REDSTONE, William

If, as seems probable, the William Redstone who sat for four different constituencies in Surrey and Sussex in at least five of the six Parliaments between 1442 and 1450 was the son of a man of the same name who had twice been elected for Southwark in the reign of Henry V, he represented at least the third generation of his family to have entered the Commons. Like his putative father, Redstone resided in Southwark, in a house close to the main highway running through the parish of St. Olave.4 CCR, 1447-54, p. 94. He also owned property nearby, in Bermondsey, Penge and Battersea, as well as elsewhere in Surrey and Kent – holdings which in 1436 were said to provide an annual income of some 40 marks.5 Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM/1719. It is not certain at what date the elder William Redstone died, but even in 1440 the later MP was still being styled ‘junior’, suggesting that the older man either still survived or had only recently died.6 CP40/717, rot. 428.

By contrast, only scattered details of Redstone’s career are recorded. In the light of his apparently extensive network of connexions it is possible that he underwent some legal training. His early activities are difficult to distinguish from those of his older namesake, but it was probably he who in August 1442 was named alongside the King’s stepfather, Owen Tudor, and others as a feoffee of a house and garden in the parish of St. Mary Newenton in Lambeth by Robert, son of John Ashwell, the former Lancaster King of Arms.7 CCR, 1441-7, p. 78. These connexions may be indicative of ties that Redstone had by this date forged within the royal household, and may go some way towards explaining his return to the Commons earlier that year for the duchy of Lancaster borough of East Grinstead.

Redstone did not neglect his ties with his Southwark neighbours. In 1439 he was bound over alongside William Bridges III* and Hugh Ashbury*, a servant of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, in his capacity as marshal of England, to keep the peace towards Thomas Boston and his wife, Joan. The details of their dispute are obscure, but the panel of sureties for the three men included a number of Southwark residents.8 CCR, 1435-41, p. 351. Among these was John Tingleden, one of several London grocers who lived in the borough, whose daughter Redstone went on to marry, settling on her a jointure worth an impressive £20 p.a. It is nevertheless possible that relations with her father soon cooled, for by the spring of 1442 the two men were tied up in litigation in the court of Chancery over the bond guaranteeing the marriage settlement.9 C1/9/62. It is not known whether Redstone secured election to the Parliament of 1445, for which no returns from the boroughs of Surrey and Sussex are known to survive, although the pattern of his parliamentary career may suggest that he did. Certainly, in 1447 he took one of the Southwark seats alongside the county coroner Adam Levelord*. When the county court met at Guildford on 25 Jan. to choose the knights of the shire, both Southwark MPs were present and set their seals to the sheriff’s indenture.10 C219/15/5.

If local credentials had served to secure Redstone election for Southwark, it is less certain to what circumstance he owed his seat for the Mowbray borough of New Shoreham in February 1449, although connexions with the royal government may have played a part, for within a year of this election he was in the employ of the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, for whom he received assignments at the Exchequer.11 E403/777, m. 9. While on this occasion the two Southwark seats were taken by members of the Household, Redstone once more represented his home town that autumn.12 Nothing is known of the circumstances of the Southwark elections to the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.), and it is impossible to know whether a simultaneous dispute between Redstone and the local tailor William Moyle I* had any bearing on his failure to gain re-election locally: C253/30/184-5. In the crisis year of 1450, Redstone again gave way at Southwark, this time to a master in Chancery, John Pemberton*. Instead, he found a seat in the duke of Buckingham’s borough of Bletchingley. Once again, it is reasonable to suppose that connexions at court played a part. Further evidence of Redstone’s ties at Westminster is provided by his appointment about this time as an executor of the will of Thomas Walbere, a one-time canon of the royal college of St. Stephen in Westminster palace, and himself an executor of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter.13 C1/17/399.

It seems clear that Redstone maintained a wide network of connexions: in his own locality he was regularly employed as a trustee for gifts of goods and chattels, many of them made by London citizens,14 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 168, 241, 271. while his Surrey neighbours who called upon him to serve as a feoffee of their landholdings included men as important as the veteran soldier Sir John Fastolf who owned property in Southwark.15 CP25(1)/232/73/25; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 94, 229. His returns for East Grinstead and New Shoreham aside, he also seems to have played enough of a part in the life of Sussex to be named in January 1452 among the commissioners charged with the arrest of three offenders from Ringmer near Lewes.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 537.

Redstone died intestate before 18 June 1453, when administration of his estate was granted to John Rokesley*, Richard Tingleden† (his brother-in-law) and John Gilbert.17 Hants. RO, Reg. Waynflete, 1, f. 26v. He was survived by his wife, Agnes, who went on to marry one Hugh Kyngeston and was still alive in 1466.18 C1/26/4; CP25(1)/152/96/21; CP40/813, rot. 455d; 823, rot. 379.