GRESSINGTON, William

William was a descendant of a family that had held a prominent position in Lincoln for two generations or more. John Gressington, a fishmonger who served as one of the city bailiffs in 1408-9, is probably to be identified as his grandfather, and it was very likely that another John, who was mayor in 1431-2, was his father. Between them the two Johns attested as many as 11 parliamentary elections for the city from 1411 to 1432.1 Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 232, 234; CCR, 1413-19, p. 273; C219/10/6; 11/4; 12/2, 4-6; 13/2-5; 14/3. The first reference to our MP comes from September 1438 when he attended the common congregation at which the electoral process for the mayoralty was reformed at the instance of the Crown. In Trinity term 1442 he was pursuing several actions of debt in the court of common pleas, including one for four marks against John Blyton*.2 Lincs. AO, Lincoln city recs., White bk. L1/3/1, f. 8d; CP40/726, rots. 11, 63, 90. Although he never held civic office, he was returned to the two successive Parliaments of 1447 and 1449 (Feb.), each time with John Vavasour*. The large number of attestors on the first occasion suggests the possibility of a contest. No doubt Gressington took the opportunity provided by his second return to further the action he had already sued against a local yeoman for close-breaking in Lincoln and taking goods worth as much as 20 marks.3 C219/15/4, 6; CP40/753, rot. 143. On 29 Sept. 1449 and 1 Feb. 1453 he attested the city’s parliamentary elections.4 C219/15/7; 16/2. Soon after, he found himself as a defendant in the court of common pleas: in Easter term 1453 Agnes, widow of Robert Sutton II*, claimed that he had stolen one of her greyhounds. In this plea he is styled a gentleman, but earlier he had been styled ‘chapman’ and was later to be described, like his putative grandfather, as a fishmonger.5 CP40/726, rot. 90; 769, rot. 193; Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, f. 39. Aside from fish, Gressington also seems to have traded in grain: in an undated Chancery petition he complained that he had purchased and sold on 80 quarters of barley, but when some of the barley was taken by royal purveyors the purchasers had refused to pay.6 C1/69/362.

Nothing further is known of Gressington’s career until the mid 1460s when he was once more pursuing several pleas in the central courts, in one of which he claimed that goods worth £20 had been taken from his tenements in Lincoln.7 CP40/814, rots. 73, 199d, 472. More revealing is the will he drew up on 1 Nov. 1467. He desired to be buried in the parish church of St. Rumbold, where a chaplain was to pray for his soul for a year, and along with some small charitable bequests he provided that 40 paupers be fed in his house so that they might add their prayers to those of the chaplain. The disposition he made for his landed property demonstrates a surprising lack of concern for the social position of his children and the financial security of his widow. She was to have a life interest in three messuages in Micklegate in the parish of St. Lawrence, but only on condition that the executors of her father, a former mayor of the city, deliver £10 in cash and a sack of wool worth eight marks to his own. His children were to be maintained during their minorities from his moveable goods, which, by the discretion of his executors, were to be divided between them when they attained their majorities. His lands and tenements, however, were to be sold, subject to the conditional life interest of his widow, for the payment of his debts and the performance of his will. Given its terms, it is not surprising that his wife was not named among the will’s executors and that William should have provided for its enrolment in the community register – he was dead by 6 Mar. 1469 when this enrolment took place – nor is it surprising that the execution proved to be a drawn out process. As late as 13 Aug. 1481 his son and heir, John, appeared before the mayor and sheriffs of the city to acknowledge two quitclaims: the first of his right in a chief messuage in the parish of St. Rumbold, which may have been the family residence, and three stangs of land (about two acres) in the fields of Lincoln to Sir Thomas Burgh†, Thomas Grantham† and others; and the second, of any actions he might have against his father’s executors arising out of the will. It is not an unreasonable speculation that this marks the end of John’s attempt to defeat his disinheritance. Two years later, on 5 Sept. 1483, our MP’s two other children, William and Elizabeth, appeared by attorney to acknowledge quitclaims of their right in the three messuages in Micklegate together with three messuages and gardens in the parishes of Holy Trinity in Cleumarket and St. Edmund the King and a vacant plot in the parish of St. Lawrence.8 Lincoln White bk. L1/3/1, ff. 31, 38d-39, 42d-43.