GODYNG, William

Godyng’s origins are difficult to trace. There is no evidence for his activities prior to his election to Parliament for the borough of Southwark early in 1426 and his first appearance as a junior clerk in Chancery, which occurred very soon after the Parliament was dissolved on 1 June. Nevertheless, it is clear that he owed both his election and the commencement of his long career in royal service to the patronage of his highly influential kinsman, Thomas Haseley†, the prominent Chancery official and clerk of the Commons.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 307-10. A few weeks after their return home from Leicester, where the Parliament had assembled, Godyng joined Haseley in receiving from an inhabitant of Tame in Oxfordshire a ‘gift’ of his goods and chattels. This suggests that like his mentor he too came from that part of the country,5 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 60-61. and it seems likely it had been Haseley’s example which had prompted him to acquire property in Southwark, just across the river from their place of work at Westminster. Thanks to their relationship, Godyng sometimes found himself in exalted company: Archbishop Kemp and the earls of Stafford and Suffolk headed the list of those, including him, to whom Haseley entrusted his moveable possessions in 1435. Godyng provided sureties for his kinsman at the Exchequer three years later.6 CCR, 1435-41, p. 40; CFR, xvii. 58. More importantly, in March 1443 he was called upon to serve as a mainpernor for the King’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, when the duke and a number of associates were granted keeping of a manor in Middlesex.7 CFR, xvii. 263. Despite this link with one of the King’s uncles, it would seem that he was not the William Godyng who was receiver of the estates of another of the uncles, John, duke of Bedford, in Cambs., Lincs. and Norf. from bef. 1435 to 10 Nov. 1443 (CPR, 1429-36, p. 507; E404/62/140), and a mainpernor for the duke’s executor, Richard Buckland* (CFR, xvi. 275-6). Part of the receiver’s brief was to take responsibility for revenues from the ldship. of Boston, and in 1442 he was ordered to build a bridge in Boston, by oversight of Viscount Beaumont: E159/219, brevia Mich. rot. 11; 220, brevia Mich. rot. 7. This strongly suggests that the Godyng concerned was he who lived in Boston (see below).

By then Godyng had become one of the busiest of the clerks in the Chancery, responsible for drawing up a high proportion of the writs issued by their department: out of the 400 or so writs contained in the surviving corpus cum causa files for 1439-41 he authorized 147.8 C244/62, 64. Like other clerks he was made party to a number of business transactions so that these might be recorded on the dorse of the close rolls.9 e.g. Cal. P and M. London, 1413-37, p. 274; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 165, 486. Doubtless he received fees for his trouble, and also benefited from other perquisities which came the way of officials of his rank. Thus, as ‘serviens domini regis in cancellaria sua’ he had been rewarded in 1429 with a corrody in Ramsey abbey, Huntingdonshire,10 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Seldon Society supp. ser. xviii), i. 761 (quoting Add. 34450, f. 9v). and occasional short-term grants were made to him at the Exchequer. The first of these (lasting for little over three years from April 1434) was of a tenement in Pagelsham in Essex, confiscated from a collector of parliamentary subsidies with whom he had earlier had dealings. Another, in 1436, was of the manor of Coombe Keynes in Dorset, which pertained to Sir John Cressy*.11 CFR, xvi. 203, 293-4, 315-16; CCR, 1422-9, p. 338; 1435-41, p. 257. Even so, there is little to indicate that the profits of office, direct or indirect, proved substantial enough to enable Godyng to invest in property to any notable extent. Jurors in Surrey providing evidence in 1436 for the assessment of the tax on incomes from land and fees, stated that Godyng’s amounted to no more than £5 p.a.12 Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM/1719.

Outside of the Chancery, Godyng took on other administrative responsibilities. These included engagement in the grain trade, in response to the shortages affecting London in this period. As ‘of Southwark, gentleman’, in Febrary and May 1429 he stood as guarantor for the probity of certain merchants tasked to ship 700 quarters of wheat to the capital from Sandwich, to help victual the city; and early in 1438, this time ‘of London’ he was granted a licence to supply the citizens with 80 quarters of wheat, purchased in East Anglia or Kent, shipping the cargo free of payment of subsidies. Such concerns led to his dealings with the prominent merchant Stephen Forster*.13 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 426, 434; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 137-8; C241/228/14. Despite these concerns with the supply of grain, he should be distinguished from William Godyng of Boston, who was granted similar licences, in Nov. 1434 and Feb. 1438, respectively to transport wheat from Boston to Newbury and from E. Anglia to the capital: DKR, xlviii. 301; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 137-8. That Godyng was controller of customs in the port of Boston 30 Jan. 1431-Aug. 1443; and collector 12 Aug. 1443-1 May 1447: CPR, 1429-36, p. 105; E403/715, m. 9; 721, m. 15; CFR, xvii. 235-7; xviii. 51; E122/9/43, 45, 49; E356/19, rots. 36-37d; 20, rot. 25. Like Godyng of Southwark he took the oath against maintenance in 1434 – doing so in Lincs., where he held lands worth £10 p.a. according to the subsidy returns of 1436: CPR, 1429-36, p. 381; E179/240/269. Recorded as constable of the Boston staple in July 1449-51, and Feb. 1459 (C67/24; C241/250/25), he was admitted to the Corpus Christi guild there in 1452: P. Thompson, Boston, 119. Godyng’s standing in Surrey was sufficiently high for him to be required to take the generally administered oath in 1434 not to maintain malefactors who broke the peace.14 CPR, 1429-36, p. 380. Yet it was in Middlesex that he served as clerk of the peace, assisting the j.p.s who included his superior and kinsman Haseley (who may well have been instrumental in his appointment). In view of Godyng’s position in the Chancery it is not surprising to find him closely associated with other royal officials. In 1432 he had been named among the executors of Thomas Wood, a yeoman of the royal ewery, and the following year he joined Richard Sturgeon, the clerk of the Crown, in receiving a recognizance.15 E404/59/48; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 298, 310.

Godyng maintained strong links with Southwark, where other inhabitants of the borough, such as Henry Purchase*, enlisted his services as a recipient of their goods and chattels both there and across the Thames.16 CCR, 1435-41, p. 467; 1441-7, p. 483. His contacts in the capital itself were reinforced in 1438-9 when he joined the fraternity of St. John the Baptist founded by the Tailors’ Company, which attracted members from the ranks of the gentry and aristocracy, as well as merchants and wealthier artisans.17 Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 305. Among Godyng’s closest associates was a fellow Surrey gentleman, William Uvedale I*, who acquired an inn called the Saracen’s Head near St. Paul’s, of which he enfeoffed our MP in 1446.18 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 430-1; 1441-7, pp. 457-8; CPR, 1436-41, p. 541; 1446-52, p. 403. Uvedale subsequently, in 1449, named Godyng among his executors, whom he instructed to sell the property and spend the profits on pious works. Shortly after Uvedale’s death, Godyng and his co-executors petitioned the chancellor for help to recover arrears of an annuity of £20 which Roger Appleton, the Exchequer official, had promised to pay the testator.19 Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Stafford, f. 176 (printed in Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 154-8); CPR, 1452-61, p. 67; C1/18/149-50. Other of Godyng’s contacts in the City included Thomas Burgoyne*, the Cambridgeshire lawyer who was under sheriff of London from 1441 to 1470. The two frequently occur together in the records along with James Kelom, a member of the Mercers’ Company, and in 1449 Kelom and his wife named both of them among the feoffees of property in the parish of All Hallows at the Hay. The previous year Godyng had acted as mainpernor when Burgoyne was granted the keeping of four gardens in the parish of St. Stephen Coleman Street.20 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 169; Corp. London RO, hr 178/7; CFR, xviii. 79. Godyng’s experience as a Chancery clerk was doubtless a factor in his appointment as a feoffee in numerous transactions concerning other properties in the city and its suburbs, both north and south of the Thames. Among the many individuals for whom he acted in this capacity were the sometime shire-knights Sir Henry Norbury* and John Founteyns*, who owned property in Wood Street and Clapham respectively.21 Corp. London RO, hr 170/33-36; 172/13-19; 178/11-12; 180/31; 186/24-25; CCR, 1435-41, p. 456; 1441-7, p. 368; 1454-61, p. 447; CAD, ii. B2082.

Godyng’s links with the county of Essex are less well documented, although they went back to the 1430s. A pardon granted him in March 1459 referred to him as ‘alias of Writtle’ in that county,22 C131/230/20, 21; C241/228/14; C67/42, m. 21. although there is no evidence that he was employed by the duke of Buckingham, for whom Writtle was an administrative centre of his estates. Nevertheless, Godyng’s services as a feoffee were in demand by other landowners there, as elsewhere.23 Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 45; CAD, iii. C3519, 3723; C1/29/175; CCR, 1454-61, p. 298. The pardon also described him as ‘William Godyng, senior’, suggesting that his son and namesake had by then come of age. In a Chancery petition probably dating from the late 1470s, William Godyng ‘the younger’, also from Southwark, was said to have fallen into financial difficulties because of his late father’s debts to Morgan Kidwelly. Godyng junior, who by that stage had two daughters of his own, had been forced to enfeoff Kidwelly and others of lands and tenements in Southwark and had himself gone to live in ‘the north cuntrey’ as a servant to his uncle Master Robert Dobbys, probably the former vicar of Cottingham in Yorkshire.24 C1/15/312; CPR, 1467-77, p. 369.

The date of the MP’s death is not known for certain, but it occurred after November 1467, and he may still have been alive in the following spring. He died before April 1473 when he was listed as one of the former feoffees of the manor of Easthall in Kent.25 CPR, 1467-77, p. 391.