FORSTER, Thomas

Little is known about Thomas’s father, who lived in St. Nicholas’s parish in the Isle of Thanet, although he may have had connexions with the Beaufort affinity in Kent through their lands in the neighbourhood. Two John Forsters, senior and junior, served with the duke of Somerset in Calais in 1452 and these may have been our MP’s father and brother.3 E101/54/16, ff. 3, 7. Certainly, there is evidence in his own career of a military heritage, and he was sometimes known as ‘esquire’. Forster himself had property in the parishes of All Saints and St. Nicholas in Thanet, some of which he apparently inherited from his father, although a messuage and 120 acres of land there came to him through his first marriage, to Christine, the daughter and heiress of their neighbour, the lawyer William Colyns. The marriage may also have given Forster his initial interests in property in Canterbury, as Colyns had served as the city’s attorney in the early 1430s. Forster’s holdings in Thanet were further augmented in 1443 by lands granted to him and Christine in the will of John Stace, to which were added more at Reculver and in Woodnesborough near Sandwich.4 C1/41/6; Canterbury chamberlains’ accts. 1393-1445, CCA-CC-F/A/1, f. 218v; archdeaconry ct. wills, PRC 17/1, f. 67. The nature and extent of Forster’s connexions with other members of the gentry of Kent is unclear. In May 1456, however, described as an esquire and of the Isle of Thanet, he acted as a mainpernor at the Exchequer for (Sir) Thomas Brown II*, when the latter acquired a lease of the manor of Huntingfield.5 CFR, xix. 158.

Forster was described as ‘of Canterbury, gentleman’, when at an unknown date between 1455 and 1457 he was admitted to the freedom of the city by virtue of his second marriage, to the widowed Alice Bonnington, daughter of John Winter.6 There are no chamberlains’ accts. between Mich. 1455 and 1457 and Forster’s admittance is recorded on a slip on paper filed with the acct. bk. which states that he was admitted on 24 July but gives no year: CCA-CC-F/A/2, loose f. He soon became an important figure in the city. At Michaelmas 1459 (when his father-in-law became mayor) he was elected as one of the 12 jurats, and soon afterwards he was chosen to represent Canterbury in the Parliament summoned to meet at Coventry on 20 Nov. Forster received wages for 41 days, four more than his companion William Sellow*, although each of them received 20s. expenses for ten days spent travelling to and from the Midlands.7 Ibid. f. 64. Forster was again chosen as a jurat in 1460-1. In this year he appears to have taken charge of the city’s ordnance, purchasing gunpowder and overseeing the movement of the guns between Canterbury and Whitstable.8 Ibid. f. 67v. This points to some kind of military experience, and it is worthy of remark that in his will Forster made several bequests of bows and arrows. The pinnacle of Forster’s short career in civic government came at Michaelmas 1463 when he was elected mayor of Canterbury, although his mayoral year appears to have been a quiet one, as there are no extraordinary payments to him recorded in the chamberlains’ accounts.

The exact value of Forster’s landed holdings, scattered through east Kent, is unknown; nor is the worth of the property he owned in the parishes of St. Mary Bredman and St. Margaret in Canterbury. At least one of his houses in the city was large enough to entertain Sir John Scott†, probably in 1466, when the latter came to Canterbury for the settlement of the dispute with St. Augustine’s abbey.9 J.R. Scott, ‘Receipts and expenses of Sir John Scott’, Archaeologia Cantiana, x. 257. Forster had originally made a will concerning the disposal of his lands on 4 Mar. 1459, in which he left to his wife Alice for life his property in St. Margaret’s parish together with all his lands in Kent, stipulating that after her death his daughters Alice and Gerentina (the children of his first wife) were to inherit all the lands and tenements once belonging to their grandfather William Colyns, and if they died without issue these were to be sold, providing a profit of 100 marks, enough to pay a priest to pray for his soul for ten years. The two girls were also to have the lands late of John Stace. Gerentina died before Forster made a further will on 18 Nov. 1467. In this he asked his feoffee Richard Carpenter to hand over to his daughter Alice certain lands called ‘Potenstrete’ when she married; and immediately after his death to give his widow seisin of the messuage where they lived and of other properties, which when she died were to be split equally among their sons. The latter were to pay each of their sisters five marks towards her marriage. The three acres bought from John Here in the Isle of Thanet and a tenement in St. Margaret’s were to be sold and the proceeds given to the churchwardens of those parishes ‘for the greater glory of God’. In a codicil on the same day he asked to be buried in the chancel of St. Margaret’s church, opposite the image of its patron saint, and provided for 100 masses to be sung in the three years after his death and 50 more on its third anniversary, as well as providing for a chaplain to pray regularly for him for one year. Forster made bequests of items of silver plate and cash to his children, his wife’s daughter, Joan Bonnington, his brother John,10 The will actually refers to John as his father but as elsewhere he makes bequests concerning his father’s soul and lands he inherited upon his death it is clear that our MP’s father predeceased him. and sister Katherine. The unborn child in his wife’s womb was to receive bequests according to its gender. Gifts to his friends and servants included bows and arrows, some of which were to be sold and the proceeds distributed among the poor. Forster’s executors were headed by his father-in-law and wife. He must have died within a few weeks, as probate was granted on 24 Jan. 1468.11 Canterbury archdeaconry ct. wills, PRC 17/2, ff. 84v-6v.

Not long after Forster’s death, his daughter Alice died childless, whereupon his sister Katherine petitioned the chancellor against his feoffee Carpenter. She claimed that Alice had wished her to inherit the former Colyns and Stace lands, but that Carpenter refused to relinquish them.12 C1/41/6, 229. Another claim to the property was later asserted by Forster’s widow, in a petition to the chancellor Thomas Rotherham, bishop of Lincoln. Since by then she had married John Rotherham†, the bishop’s brother, she might well have expected a sympathetic hearing.13 C1/53/164. The widowed Alice survived her third husband, who represented Canterbury in 1472 and Bedfordshire six years later; and was named co-executor of his will with her brother-in-law Archbishop Rotherham in 1492. In that will John Rotherham left her besides his own manor of Houghton Conquest in Bedfordshire all the lands and tenements in Kent and the city of Canterbury which had belonged to Forster. These, as well as the property of her late father Winter, were to pass on her death to their children Thomas, George and Alice Rotherham, since she, of her own free will, had given her consent for them to inherit the holdings she had brought to the marriage. Whether she deliberately disinherited her children by Forster, or they had all died childless by this date is not known. Alice also outlived her eldest son by her third husband, Sir Thomas Rotherham (d.1504).14 PCC 20 Dogett (PROB11/9, f. 155 ); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 766.