CPR, 1467-77, p. 389. These links were reinforced in the mid 1470s on his move from the King’s household to that of the queen. This seems to have occurred shortly before June 1475 when letters patent issued by Queen Elizabeth confirming him as constable of Odiham also described him as an usher of her chamber.31 CPR, 1467-77, p. 567. Within four years he had also been appointed to the office of receiver of all her lands in the south-east. Gaynesford’s standing at court also ensured that he continued to receive his fee as steward of Reigate after the death in 1476 of the third duke of Norfolk, for the estates and title came into the hands of the King’s younger son, Richard, duke of York.32 Moye, 438; DL29/454/7312, 7313. The settlement of the Mowbray estates formed part of the business of the Parliament which met on 16 Jan. 1478, with Gaynesford in attendance as an MP for the borough of Southwark. The day before, the four-year-old duke was married to the Mowbray heiress, Anne, and parliamentary authority enabled the King to ordain that if she were to die without issue his son would retain her estates for life. Yet the principal task of this brief Parliament was the trial for treason of the King’s brother, George, duke of Clarence. Following Clarence’s execution, Gaynesford was among those appointed a commissioner to inquire into his possessions in Surrey.33 CPR, 1476-85, p. 111.

As a loyal servant of Edward IV, Gaynesford had received numerous rewards, many of which had been acquired as a result of action taken by the King against his enemies. Following Edward’s death in April 1483, however, he was caught up in a train of events which rapidly led to the seizure of his own lands and offices and his attainder as a rebel against the Crown. His association with the Wydevilles was critical in this process: the struggle for control of the young Edward V was played out between the queen and her family on the one hand, and the boy’s uncle, Richard, duke of Gloucester, on the other. By the end of May the young King and his brother were in Gloucester’s hands, and their maternal uncle Anthony, Earl Rivers, had been put to death. The duke subsequently had both boys declared illegitimate, paving the way for his own coronation as Richard III.34 C.D. Ross, Ric. III, 106-7. Gaynesford’s whereabouts at this time are unknown, although it may be speculated that he remained in close contact with the queen, who had sought refuge with her younger son in Westminster Abbey. For him and for many other men of his social position the usurpation of the throne by Richard and the imprisonment of the young princes were unacceptable and arbitrary actions. The opportunity for the expression of their opposition came in the late summer and early autumn when a popular movement in the south-east gathered strength amid rumours that the princes had been murdered. By mid October, according to (Sir) John Howard*, now made duke of Norfolk in Prince Richard’s stead, the Kentish men ‘be up in the Weald’.35 J. Gairdner, Ric. III, 130; Croyland Chron. ed. Pronay and Cox, 163-4. Vital to its support among the gentry of these counties was the involvement of Henry, duke of Buckingham, who had previously provided crucial support for Gloucester’s coup d’etat before turning against him. Buckingham was in Wales, and in anticipation of his leadership co-ordinated assemblies at Maidstone, Guildford and Newbury took place on 18 Oct. under the command of such leaders as (Sir) Thomas St. Leger and Sir John Fogg†, but by the time that Buckingham’s men marched eastwards the risings had been checked by Norfolk’s forces and the process of punishing those involved had begun. The first proof of Gaynesford’s participation is provided by a proclamation in Kent issued in December which alleged that the King’s subjects in the county had been ‘abused and blinded’ by various men, including our MP and headed by Sir Thomas Lewknor and William Haute. Rewards were offered for their arrest, with Gaynesford being among those whose capture was worth £100 or ten marks in land, rather than the 300 marks or £10 in land which was offered for taking Lewknor and Haute.36 BL Harl. MS. 433, ii. 48; Gairdner, 343. Despite the relative ease with which the rebellions had been put down, the highly charged political atmosphere prompted the King on 9 Dec. to issue writs for the summoning of Parliament for the purpose of ratifying his own claim to the throne and proceeding against those who had been involved in the risings. Steps were taken to remove as many as possible of the rebels from the offices to which they had been appointed by Edward IV: on 11 Dec. Gaynesford’s posts at Odiham were granted elsewhere.37 CPR, 1476-85, p. 412. Parliament met on 23 Jan. 1484 and an Act of Attainder was duly passed which named more than 80 men who were said to have committed treason. The list of rebels in Kent was headed by Fogg and included both Gaynesford and his son, John. The Act accused them of organizing the assembly at Maidstone on 18 Oct. as well as subsequent gatherings at Rochester and Gravesend. They were then said to have marched to Guildford where they joined the rebels from Surrey on the 25th.38 RP vi. 245; Archaeologia Cantiana, xxxvii. 105-6. The passing of the Act led swiftly to the seizure of the rebels’ estates. While Parliament was still in session Gaynesford’s lands in Surrey and Lincolnshire were placed in the custody of John Kendale†, and his son’s holdings at Allington were subsequently granted to John Moyle†.39 BL Harl. MS 433, ii. 83, 126. The Crown also introduced specific measures against certain individuals, designed to ensure their future good behaviour. On 22 May Gaynesford, by then apparently at large again, entered into a bond in 100 marks with a number of close associates including Thomas Hoo II*, (Sir) Edmund Rede* (husband of John Gaynesford II’s widow), and his own nephews to ensure his loyalty to the King and guarantee that he would not enter the county of Kent without licence. The involvement of so many highly-placed individuals in the risings of 1483 had wider consequences, particularly for their often complicated activities as feoffees. This included Gaynsford with regard to the support he had given to Richard Haute† in his dealings with William Catesby† (the Speaker in the Parliament of 1484).40 CCR, 1476-85, nos. 1258, 1370. A similar bond was entered into by his son: no. 1259. On 16 July, less than six months after their attainders, Gaynesford and his son John were granted general pardons, and there is some indication of their rehabilitation. In April 1485 they were permitted to receive the revenues of the manor of Allington, although this remained in the hands of the Crown’s receiver, John Moyle.41 CPR, 1476-85, p. 478; BL Harl. MS 433, i. p. xxxv; ii. 213; iii. 237. It is possible, however, that by this stage Nicholas had forged a more personal connexion with Moyle, whose kinswoman Margaret was to become the wife of his grandson and eventual heir, Robert.

The successful invasion by Henry Tudor in August 1485 and his subsequent coronation as Henry VII provided many opponents of Richard III with the opportunity to regain offices and lands taken from them in 1483-4. Less than a month after Henry’s victory at Bosworth, Gaynesford was once again granted the keepership of Odiham, and together with his son John he was granted in survivorship the other offices there from which he had been removed by the late King. An Act of Resumption passed in Henry VII’s first Parliament, which met in November, duly included an exemption-clause relating to these grants. More important, the attainders of the previous year were revoked.42 VCH Surr. iii. 109. Gaynesford was probably restored to his estates at Carshalton at about the same time, although political expediency meant that the manor of Shalford Clifford, awarded to him by Edward IV, was returned to the Cliffords in order to secure their support for the new King.43 VCH Surr. iii. 109 His earlier service to Elizabeth Wydeville proved particularly advantageous following the new King’s marriage to her eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, and by June 1486 he had been re-appointed to his former position as usher of the chamber to the King’s consort. As such he was granted an annuity of £20 out of the issues of Kent. Similarly, his wife also resumed her duties at court, for she was among the gentlewomen of the chamber who attended on the new queen at her coronation in November 1487, while Nicholas took part in the procession to Westminster Abbey along with other prominent Household men ’well horsede in gounes of cremesyne velvett’.44 CPR, 1485-94, p.100; J. Leland, Collectanea, iv. 233; D. Lysons, Environs of London, 128.

The inclusion of John Gaynesford in the royal grant of the Odiham offices was undoubtedly a mark of the regard in which Nicholas was held by the new monarch, but John died in the summer of 1486, and on 10 Aug. his widow, Joan, enfeoffed her father-in-law of several of her family’s manors in Kent.45 CAD, i. B33; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 781. On 17 Oct. John’s young son and heir, Robert, was included in a further grant made to his grandfather, this time of estates in Staffordshire which had been forfeited by Humphrey Stafford III* by judgement in the Parliament of 1485.46 CPR, 1485-94, p. 140. Although Joan married again (her second husband being Robert Brent, one of the Kentish rebels who had been attainted with Nicholas and John), she maintained her close ties with the Gaynesfords, and on her death in 1492 she was buried in Carshalton church. In her will she requested that her lands be held in trust for Robert Gaynesford by his grandparents Nicholas and Margaret, together with their other son, Walter, the rector of Carshalton. The wardship and marriage of Robert, still a minor, were granted in March 1493 to our MP. He thus became keeper of the Moresby estates in Kent, including the valuable manor of Melton of which he had been named a feoffee by Joan on the day before her death.47 Archaeologia Cantiana, xxix. 163; xxviii. 354; xxix. 161-3; CPR, 1485-94, p. 419; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 781.

As well as reviving his career in the Household, Gaynesford had also resumed his administrative duties in Surrey. His importance for the new government was shown in his immediate appointment as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, a post he had held on three previous occasions but which was doubtless seen as a useful means of bolstering support for Henry VII in the locality. Having returned to the bench in October 1487 he remained a j.p. until his death 11 years later. In the autumn of 1491 he was returned to Parliament for the fifth and perhaps final time, once more as a representative for Surrey.

In his will, dated 27 July 1497, Gaynesford asked to be buried next to the high altar of Carshalton church and required his executors to establish a perpetual obit there. Particularly notable in the will was his insistence upon the good behaviour of his grandson and heir, Robert, towards his widow, Margaret, for many of the bequests (of clothing and furnishings from the manor-house at Carshalton, as well as two fine horses), were made conditional on his ‘kynde and curteys delyng’. The same applied to the reversion of the testator’s lands and tenements in Carshalton and elsewhere in Surrey, which would pass to Robert after Margaret’s death only if he honoured the agreements they had made. Other lands were to be released to Robert’s wife, Margaret, in fulfilment of an arrangement made with her kinsman John Moyle. The couple were then living with him at Carshalton. Gaynesford made further provision for his soul in the form of trentals of masses to be said immediately after his death at three religious houses. Among these was the hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr in Southwark, and he made a further bequest to one of the priests there, his ‘gostly fader’ William. Negotiations were currently under way for the marriage of Gaynesford’s grand-daughter, Margaret, to Sir Richard Ludlow; he asked his executors to use damask cloth from one of his robes to make a gown for the bride. Another bequest was destined for his ‘son’ Robert Clifford, presumably the husband of one of the four daughters known to have survived to adulthood. The others included Margaret, wife of Robert White, Elizabeth, who had married John Ellingbridge’s son Thomas, and another Margaret, wife of John Kirton who was named as an executor alongside Gaynesford’s wife. The overseer of the will was the new rector of Carshalton to whom he bequeathed ‘my brace of grayhowndis and my crosbowe’. The will was proved on 4 Nov. 1498, although Gaynesford was dead before August when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued to the escheator in Surrey. A further writ was sent to his counterpart in Berkshire, but in the absence of a surviving inquisition post mortem the extent of his lands there is unknown.48 VCH Surr. ii. 445; iv. 183-4; PCC 27 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 216); CFR, xxii. 259, 269. Gaynesford’s widow survived for five years, her will being proved on 16 Nov. 1503. An inscription on the ornate tomb erected for them both referred to their long service to Edward IV and Henry VII and their queens.49 Surr. Arch. Collns. xxvi. 30-31; PCC 27 Blamyr (PROB11/13, f. 225).