FELDYNG, Geoffrey

Although the Feldyngs had held land in Leicestershire since the reign of Henry III, even in the fifteenth century, by now resident at Lutterworth, they were still relatively minor gentry by comparison with their similarly long-established neighbours. Geoffrey’s place in the family is uncertain: he bore the same arms as William Feldyng, the shire knight, and may have been the latter’s uncle, and hence a younger son of another William who attested the Warwickshire election of 1425.6 Stowe 860, ff. 53, 85; VCH Warws. vi. 174; C219/13/3; A.H. Dyson, Lutterworth, 26, 64-66. Perhaps in the light of the family’s limited resources, advancement for the young Geoffrey was sought in the city of London, where he was apprenticed to the mercer John Admond. He duly completed his training and obtained the freedom of the city in 1421-2. Feldyng then began his rise through the ranks of his company, which would ultimately see him reach the very pinnacle of London civic society. In 1425 he was admitted to the first of three stages which led to membership to the livery of the craft, a process he completed in 1428. In the summer of 1432 he was chosen for the first time as one of the wardens of the Mercers, an office he held again ten years later, as well as serving twice as master of their company in 1447-8 and 1452-3. Like other leading members of the company he served as a feoffee of the quitrents belonging to the Mercers, and in April 1443 was among a group of mercers who entered into a bond with the chamberlain of London in £1,000, regarding the patrimony of the son of Robert Large*.7 Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 365, 371, 385; Acts of Ct. Mercers’ Co. ed. Lyell and Watney, 43; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 280.

Feldyng became a successful merchant, engaging in trade in a wide range of commodities between England and the continent. While not among the largest exporters of wool through Calais, he was nevertheless a prominent figure: in 1450-1, for instance, the staplers sought extra finance in order to cover the running expenses of the garrison pending the repayment of hefty loans that some of them had advanced to the Crown. The Grocers’ Company agreed to lend £477 (plus interest), and Feldyng along with William Cantelowe*, William Combes* and John Middleton* entered into obligations for repayment of £30 of that sum, which was, however, still owing a year later.8 Archs. Grocers’ Co. ed. Kingdon, 315, 318. Over the course of his career, Feldyng took on no fewer than 13 apprentices, at least some of whom proved a mixed blessing. His first apprentice was Richard Claver, who went on to become a successful cross-Channel trader in his own right. By contrast, another apprentice became involved in a fracas in Cheapside in 1445, following which Feldyng appeared before the court of aldermen to provide guarantees that he would keep the peace.9 Mercers’ Co. Biog. Index Cards; Med. London Widows ed. Barron and Sutton, 129; Corp. London RO, jnl. 4, f. 74. It is almost certain that Feldyng was also instrumental in drawing his putative nephew William into the wool trade. Shortly after being returned to Parliament in the autumn of 1449, William and four other Leicestershire merchants were granted a licence enabling them to export wool free of customs from Ipswich in repayment of £366 5s. which they had contributed to a total sum of £10,700 loaned by the staplers over the previous four years.10 CPR, 1446-52, p. 315. It is striking, however, that Geoffrey himself does not appear to have been involved in any of the staplers’ loans to the Crown. Indeed his only contributions appear to have been the personal loans of £52 and £18 which were made the subject of orders authorizing repayment by assignment in July 1453.11 W. Smith, ‘R. Finance and Politics in England, 1450-5’, (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), app. vi.

Feldyng’s comparatively low profile as a stapler may be partly explained by his activity in other spheres. Thus he was active in the export of cloth, and used the profits from these ventures to buy up mercery goods for shipment to England, often through the port of Southampton. In 1438-9 he imported linen cloth of various kinds, as well as fustian, while the following year he brought 100 pieces of tartarin cloth into the port on an Italian galley.12 E122/73/23, m. 21; 203/1, m. 22; 209/1; Port Bk. 1439-40 (Soton Rec. Ser. v), 76. Feldyng had extensive dealings with London’s Italian community. In April 1450 he was a recipient of a gift of goods and chattels made by Alessandro Palastrelli, and in June the same year he stood surety in Chancery for Benedetto Borromei, a Florentine merchant. In March 1452 Amoneo Galeotti, a wine merchant, handed over to him 100 casks of wine in the parish of St. James Garlickhithe and all his other wines in the city, and two months later Feldyng, Galeotti and Cantelowe entered into a bond in 400 marks before the mayor in respect of wine to that value belonging to Galeotti which had been seized by the Crown.13 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 191, 354; CPR, 1446-52, p. 158; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 123. Such contacts made Feldyng a prime candidate for appointment to royal commissions concerned with the affairs of alien merchants. In May 1450 one such commission was ordered to investigate the seizure of merchandise from Milanese merchants in London, while later that year Geoffrey was among those ordered to look into the seizure of a Flemish ship by an English merchant vessel.

Both in London and further afield Feldyng built up an extensive network of business contacts. In London, these were reflected in the numerous ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels which were made to him during his career, either alone or with other merchants, devices which were frequently employed in order to provide security in credit transactions or for the financing of business ventures.14 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 134, 230; jnl. 3, f. 122. Most of those who made the gifts were Londoners, with fellow mercers such as Bartholomew Stratton and Thomas Tykhill especially prominent. On two occasions, however, credit was probably being extended to two Bristol mercers, both of whom were apparently related to members of the London company.15 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 134, 200, 231; 1447-54, pp. 115, 202; 1454-61, pp. 201, 311, 313; 1461-8, p. 94; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 179; 1458-82, p. 158. Otherwise, outside London the best evidence of the nature of Feldyng’s provincial contacts is provided by the many royal pardons which were granted to men who owed him money and had been outlawed after Feldyng had tried to recover it. A geographical analysis of these debtors indicates that Feldyng had links with customers and suppliers in parts of the country stretching from Yorkshire and Westmorland to Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset and East Anglia.16 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 3, 446, 522, 618; 1461-7, pp. 257, 319, 418, 502, 509; 1467-77, pp. 149, 204, 223, 257, 385. What is particularly striking about these debts is that the proceedings which led to the outlawries and pardons of the debtors mostly date from the late 1450s onwards, soon after Feldyng became mayor of the Westminster staple. He was elected to this post in July 1457 and remained in office until the summer of 1466, well after he had resigned his aldermanry in London. It may well be that his tenure of the mayoralty encouraged him to pursue his own debtors at a time when in his official capacity he was dealing with large numbers of debt cases.

Feldyng’s main property holdings in London were located in the parish of St. Lawrence Jewry, although the full extent of these and his other tenements in the capital is not known. As early as 1435 a probably collusive plaint of intrusion was brought by Everard Flete* and a number of other men against Feldyng concerning a building in St. Lawrence’s parish,17 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 284. while it is possible that he also came to own the tenements in St. Lawrence Lane granted to him and others in April 1446. More certain is his ownership by about 1472 of houses in Milk Street, which may have been the same property originally conveyed by the grocer John Maldon to Feldyng and others in 1454.18 London hr 174/24, 182/14-15; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1037. Unlike other leading Londoners, Feldyng did not, apparently, invest extensively in property outside the City: he does not, for instance, seem to have been a landholder of any consequence in his native Leicestershire.

Feldyng’s involvement in the affairs of London’s government saw him receive the first of many appointments to city committees when he was chosen to audit a ward assessment of 500 marks raised for London Bridge early in 1439, and in September that year he was elected as one of the four auditors of the city. Election for the first time as an MP followed shortly afterwards.19 Jnl. 3, f. 12v. The city apparently regarded the likely proceedings of this Parliament with some concern, and before the start of the first session on 12 Nov. Feldyng and his fellow Members, who included the newly knighted William Estfield* and the city’s distinguished common clerk, John Carpenter II*, were formally briefed at a meeting of the court of aldermen. During the second session, held at Reading, the city government considered sending the recorder there to assist with the prosecution of the city’s business, but in the event the mayor and aldermen decided instead to send a letter of instruction to Estfield. Unfortunately, their principal concerns are not recorded. Seemingly the only measure of direct relevance to London currently under debate was the limited extension of the powers of the aldermen as justices to control stretches of the Thames, but this was hardly a burning issue. More likely is that the city’s merchants had come together in an effort to pressure the government into introducing stricter controls over the activities of alien traders. As well as making avoidance of the Calais staple a felony, the measures enacted by the Parliament included the revival of the ‘hosting’ regulations which required alien merchants to operate under the scrutiny of ‘hosts’ who would have access to all their transactions, and to use their profits to buy English merchandise. Other bills, including one which tried to limit the trade of foreigners from beyond the straits of Gibraltar to imports only, were unsuccessful.20 Ibid. ff. 25v, 29, 34, 35v, 37v; C.M. Barron, ‘London and Parliament’, Parlty. Hist. ix. 367; PROME, xi. 291-3, 303-9.

Feldyng served as auditor of London for four consecutive years, a relatively unusual occurrence and one which suggests that his expertise in financial matters was regarded highly by the city fathers. In parallel, he continued to serve on civic committtees, attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first time and was a collector in April 1442 of a corporate loan to the Crown of 2,000 marks. In July 1444 he was a member of a delegation from the court of aldermen to negotiate with representatives of the Weavers for a resolution of a long-running dispute between the craft and the City.21 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 43; jnl. 3, ff. 34, 90, 114v, 116. That autumn Feldyng was rewarded by the Crown with a grant of letters patent exempting him from service on juries or from holding any office in London or elsewhere. This was quite unusual, particularly for someone at a relatively early stage in his civic career, and suggests that he had established a connexion with some influential individuals within the government, but Feldyng does not appear to have availed himself of its provisions.22 CPR, 1441-6, p. 331. Not only did he continue his committee work, but in September 1445 he was chosen as one of the city’s two sheriffs. During his year in office he made his first bid for membership of the aldermannic bench on 19 Oct., but was narrowly beaten by nine votes to eight by Thomas Canynges*. Not to be thwarted, however, he tried again the following April and on this occasion he was successfully elected for the ward of Farringdon Within. By the end of his shrievalty, therefore, Feldyng had become an alderman and was thus theoretically able to hold the offices of auditor and sheriff again, this time at the nomination of the court of aldermen rather than the common council. In the case of the shrievalty the burdens of the office meant that few men served more than once, but, remarkably (particularly in the light of his royal patent), on 21 Sept. 1446 Feldyng accepted election for a second consecutive term.23 Jnl. 4, ff. 101, 125v.

After a brief respite during the 12 months that followed the end of his shrievalty, Feldyng was plunged back into the minutiae of civic government in the autumn of 1448 when, despite having served for four years while a common councilman, he was chosen once again as an auditor, and re-elected a year later, while also serving on a string of city committees. In July 1451 he was chosen as one of those who were to raise finance for the defence of Calais, a cause that was naturally close to his heart. Three months later he was adopted as one of the candidates for the mayoralty, losing out in the election to William Gregory. By this time, however, the candidates were normally selected on the basis that one would serve for the coming year with the other likely to be elected the year after. Given this, and his experience of government, it was no surprise that on 13 Oct. 1452 Feldyng, currently master of the Mercers, was duly elected as mayor.24 Jnl. 5, ff. 8, 13, 31-31v, 58, 58v, 64.

Already, his official duties had brought him into conflict with some of his neighbours. By February 1449 a serious quarrel had arisen between him and John Derby (elected sheriff with him in 1445), and the prominent grocer William Marowe*over a quantity of salt which Feldyng had seized from Marowe during his shrievalty. At the end of 1453 the matter was in the hands of the mayor, but with no sign of a compromise it was decided on 31 Jan. 1454 to place it into the hands of arbiters. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Feldyng opted for his fellow mercer and stapler William Cantelowe, while Marowe chose Stephen Forster*. The dispute was eventually resolved in July the same year by a meeting of the whole court of aldermen.25 Ibid. ff. 5v, 29v, 137v, 145, 163v, 178. If after the end of his mayoralty Feldyng had hoped to some extent to withdraw from the day-to-day affairs of the city, he was to be disappointed. The King’s incapacity and the consequent protectorate of the duke of York had, if anything, exacerbated the existing divisions among the lords, and these finally found their outlet in a skirmish in the streets of St. Albans in May 1455. A Parliament was rapidly summoned in the battle’s aftermath, and on 10 June Feldyng, along with fellow staplers Cantelowe, John Harowe* and John Young* was chosen as an MP. The London authorities were anxious to keep themselves well informed of developments, and during the third session in the early spring of 1456, Feldyng and Cantelowe came away from the Parliament to attend meetings of the court of aldermen on 3 and 4 Feb.26 Ibid. f. 245v; G.L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR lxxv. 41-51; Barron, 367; PROME, xii. 370-81.

Parliament was dissolved the following month, and in its aftermath Feldyng returned to his work on civic committees.27 Jnl. 6, ff. 68, 90v-91, 184v, 201. Although his role was not a prominent one, it seems that he had in some way attracted the suspicion of the resurgent court party centering on the queen, for in June 1459 he was among a number of London merchants who were prosecuted by the Crown for illegally advancing credit to alien merchants. This was probably a politically motivated campaign designed to intimidate London’s merchants into remaining loyal to the Crown, for among its targets were men such as John Young who were associated with pro-Yorkist sentiment in London. Feldyng’s alleged offence was the supply of 44½ sacks of wool worth £278 14s. 4d. to a foreign merchant named Umfredo Giustiniani on 12 Feb. that year, for which he had asked payment in five instalments. Unlike some of the other men charged, Feldyng did not manage to secure a royal pardon until after the accession of Edward IV.28 E159/235, recorda Trin. rots. 15, 62; English Trade in 15th Cent. ed. Power and Postan, 368; P. Nightingale, Med. Mercantile Community, 509-10.

In the light of these troubles, it is perhaps not surprising that although active as a merchant, and as mayor of the staple at Westminster, Feldyng now prepared to retire completely from public life. In December 1460 he appeared before the court to petition to be exonerated from his aldermanry. Although no reasons were noted by the common clerk his petition was granted, marking the end of his career in London’s government.29 Jnl. 6, f. 279v. Feldyng’s activities over the following decade suggest that his retirement from civic duties was not caused by ill health. For much of the next ten years, however, his efforts were mainly aimed at the recovery of debts which were run up by his customers in various parts of the country. By the end of the 1460s he was probably in the process of transferring his business interests to his son Richard, who himself became a prominent member of the Mercers’ Company.30 CCR, 1468-76, no. 285.

On 1 Sept. 1469 Feldyng made his will in which he asked to be buried at the north end of the altar of St. John in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry. There were elaborate arrangements for the dower of his widow, Angela. In the first place, Feldyng allocated ‘in name of her reasonable dower or purpart to her belongyng’ all Angela’s own clothing and jewelry. If she disagreed with Feldyng’s assessment of the extent of her dower then the bequest was to be void. Angela was also to have Feldyng’s property in Milk Street for the remaining term of its lease, with the exception the adjoining shop and its cellar and their contents, which were to remain in the hands of his executors. To this were added £100 in cash to maintain the household, the moveable contents of her dwelling house and plate of a total weight of 24 marks, which included a number of silver and gilt goblets and four dozen diamond encrusted spoons. An additional 20 marks p.a. was allocated to her out of his estate, which she was to have as long as she remained unmarried. If Angela married again, or failed to support Feldyng’s servants and apprentices, he instructed his executors to enter into his property ‘and therof to put out ye said Aungell my wife & also to take and seise all ye seyde payment of ye seyde sommes of money to be payd to her for the findyng and sustenaunce aforseyde’. In the event that Angela should break any of the conditions, she was nevertheless not to be penniless, for in this eventuality Feldyng allocated to her the sum of 1,000 marks, rather less than the total value of the other bequests, but no negligable sum. This legacy was to take the form of an annuity, payable at a rate of 100 marks a year.

More straightforward by comparison was Feldyng’s provision for his three sons, Thomas, Richard and John (the last still a minor). They were to receive a third of the residue of his estate, and he left £20 to the Mercers’ Company to ensure that they were admitted as members. The Mercers were also paid to enter Feldyng’s name on their bede roll, while a further memorial came from a bequest for the paving of the road from Bishopsgate to Finsbury which was to be marked ‘with a convenant croc of ston and a plate wt myn name in ye same to be made and sette in such place as can be thought most convenant’. Less ostentatious was his donation of all his gowns, hoods, doublets and furs, which were to be sold and the proceeds used to buy bedding and clothing for the poor. He also made clear arrangements for the repayment of debts which he owed: within a month of his death he asked that ‘open proclamacion be made at poules crosse in London Þ[a]t every persone Þ[a]t wtin a yer and a day next suyng make due prove by for myn executours of any dette by me than due unto him’. Feldyng chose as his executors his sons Thomas and Richard, with John to be included as well if he had attained the age of 21 by the time of his father’s death. He appointed John Middleton to oversee the administration of the will and his estate. Probate was granted on 1 Mar. 1470.31 Guildhall Lib. London, commissary ct. wills, 9171/6, ff. 70-71v. More pardons for outlawry were granted to Feldyng’s debtors in late 1470 and early 1471 suggesting that he continued to pursue them right up to his death: CPR, 1467-77, pp. 204, 223, 257, 385.