More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 107.
In Trinity term 1436 Forster presented a bill to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer alleging that when, as bailiff of Scarborough, he had been collecting money for the payment of the town’s fee farm, William Dryng the younger, an unruly and ‘cumberous’ man in Forster’s estimation, had first refused to make any payment and then had raised 100 men to prevent the levy of the farm from others.2 E207/14/14. The Dryngs were one of the town’s leading families and the alleged offender is probably to be identified with one of the bailiffs of 1442-3, but there is no direct evidence to give this alleged event any context. Forster was perhaps manufacturing an excuse for some shortfall in his levy of the farm.
Forster’s will shows him to have been one of the largest property holders within the town, and he added to that property by leasing further tenements and land there from the abbey of Byland.3 In 1441 the abbey sued him for waste as its lessee: CP40/722, rot. 255. His commercial interests have left almost no trace on the records. He was not among the townsmen who paid fish tithes to the parish church of St. Mary during the two periods for which tithe accounts survive (1414-18 and 1434-42).4 E101/514/31, 32.
Forster’s widow survived him for nearly ten years. She married, as her second husband, John Gower, perhaps the younger brother of Thomas Gower II*, who represented Scarborough in the 1460 Parliament. In her will, made on 18 Oct. 1452, she divided a considerable quantity of household goods between her husband and her four surviving children by Forster.5 Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 162.