GOODYER, John

Although not much is known of its origins and early history, the Goodyer family appears to have been well established in and around Hadley, sometimes called Monken Hadley, and Barnet in Middlesex by the early fifteenth century. Indeed, later pedigrees claimed marital relations with families as important as the Wests, Lords de la Warre, and the Lewknors.3 VCH Mdx. v. 269, 289. John Goodyer’s early career is likewise difficult to trace, but it is possible that he was in some way connected with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, the lord of the borough of Bletchingley that he would represent in the Commons. No evidence of the nature of this connexion has come to light, but Goodyer’s parliamentary colleague in 1431 was William Gaynesford*, a younger son of John Gaynesford I*, the steward of Stafford’s Surrey estates, while some years later Goodyer himself acted as a witness to a conveyance of lands in Kent to a group of feoffees which included the Stafford retainers William* and Thomas Hextall*.4 CCR, 1454-61, p. 382.

Perhaps also through Stafford’s good offices, Goodyer entered the royal household as a page of the counting house, and in this capacity was rewarded with a grant of 12 acres of land in the royal manor of Kempton in Middlesex in June 1441. The following January, however, Kempton was in its entirety granted to two other royal servants, John Somerton and John Hampton II*. In the first instance, Goodyer successfully asserted his title, but in November 1442, when he failed to attend a hearing in Chancery, his grant was revoked.5 CPR, 1436-41, p. 549; 1441-6, pp. 30, 138. Goodyer nevertheless continued in post at the royal counting house into the 1450s, and may have retained his office until much of the King’s household was replaced by the Yorkist administration of 1460-1.

In the county of Middlesex Goodyer was clearly a man of some standing, and in August 1449 he was appointed for the first time as a tax collector in the county. Over the course of the 1450s and 1460s he was regularly called upon by his neighbours to act as a feoffee or a trustee of their moveable goods. It is indeed possible that some of these transactions had a mercantile background, since on at least one occasion Goodyer (otherwise styled a gentleman) was described as a ‘chapman’. This may have been true of a settlement of John’s own moveable property made in June 1459.6 CFR, xviii. 127; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 213, 341, 349, 374; C1/57/153-5, 159. On occasion his dealings could turn sour, as when he was defrauded of the lease of a house in the London parish of All Saints Honeylane, which he had acquired from William Brent in August 1462, through the machinations of one Robert Knolles, sparking litigation in Chancery.

In spite of his former service to the deposed Henry VI, Goodyer was allowed to play a minor part in county administration under Edward IV, serving once more as a tax collector in 1463,7 CFR, xx. 107. and attesting the parliamentary elections of 1467 (as he had also done seven years earlier, in 1460, and perhaps also on other, unrecorded, occasions. It was perhaps also he who between 1470 and 1473 served as Richard Turnaunt’s bailiff of the lordship of Tottenham which the latter had inherited after the death of his stepfather, John Gedney*.8 Tottenham manorial recs. MR90-91. He appears to have survived into the early 1480s, when two men of his name attested deeds at South Mimms.9 Glos. Archs. Ducie, Moreton and Reynolds mss, D340a/T195A/1-5; C131/79/5; C241/258/62.

By the end of the century the family holdings had passed to a younger John Goodyer, perhaps the MP’s son, who died in 1504. The family went on to acquire the manor of Monken Hadley itself, as well as the two largest copy-hold estates in Friern Barnet, and a substantial property in Edgware. According to some authorities, such was the prominence of this family in the locality that it gave its name to the settlement known from the early seventeenth century as Golders Green.10 PCC 12 Holgrave (PROB11/14, f. 14); Trans. London and Mdx. Arch. Soc. xx. 184-5; VCH Mdx. v. 263, 289; vi. 18, 22; REQ2/9/60, 13/76.