FORSTER, Richard III

Of obscure background, Forster is first recorded as residing at Bray in March 1445, when he witnessed a deed there in association with the highly influential courtier, John Norris*.6 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV. 58/D/77. Norris, one of the esquires for Henry VI’s body and currently keeper of the great wardrobe, was shortly to take over the lease of the royal lordship of Cookham and Bray, and dominated the parliamentary representation of Berkshire until the King suffered his first mental collapse. He was a knight of the shire in all three of the consecutive Parliaments in which Forster represented New Windsor, and may have played a part in promoting his returns. Although there is no evidence that Forster held property in Windsor itself, he lived not far away at Binfield, and must have been known to the burgesses prior to his first election, having held office as steward of the courts held at Windsor in the previous year. Indeed, it is possible that he occupied the stewardship throughout his parliamentary career. In April 1452 he and a kinsman, Walter Forster, arranged for a croft next to the royal forests of ‘Redebull’ and ‘Knaphurst’ to be conveyed to the King’s foundation of Eton College.7 Eton Coll. Archs., Windsor deeds, 214.

Quite likely a lawyer by training, the MP may have been the man of this name appointed during the second session of the Parliament of 1453 as clerk to the justice of the forests south of the Trent, for term of his life.8 CPR, 1452-61, p. 70. If so, he served briefly under the duke of York before his retention in office by Edmund, duke of Somerset (the constable of Windsor castle), who replaced York as chief justice shortly afterwards. A petition sent to the chancellor in the early 1460s reveals more about Forster’s connexion with Norris. A yeoman named John Catesby recounted how, five years previously, a stray horse had been seized for the King within the lordship of Cookham and Bray and delivered to Forster, who brought it to Norris, then farmer of the lordship. Norris told Forster to take the horse for himself, ‘upon a price’, and Forster often sent his ‘menyall servant’ Catesby on errands riding the horse, until one day Catesby’s possession of it was challenged and an action brought against him in the court at Windsor castle.9 C1/27/452. Edward IV’s accession to the throne and his initial suspicions about Norris’s loyalty to the new regime proved to Forster’s advantage. On 20 Dec. 1461 custody of the lordship of Cookham and Bray was taken away from Norris and given instead to Forster and Peter Beaupie for term of their lives, in recognition of their service to the new King and his father, and at the same time the two men replaced Norris’s son William* as joint stewards of the lordship.10 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 148-9.

Described as an esquire, Forster witnessed a transaction regarding land in Binfield in February 1462,11 St. George’s Chapel, recs. XV. 10/4. and evidently hoped to expand his landed holdings in the neighbourhood. A few years later one John Mounter petitioned the chancellor to complain that Forster had evicted him from tenements in Bray which had long been in his family’s possession. Forster had enfeoffed ‘many persones straunge and unknown’ of the property, and Mounter could not obtain redress in the courts of the lordship owing to his influence.12 C1/11/292. A certain arrogance may also be discerned in the MP’s dealings with Richard Bulstrode*, a kinsman of Norris. He had entered a bond in £20 to Bulstrode in the spring of 1454, but neglected to pay him on the appointed day. When, 11 years later, Bulstrode brought him to the court of common pleas to make answer he escaped penalty on a technicality by claiming that the writ had given his place of residence simply as ‘Binfield’, whereas he had then been living in North Binfield.13 CP40/816, rot. 373d; 817, rot. 334d.

A pardon granted to Forster in May 1458 had referred to him as ‘of Houghton, Sussex, esquire, late of Binfield, Berkshire, gentleman’,14 C67/42, m. 15. indicating that he had by then extended his landed interests elsewhere. These new holdings came to him through marriage to Joan Cheyne, whose family held the manor of Houghton. The nuptials had apparently taken place at Bray, possibly during the lifetime of Joan’s kinsman, Sir William Cheyne c.j.KB., who died in 1443,15 KB27/853, rot. 117. but the marriage settlement had aroused controversy. At Chichester on 8 July 1446, Forster entered bonds in £200, undertaking to accept the award of the Sussex lawyers William Sydney* and Edmund Mille* in his dispute with John Erneley* over land and tenements at East Wittering which had once belonged to Joan’s father, the late John Cheyne. Erneley subsequently commenced an action against him in the common pleas for payment under the terms of the bond, and this came to pleading in the Michaelmas term of 1450. Forster, then attending his second Parliament, appeared in court in person, and stated that the arbitrators, meeting on 22 July 1446, had awarded the disputed property to him, in right of his wife, and to the latter’s issue, provided that they paid Erneley £40 and permitted him to lease the land for the next 14 months at the rate of seven marks a year. Erneley contended that a second award had been made on 2 Oct. following, which gave Joan tenure only for life, with successive remainders to her four sons and a daughter by her previous husband John Dawtry; furthermore, Forster had failed to pay him the second installment of the agreed amount of £40.16 CP40/753, rot. 46; 754, rot. 58d; 756, rot. 310; 759, rot. 384. Forster’s tenure of his wife’s property continued to be subject to challenge in later years. In December 1452 Richard Alfray* of East Grinstead allegedly took possession of certain of Joan’s manorial holdings by force; and in the Michaelmas term of 1468 Bishop Arundel of Chichester sued Forster himself for illegal entry into a close at Houghton. The bishop’s contention was that in April 1464 he had cut down trees worth £20, but Forster claimed rights of estover in the close as lord of the manor which had descended to his wife as the heir of John Houghton, who had owned it in the fourteenth century.17 KB9/270A/81; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxv. 32, 38; CP40/829, rot. 328.

Forster relinquished his stewardship of Bray before November 1465,18 When the King was planning to replace Peter Beaupie with (Sir) William Norris*: PSO1/27/1434. and then took up permanent residence in Sussex. He was appointed to royal commissions in the county and the Cinque Ports, and when he sued for another pardon, in September 1472, he styled himself as ‘late of Bray and Binfield, Berkshire, alias of Houghton’. This pardon was the first grant to be sealed with the great seal by the bishop of Rochester, acting as its keeper during the illness of the chancellor, the bishop of Bath and Wells.19 C67/49, m. 19; CCR, 1468-76, no. 972. Forster’s wife had recently died, and he was currently engaged in defending suits brought at the assizes by her kinsman, Thomas Cheyne, in which it was alleged that he and his stepson William Dawtry had forcibly disseised the plaintiff of a messuage, 200 acres of land and 20 acres of meadow at Houghton and Billingshurst. Forster, attending the assizes at Crawley in May 1472, had claimed to have held a moiety of the property jointly with his late wife in her right, while Thomas claimed title as heir of Sir William Cheyne the judge. The suit eventually, in July 1473, came before the justices sitting at Horsham, but on that occasion Forster failed to make an appearance, and an order was sent for him to be attached by the bailiff of the liberty of the earl of Arundel in the rape of Arundel.20 KB27/853, rots. 114-18d. There is no sound reason to follow HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 347, in the assumption that he was the Richard Forster of Kingston-upon-Thames who made his will on 12 Apr. 1495: PCC 28 Vox (PROB11/10, ff. 223v-4). He is not recorded thereafter, unless he was the man of this name who attested the parliamentary indenture for East Grinstead on 31 Dec. 1477.21 C219/17/3.