FOORDE, John, of Colchester, Essex.

Several men surnamed Foorde were prominent in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Colchester – including the John Ford† who sat for the borough in Henry V’s reign – but it is not clear if they were all from the same family. VCH Essex, ix. 60; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 102. John Foorde of Colchester stood surety for John Godstone* at Westminster in 1425, but it is unclear whether he was the MP or a namesake: CP40/658, rot. 263d. A Member of at least three Parliaments, John was probably the man who held the offices listed above, since those who sat for borough invariably came from its ruling hierarchy. Perhaps the stepson of Nicholas Berners, an esquire from Essex, In Oct. 1424 Berners and his wife, Joan, previously married to John Foorde, surrendered her life interest in a messuage and four shops in Colchester to her son, another John Foorde, but the latter could have been the MP of Henry V’s reign: ct. roll, 1424-5, D/B 5 Cr45, mm. 34d-35. he was almost certainly related to a fellow burgess, William Foorde*. John had business dealings in London, where he took delivery of five bales of woad from John Copmyll of that City in January 1446. Later that year, Copmyll began a suit over this transaction in the court of common pleas, alleging that he had delivered the woad, worth £12, to Foorde for safekeeping only and demanding its return. CP40/743, rot. 488d. In the plea roll, Foorde is styled a ‘merchant’ but, given that woad was a dyestuff, he may well had a particular interest in the cloth trade like William Foorde, a draper as well as a merchant.

In February 1453, when (Sir) John Prysote* and other commissioners of oyer and terminer came to Colchester, both Foordes were among the jurors who indicted William Lecche* and other townsmen for rising in support of Jack Cade in 1450. KB9/26/1/17. It is unlikely that Lecche, who had become one of the bailiffs of Colchester soon afterwards, had played any part in Cade’s revolt so the indictment may have arisen from personal enmities among the burgesses. In the mid 1450s, John Foorde took part in several conveyances in Colchester, apparently as a feoffee for the London draper, Thomas Cook II*. Earlier that decade Thomas Kimberley had made a release to him, Cook and others of various messuages in the town’s parishes of St. Nicholas and All Saints which had formerly belonged to John Kimberley†. Mercers’ Co., London, St. Paul’s school, cart. ff. 207v-208, 216, 217v, 218; Colchester ct. roll, 1452-3, D/B 5 Cr65, m. 9. The release refers to Foorde as ‘John Foorde senior’ to distinguish him from a namesake. Both Johns are among several Foordes who feature in the will of Katherine, the widow of another burgess, Nicholas Peek*. In the will, made in June 1465, she made the elder John one of her executors and left him property in the borough. PCC 12 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 93). John Derby was active as one of the executors of John Foorde of Colchester in 1485, Ct. roll, 1484-5, D/B 5 Cr81, m. 23d. but it is not clear if the testator was the elder or younger man, or another John Foorde altogether.