FORSTER, John (c.1373-c.1438), of Penrith, Cumb. and Drybeck in Appleby St. Lawrence, Westld.

This MP poses a slight problem of identification. Appleby occasionally returned fellows of Lincoln’s Inn – the other MP in 1422, Nicholas Stanshawe*, was one such – and it is thus possible that he was John Forster of that Inn, who rose to be under sheriff of London in the early 1430s. The lawyer was from Lincoln: Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 112. Aside from his service as under sheriff, his career is obscure: J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1745. There is, however, a candidate so local that he is very much more likely to have been the MP. This John was the son of a man of some prominence: his father long served in the royal household, having a place as one of the royal archers from the 1370s, and took an active part in local affairs, holding office by royal grant as forester in Inglewood forest, serving as a collector of fifteenth and tenths in both Cumberland and Westmorland and leasing the alnage of cloths for sale in the four northernmost shires. CPR, 1377-81, p. 218; 1381-5, pp. 39, 94, 459, 532, 575; 1385-9, p. 66; 1388-92, p. 379; CCR, 1385-9, p. 578; CFR, x. 19, 159, 266, 267; xi. 27, 140. Our MP first appears in the records in February 1394, probably soon after coming of age, when he succeeded his father in the forestership, which brought daily wages of 2d. CPR, 1391-9, p. 377. In 1428, when giving evidence at Ralph Neville’s proof of age, he was said to be about 50 years old, an estimate, given the latitude of such estimates, consistent with a birth date in the early 1370s: CIPM, xxiii. 314. Three years later, in May 1397, he benefited from another royal grant, namely a remainder interest in his father’s farm of the herbage of the lawn of Southwaite in Hesket in the same forest. This remainder soon fell in: his father was dead by the following November, when replaced among the King’s yeomen. CFR, xi. 211; CPR, 1396-9, p. 184.

After the change of dynasty in 1399 Forster lost this last grant. On 14 Nov. the herbage was granted to one of the leading Cumberland gentry, William Stapleton†, for life. Forster responded by suing out new letters patent of his own. On 12 May 1400 he was awarded the herbage for a term of ten years, but not surprisingly, given Stapleton’s superior rank, these were revoked a year later. CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 88, 485. He did, however, retain his forestership, and if one might judge from the only two other references to him from Henry IV’s reign his affairs prospered in a modest way. On 10 July 1408 he joined one of the local gentry, Hugh Salkeld†, in farming from a royal servant, Henry Longdon, lands once owned by Oliver Raghton (d.1399). Longdon held the property by a royal grant of 1399 during the minority of Oliver’s heir, and it was probably because Longdon’s main interests lay outside the north-west that the considerable annual rent of £11 6s. 8d. was to be paid, at two terms of the year, in the house of a wealthy London skinner, Henry Barton†, in Watling Street. The lease was intended to reconcile Longdon’s interest as the royal grantee with those of Forster, who had been named as one of Oliver Raghton’s feoffees in 1392. E210/4254; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 32; CIPM, xix. 355. The relationship between the Forsters and Raghtons was close. In 1394 William Raghton had surrendered the herbage of Southwaite to our MP’s father, and in 1397 Oliver had offered surety when the herbage was farmed to our MP: CPR, 1391-6, p. 374; CFR, xi. 211. The other reference gives a another measure of Forster’s standing: on 20 Nov. 1408, described as ‘of Penrith’, he was one of four men entrusted by the Crown with the task of taking pontage for two years from goods crossing the river Amot and applying the funds to the repair of two local bridges. CPR, 1408-13, p. 31.

A further small mark of royal patronage came Forster’s way early in the next reign. On 23 Jan. 1416, described as ‘of Penrith, alias of Drybeck’ (places lying on either side of the border between Cumberland and Westmorland), he was pardoned of all debts due to the Crown. Later, on 25 Mar. 1421, he was named last of the 24 attestors to the Cumberland parliamentary election, a demonstration of his, perhaps tenuous, gentry status. C219/12/5; E159/201, brevia Easter rot. 7. Gentleman or not he was more than qualified to represent an impoverished borough in Parliament. His election for Appleby in 1422 presumably owed much to his ill-documented (but certainly not extensive holdings) in the neighbourhood of the town, but perhaps also to an association with Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, to whom the fee farm of Appleby was payable by royal grant. The probability is that he numbered among the earl’s tenants at Penrith, and there is good evidence of this connexion. If the proof of age taken in respect of the earl’s grandson and heir, Ralph, at Penrith on 22 Nov. 1428 is to taken literally, Forster had been among those present at the baby Ralph’s baptism in the chapel of St. Michael in the Percy castle of Cockermouth, then in the earl’s hands on account of the temporary forfeiture of the Percys, on 4 Apr. 1406. Further, Forster was a juror both at this proof and (in company with his son Hugh), at the earl’s inquisition post mortem taken in 1425, again at Penrith. CIPM, xxii. 653; xxiii. 314; CPR, 1405-8, p. 50.

As a resident of Penrith, an important administrative centre, Forster was frequently employed as a juror in other routine inquisitions, most notably, the inquisitions post mortem of Sir Robert Lowther† in May 1430 and of William Stapleton (who had long before supplanted him in the herbage of Southwaite) in October 1432. He also discharged other tasks of local administration: in November 1431 the escheator of Northumberland employed him to warn Sir John Bertram* and John Preston†, guardians of the keepers of the Lumley lands, about the forthcoming proof of age of Thomas, later Lord Lumley. CIPM, xxiii. 345, 724; xxiv. 86. By this date Forster’s son was comfortably old enough to join his father in these tasks: from about 1420 he was one of the garrison at Carlisle and in 1429 he attested the Cumberland parliamentary election there. Later, in February 1435, our MP gave up his forestership in favour of his son, whose service at Carlisle served as a recommendation for the Crown’s continued patronage of the family. By this date John was over 60, and he was dead by February 1438, when Hugh had new letters patent granting him the forestership for life. C219/14/1; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 442, 448; 1436-41, p. 135.