GODEMAN, John, of Lewes, Suss.

This MP was almost certainly related to a namesake who had represented Lewes in three Parliaments of the 1390s; indeed, he may well have been his son. They were connected with another branch of the Godeman family livint at Fletching, some eight miles to the north of Lewes, and our John is first recorded, in 1419, bringing a suit in the court of common pleas against a fuller of that village for a debt of £10. CCR, 1409-13, pp. 119-20; CP40/635, rot. 486d. He himself was sued in Hilary term 1424 for the same amount, which he allegedly owed to the estate of a deceased burgess of Southampton. Although little is recorded about his trading activites, he was described in the plea roll as a merchant, and it seems likely that he dealt mainly in wool from sheep grazed on the South Downs. CP40/652, rot. 368. In the last session of the Parliament of 1427-8, in which Godeman represented Lewes, the Commons granted an unusual tax to be levied on parishes. He subsequently played a part in its collection by serving on juries gathered in his home town to provide information to the tax assessors. Feudal Aids, v. 163. Later, he acted likewise at the inquisition post mortem conducted in Lewes in November 1441 following the death of Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf. C139/103/30.

Godeman was regularly recorded witnessing deeds at Lewes between 1432 and 1454. Add. Chs. 30564-6; C146/493. The date of his death is not known, although the possibility should not be discounted that he was the merchant of the staple of Calais of this name who in May 1456 dispatched a cargo of woolfells and fuel from Seaford on the Sussex coast. The vessel carrying the goods was later found ‘suspiciously disposed’ on the coast of Flanders and was arrested on the grounds that it was heading for Zeeland rather than Calais, and that payment of customs duties on 700 woolfells had been evaded. Even if our John Godeman was the merchant concerned, it is unclear whether he had intended to defraud the Crown. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 344-5.

Godeman’s son, another John, usually described as ‘gentleman’, CP40/724, rot. 388. had trained to be a lawyer, and held office as coroner in the rapes of Lewes and Pevensey in the period 1456-67. Suss. Arch. Collns. xcviii. 65; KB9/315/39. He was also appointed to a commission dated 11 Mar. 1461 to arrest the former escheator of Surr. and Suss. Together with his wife Margaret this younger John acquired land at Withyham in east Sussex, by a series of transactions dating from the 1450s, CP25(1)/241/90/15; 91/7, 23. but as a pardon granted to him in 1468 makes clear he had once also possessed landed interests in Little Haseley, Oxfordshire, and at Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. C67/46, m. 29. How he came to be linked with these places has not been discovered, although it may have been his ambitions in the property market which led to the straightened financial circumstances revealed in petitions presented in the royal Chancery in 1476 and 1480. These petitions also reveal much about the relations earlier pertaining between John junior and his father, our MP. The first, a bill from another former MP for Lewes, William Delve*, stated that when John Godeman the younger had fallen into debt to the tune of 40 marks his father had borrowed the required sum from a neighbour, John Hert†, to secure his release from the Fleet prison. As surety for the loan, John senior and Delve had been bound by obligation to Hert. Afterwards, John senior paid Hert back 22 marks, and made a settlement on his son of two messuages in Lewes which might be sold to raise the rest of the sum due; but after he died the younger John refused to come to Delve’s assistance when Hert’s widow sued him for non-payment of the remaining 18 marks and for £2 in costs. The second petition also concerned John junior’s financial difficulties. In it he related how, being in ‘grete need’ of money, he and his wife had borrowed 43 marks from Thomas Sherman* alias Baker on the security of property in Lewes. However, although Sherman had recovered his money from the estate within the agreed term of the mortgage, he refused to return it, asserting that the Godemans had broken covenants contained in their agreement. C1/51/176-8, 187-9. The younger Godeman headed the list of ten men who attested the parliamentary indenture for Lewes in December 1477. In 1482 he and his wife made a conveyance of six messuages, a garden and two acres of land in the town, but whether these properties had once belonged to his father the MP does not appear. C219/17/3; CP25(1)/241/93/29.