FORSTER, Robert

The identification of the man who represented two unconnected boroughs in two of the Parliaments of the third quarter of the fifteenth century presents some difficulties, for his name was a common one. Moreover, the careers of several of the Robert Forsters active in the period overlapped, and it is at times difficult to separate the activities of one from those of the others.6 These namesakes included: (1) Robert Forster of Westminster, whose sis. married William Whaplode*, with whom he was frequently associated. In 1434 he was among the Mdx. gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance, and he was still alive in 1440, when he was one of the parishioners of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, licensed to found a guild dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin. He may have been the man who was serving as coroner of the liberty of Westminster abbey in 1445. This Robert Forster attested the Mdx. county elections of 1427, 1432, and perhaps also 1449 (Nov.): E40/1562; CFR, xvi. 317; xvii. 27, 158; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 190, 193, 229; 1435-41, p. 447; 1441-7, pp. 365, 389, 457; CPR, 1429-36, p. 408; 1436-41, p. 448; 1441-6, p. 392; 1446-52, pp. 232, 262, 568; KB9/248/79; C219/13/5, 14/2, 330/24; London and Mdx. Feet of Fines, i. Hen. VI, nos. 20, 21, 71; (2) Robert Forster (d.c.1480) of Enfield, Mdx., who also held lands in Herts. at Berkhampstead, Bayford and Hatfield. He made his will 12 Dec. 1479, asking to be buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew, Enfield. He was survived by his wife, Joan, and a son, John. Probate was granted on 9 Sept. 1481: PCC 22 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 169v); C1/57/53; (3) Robert Forster (d.1479), citizen and grocer of London, a yr. s. of the fishmonger Stephen Forster*: John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al., 100-1; CPR, 1476-85, p. 151; C1/52/56; (4) Robert Forster, treasurer of the east march under Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, from 1449 in succession to John Lematon*, of whose will he was an executor: C1/19/350; E403/777, mm. 10, 14; 779, mm. 3, 4; 781, m. 11; 785, mm. 7, 8, 9; 798, mm. 3, 10, 12; 807, m. 6; 810, m. 2; 814, mm. 3, 4; 816, mm. 1, 3; 817, mm. 5, 7; 819, mm. 2, 5, 7; CCR, 1447-54, p. 166. It is probable that he, like Lematon, came from the north, and he may perhaps be identified with (5) Robert Forster of Cornhill, Northumb. or his synonymous son, who possessed connexions at the Percy seat of Alnwick (CFR, xviii. 211), or (6) Robert, s. and h. of Thomas Forster of Adderstone, Northumb., who in 1448 transferred his property in Southwark to William Gaynesford* and others (CCR, 1447-54, pp. 75, 76, 94; C241/254/123), or (7) Robert Forster (d.1483/4), of Howsham, Yorks., who made his will on 13 Sept. 1483, asking to be buried in the Lady chapel of Kirkham priory; probate was granted on 24 May 1484. He was survived by his wife, Joan, his son and heir, Guy, and two daughters. Two men of this name attested the Yorks. election indenture of 1442, and one that of 1467 (CCR, 1454-61, p. 225; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 250n; C219/15/2, 17/1). It is unlikely that the MP should be identified with (8) Robert Howchyns alias Forster, a Wiltshire man who served as mayor of Marlborough in 1494, and died in the autumn of 1502: CAD, ii. B2532; Wilts Hist. Centre, Savernake Estate mss, 9/19/273; CFR, xxii. 750; PROB11/13, f. 102. It seems likely that the Calne MP of 1459 was a man closely connected with Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham and chancellor to Queen Margaret of Anjou, who in that year also placed retainers in seats representing other Wiltshire boroughs. This Robert Forster was a lawyer who may have hailed from the north of England, and received his legal training in the capital: in the summer of 1461 he was among the committee of lawyers on whom the buildings of Clifford’s Inn (the forfeited property of John, Lord Clifford) were settled.7 CFR, xx. 20. Alternatively, he began his career in the north, and after entering the service of Bishop Booth by the later 1450s held the post of clerk to the justices of the bishop’s palatinate. By this date he was already occupying the lucrative position of one of the filacers of the court of common pleas in Westminster Hall, and it was as a consequence of his tenure of this post that in 1457-8 he took up the under shrievalty of Middlesex, an office conventionally filled by one of the clerks of the Westminster common law courts.

Although Forster maintained his links with the far north (as late as 1474 he was admitted to membership of the fraternity of Durham cathedral priory, although known to be ‘dwelling in London’), the focus of his life was now at Westminster. By marriage to a minor heiress he acquired property, including a tenement called the ‘Charyet’ in Fleet Street near the law courts, and the ‘Bardhouse’ in Wokingham in Berkshire,8 C1/242/40. while he may have purchased some of the holdings in Tottenham, Westminster and Hendon which he owned by the end of his life. These, mostly let out to tenants, had an annual value of more than £10.9 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 133. Certainly, his busy professional practice provided him with the wealth necessary for the acquisition of an estate. Like other clerks of the Westminster courts, he frequently acted as an attorney,10 CP40/ 796, rot. 143; 797, rots. 152d, 419; 799, rot. 342d; 805, rot. 352d; 817, rots. 67, 283, 427d; 818, rots. 30d, 112d; 822, rot. 336; 823, rot. 321d; 824, rot. 129, 129d; 826, rot. 152; 827, rots. 105d, 120d, 123d; 828, rot. 362. and it was while employed in this capacity by one John Barnburgh in the summer of 1456 that he became embroiled in an unseemly exchange with Thomas Gower I*, a northern esquire who had acquired property in Surrey. Both Gower and Forster had been addressing the jurors empanelled in a debt case between Barnburgh and Gower, and had presented to them evidence in support of their respective sides of the argument. Forster, who believed that Gower was peddling lies, approached him and told him that it was a denigration of his honour to inform the jury in that manner, and that he ought to consider this before proceeding. This had enraged Gower, who ‘verbis et dictis eiusdem Roberti commotus, verbis contumeliosis et comminatorijs’ told Forster not to concern himself in any way with his honour, and to hold his tongue, lest one of them should lose his life over the matter. As a filacer of the court, Forster was evidently in good standing with the justices, and Gower found himself committed to the Fleet and forced to pay a fine.11 CP40/782, rot. 323.

Throughout his life, Forster maintained his links with Laurence Booth, who rose to be archbishop of York in 1476. He was frequently associated with Booth in his transactions, and was named an executor of the prelate’s will.12 E40/5235; Test. Ebor. iii. 250; C67/51, m. 11; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 232, 255, 283; C143/455/7. In this context it may be significant that the next stage of his professional advancement roughly coincided with Booth’s promotion in the King’s administration in the first half of the 1470s. In the aftermath of the crisis years from 1468 to 1471 which had seen considerable change in the ranks of the justices and officers of the Westminster courts, Forster secured a seat in the Commons for the second time, on this occasion in the service of the duchy of Lancaster borough of East Grinstead. It was while serving in Parliament that he exchanged his filacership for the more prestigious post of clerk of Hell, the record repository of the court in the under-croft of Westminster Hall, and not long after the dissolution he was added to the quorum of the Middlesex county bench. He had by this date formed a close association with the treasurer of the Household, John Elrington†, and his sons, John and Simon, both at one time or another among the officers of the common bench. Throughout the 1470s, he was regularly associated with the Elringtons in a variety of land transactions.13 CCR, 1476-85, nos. 642, 1125-6, 1336; C1/52/6; London and Mdx. Feet of Fines, i. Edw IV, nos. 40, 46, 69, 70, 77, 79; Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), no. 3214.

The date of Forster’s death presents some problems, for according to an inquisition taken more than a year after the event, in October 1486, he died on 13 May 1485, a week before the date of his will. Under the terms of this document, he asked to be buried in the parish church of St. Sepulchre without Newgate, to which he left bequests of £7 3s. 4d. He singled out the two fraternities based at the church, those of Corpus Christi and of the Virgin and St. Stephen, to which he respectively left 20s. and £3 6s. 8d. Other bequests totalling £37 13s. 4d. went to the various London friaries, the Charterhouses at London and Sheen, Syon abbey, St. Mary Graces, the Minories, and Haliwell and Clerkenwell priories. An anchorite at Tottenham was assigned 6s. 8d., while 33s. 4d. was set aside for the relief of the inmates of the Marshalsea and King’s bench prisons in Southwark, Ludgate, Newgate, the Fleet and the counters. The hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower, whose master, William Wrixham, attended his death bed, was at last to receive the chalice bequeathed to it by Archbishop Booth which Forster still had in his keeping five years after the prelate’s death. Forster’s son John received a legacy of £100. The execution of the will was entrusted to Forster’s brother John, the archdeacon of London, Walter Wheler, one of the clerks of Chancery, and John Bedford, a fellow clerk of the common bench.

Certainly, Forster died about this time, for by the end of the Easter term of 1485 he had been replaced as clerk of Hell by John Bryan, although probate of his will was not granted until September 1486. Forster was succeeded by his elder son John, but the boy may have died young and without issue, for by the spring of 1501 an acrimonious dispute had broken out between his executors, who sought to promote the rights of his younger son, Robert, and his three daughters (Alice, wife of John Goos, Elizabeth, successively wife of John Wightman and Thomas Ayloff, and Margaret, who died unmarried).14 CFR, xxii. 6; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 133; PCC 22 Logge; C1/83/86, 242/40-42; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 598.