GOULD, Richard, of Winchester and South Langley, Hants.

Gould had a modest interest in the cloth finishing industry of Winchester: at least, he was among the citizens fined for having cloth woven outside the city liberty, and he was assessed for alnage in 1398.Keene, ii. 1247; E101/344/12. However, his main concern was plainly with the law. Soon after his first return to Parliament in 1394 he was paid 6s.8d. for acting as attorney for the city in the court of common pleas, and from then on until the 1420s he was very much in demand as an attorney at the assizes held at Winchester, not only receiving briefs from such notables as William Ringbourne, John Penkestone of Southampton, William Bolt, members of the Courtenay family and Sir Walter Pedwardine, but also for corporate institutions like St. John’s hospital and the abbey of Hyde in Winchester, the priory of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen and the borough of Southampton. Indeed, the authorities at Southampton appointed Gould as their legal representative, his duty being ‘ad omnes libertates suas petendas et calumpniandas’. In 1411 he was named as an attorney for the earl of Salisbury, and later appeared on behalf of the influential Thomas Chaucer.Winchester RO, chamberlains’ accts. 18-19 Ric. II; JUST 1/1502 mm. 216-17, 220d, 1513 mm. 58, 60, 1518 m. 20, 1519 mm. 113-14, 117-18, 120, 1527 m. 25, 1531 m. 47d. Gould’s activities were by no means restricted to the local courts: in 1397 he had been deputed by the sheriff of Hampshire to serve notice on the executors of a London citizen to answer charges in Chancery; and he made frequent appearances in the same court and at the Exchequer. In Henry IV’s reign Gould was employed in the common pleas by Peter Besyles in a suit over the manor of Woodrew in Melksham (Wiltshire), and he once defended the abbot of Beaulieu on a charge of detinue of 200 marks. In the same court he acted for other local men for the completion of a conveyance of lands in Steeple and Botley.CCR, 1396-9, pp. 144, 440; 1402-5, pp. 154, 374; 1405-9, p. 409; 1409-13, p. 271; CPR, 1441-6, p. 263; CFR, xii. 69; CP25(1)207/30/54. Perhaps Gould’s closest associates were two other Hampshire lawyers, William Wood II and Henry Keswick: in May 1410 he was associated with them both in standing bail for Simon Membury; later that year he provided securities at the Exchequer for Keswick, who was then made a co-lessee of a house in Winchester; and in 1415 he did the same for Wood, when the latter was appointed one of the alnagers in Hampshire. That same year and again six years later, he went surety for the prior of Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight and for the lessees of the alien priory of St. Helens there. Although Gould had been exonerated in 1415 from holding public office in Winchester, he was then returned to Parliament for a second time.CCR, 1409-13, p. 101; CFR, xiii. 197; xiv. 31, 38, 110, 409; Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 42.

Gould’s property in Winchester, which he gradually extended after 1398, included houses and gardens in ‘Shortnestret’, Parchment Street, Shulworth Street (where in 1417 he was landlord of six gardens), Gold Street, Jewry Street and outside the west gate. A garden in Shulworth Street was conveyed in 1404 by his feoffees, John Gould and William Audele, esquire, to Mark le Faire. In 1413, along with his second wife, he purchased lands in South Langley (Fawley), but having settled them jointly on himself and his third wife in 1416, he later sold them to William Soper of Southampton. By May 1429 he had apparently moved to Havant, for it was as ‘of Hafonte’ that he sold up all his Winchester properties. He is last recorded in January 1436, when his landed holdings in Hampshire were assessed for the purposes of taxation at £5 a year.Keene, ii. nos. 226, 263, 335, 355, 357-61, 366, 633-4, 650-1, 653, 704; Stowe 846, ff. 105, 107v, 109, 117v, 140v, 142v, 154; CP25(1)207/31/2; CPR, 1436-41, p. 130; Winchester RO, 34/BX/TC9, enrolments mm. 3d, 6, 11d; D3; E179/173/92.