FORSTER, Richard I, of Bottisham, Cambs.

Richard was almost certainly a near relative, if not the son, of John Forster of Bottisham, the alnager for Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire between 1406 and 1413 and a royal tax collector in 1416. CFR, xiii. 49; xiv. 12, 150. Although Richard had, or was later to acquire, lands in Suff., he should not be confused with his namesake from Stoke by Nayland who was involved as a follower of Sir John Howard* in Howard’s feud with Sir Thomas Kerdiston* in the early 1420s and died in 1439: E179/240/268; KB27/654, rot. 105d. A lawyer – he was probably the ‘R. Forster’ who spent his second Christmas at Lincoln’s Inn in 1421 – he had begun to practise by early 1424 when Nicholas Parys, the escheator in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, appointed him his attorney in the Exchequer. L. Inn Adm. i. 4; E368/196, rot. 140d. He first became active locally in the following October when, after Parys’s death while still in office, he took over as escheator for two weeks. Forster was also an attorney in the common pleas, where he represented John Knapton* of Cambridge in 1428, in a suit for debt that Knapton brought in that court against a London fishmonger. CP40/669, rot. 421.

In the same year, Forster acted as a feoffee in a couple of fines on behalf of Laurence Cheyne*, CP25/1/30/96/25; 97/47. later his fellow knight of the shire in Parliament, and took up the office of escheator for a full term. The previous year he had attended the Cambridgeshire county election, and he was present at successive elections from 1427 to 1436, save that to the Parliament of 1433. While the 1433 Parliament was sitting, however, he and other petitioners, including Cheyne and the Oxford townsman Thomas Coventre I*, obtained licence by authority of Parliament to grant the rents of six messuages and five acres of land in Oxford to the Benedictine nunnery at Littlemore in Oxfordshire, in exchange for property belonging to that house in Cambridgeshire. RP, iv. 467 (cf. PROME, xi. 155); CPR, 1429-36, p. 287. How he had formed links with the nunnery is unclear, but it is not surprising to find him acting as steward and adviser of the priory at Bottisham by 1431. It was on his doorstep, and it was as ‘of Bottisham’ that he took the general oath not to maintain breakers of the peace in 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 385.

By the mid 1430s, Forster had for some years officiated as a coroner, although in November 1435 the Crown removed him from office because he was too busy with more pressing matters on the King’s behalf to attend to his duties. CCR, 1435-41, p. 9. At that date he was a sitting MP and had recently become a j.p. of the quorum. Forster possessed lands in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk assessed at £33 p.a. for tax purposes in the following year, E179/240/268. so he was undoubtedly qualified in his own right to represent the former county as a knight of the shire. Furthermore, he was now bailiff of the Cambridgeshire lands of the duke of Bedford’s honour of Richmond, and this may have played a part in his selection as an MP. On the other hand, Bedford was not an immediate presence in the county, since he was in France when the election took place on 1 Sept. 1435 and died nearly a month before Parliament met. C219/14/5; CP, ii. 72. Forster’s removal from the office of coroner released him to assist further with the administration of Bedford’s estates, now taken into the Crown’s possession, and four days after the dissolution of Parliament he became steward as well as bailiff of these lands. He almost certainly owed this additional appointment to John, Lord Tiptoft, a senior and highly influential member of the King’s Council. Tiptoft was a dominant figure in the shire in the first half of the fifteenth century and had been steward of the Mortimer lordship of Bottisham between 1405 and 1413, so Forster’s connexion with him may have dated back several years. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 622. In November 1431 Forster and Miles Scull, a Herefordshire lawyer, had acted as mainpernors when Tiptoft was granted custody of the Hankford estates in the West Country, but the former had probably entered the peer’s service well before then. Otherwise it is hard to explain how, except through Tiptoft’s contacts in the marches of Wales, he had come to act as a mainpernor for Makelin Walwyn*, a Herefordshire esquire, in February 1430. CFR, xvi. 22, 59. Quite possibly, Forster owed more to Tiptoft than to Bedford for his success in gaining election to Parliament.

It is likely that Forster was acting for Tiptoft when in February 1435 he and others obtained a royal grant of the custody of part of the estates of Sir Walter de la Pole*, since de la Pole’s heir, Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*, was Tiptoft’s ward. CFR, xvi. 230. By now, he had also become a feoffee of the former de la Pole manor at Trumpington on Ingoldisthorpe’s behalf. C139/165/20. Four years later, he and Tiptoft were involved in a transaction concerning a manor at Latton, Essex. CPR, 1436-41, p. 348. At that date, he was serving as the peer’s steward at Bassingbourn, two thirds of which manor Tiptoft had received as part of a life grant of estates belonging to the honour of Richmond in Cambridgeshire in 1437. VCH Cambs. viii. 14; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 120-1, 193-4. He was no doubt acting in his role as steward when he and the bailiff of the honour, Thomas Lokton*, sued several men from Bassingbourn and elsewhere for debt three years later. CP40/715, rots. 388d, 584d, 625d; 716, rots. 98d, 408. His links with Tiptoft also probably explain how he became Sir John Shardelowe’s bailiff at Fulbourn and Sawston, since Shardelowe was another former Tiptoft ward. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 622.

In July 1437, a few months before his third term as escheator, Forster took advantage of a royal pardon covering any offences committed before 2 Sept. 1431. C67/38, m. 9. Ironically, it was for this third term that he was to come under a cloud, for failing to account at the Exchequer at Michaelmas 1438. The Crown reacted by seizing a messuage of his in Bottisham and holding it until he finally complied in July 1439. E364/73, rot. E. In the following January, Forster acted as an attorney in an enfeoffment of lands in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire for Elizabeth, widow of Reynold Ragon†. CCR, 1441-7, p. 54. Here his earlier service to the duke of Bedford may have played its part, for Elizabeth was the half-sister of Richard Wydeville*, whose son had married Bedford’s widow. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 171-3.

Until mid 1442 Forster was an active j.p., e.g. JUST3/212. though not always of the quorum, and he occasionally served on other commissions too. In the same year he was also busy with his own affairs, suing a merchant from Bishop’s Lynn for debt and defending himself in another suit brought by his erstwhile friend, Laurence Cheyne, and William Allington II*, who accused him of detaining a bond from them. CP40/724, rots. 410, 474. He had more than a passing connexion with Lynn, for in 1440-1 he had gained admission to its Holy Trinity guild, a body from which he had purchased a millstone in June 1441. Norf. RO, King’s Lynn bor. recs., acct. scabins Trin. guild, 1440-1, KL/C 38/18.

After 1442, however, Forster was never again a j.p. or commissioner and there is no evidence that he went on to serve the second Lord Tiptoft, who succeeded his father in the following year. His retirement was perhaps a consequence of old age or ill health, but he does not completely fade from view after 1442. In 1443, he became a feoffee of Wimbotsham, a Norfolk manor belonging to Tiptoft’s former ward, Sir Edmund Ingoldisthorpe, and he was probably the Richard Forster who took out a loan of £10 from Thomas Depden of Cambridgeshire in the following year. C139/165/20; CCR, 1454-61, p. 156; Royal 11 A IX, f. 176v. In 1448, he was a party to a fine made on behalf of William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, with whom he had perhaps come into contact through Sir John Shardelow, one of de la Pole’s councillors. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 38-39; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 235n.

The date of Forster’s death is unrecorded but he was certainly no longer alive on 11 Nov. 1456. CPR, 1454-61, p. 156. He died as a more significant landowner than at the start of his career. While it is likely that he had inherited most of his lands in Bottisham, Barnwell and Cambridge, he had added to his possessions by buying land in Stow-cum-Quy in 1437. Three years later, he had agreed to pay John Coo 250 marks for the reversion of his lands in Stetchworth and Dullingham. E. Hailstone, Bottisham, 335, 338; CP25(1)/30/94/47; Add. Ch. 15674. He might also have bought his manor in Balsham, held of the earl of Oxford. His Suffolk lands were perhaps in Wetherfield, since ‘Hanchethall’ in that parish was in the hands of a namesake in Henry VII’s reign. Bodl. Rawlinson mss, B319, ff. 102v, 111; VCH Cambs. vi. 193. In his will of 1504, this later Richard Forster requested burial at Bottisham, next to the sepulchre of his unnamed father. He was probably the MP’s son, as no doubt was the John Forster who was sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1466-7. There were still Forsters living at Bottisham in Elizabeth I’s reign. PCC 12 Holgrave (PROB11/14, f. 94); Rawlinson mss, B319, f. 111.