GLOUCESTER, John II

Gloucester, sometimes known as John Jones, probably hailed from the Welsh borders,3 His links with men of Herefs. and Glos. suggest this (e.g. CCR, 1447-54, p. 181), and it is pertinent that the remainder interest on his lands was settled on certain men of Glos. should his daughter’s issue fail: CAD, v. A12183. but rose to become an important official at the Exchequer, where he made his career. His early election to the Parliament of 1431, held while the King was in France, indicates that he was not the yeoman of the Household of this name who had been retained in the previous spring to be attendant on his royal master for the coronation expedition.4 E403/693, m. 20, 695, m. 6. That John Gloucester was given wages of war in 1430-1 and was still in a household office in 1441-3: E101/408/11, f. 10, 409/9, f. 37, 409/11, f. 39. Rather, it seems likely that the MP was by then already employed at the Exchequer.5 The earliest reference to him there dates from a few months later: E159/209, recorda Mich. rot. 27d. While an MP for the Wilts. borough of Ludgershall he had acted as an attorney in the common pleas in a suit from that county: CP40/680, rot.244. Gloucester served in a junior position under two successive clerks of the pipe, known as ‘engrossers of the great roll’, from at least 1436 until July 1452, when he was promoted to the higher office by the treasurer, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. Thereafter he officiated as ‘engrosser’ for nearly ten years, until replaced under the Yorkist regime. The superior post brought with it an annuity of £10 together with a customary yearly payment of 40 marks, and in addition there were regular grants of livery in accordance with his status.6 PRO List, ‘Exchequer Offs.’, 58-59, 64; E361/6, rots. 50-51. Gloucester’s place at the Exchequer was undoubtedly a factor in his parliamentary career.

In the early stages of his career Gloucester was active as an attorney in the Exchequer, appearing in the 1430s and 1440 for the mayors of Cambridge and Hereford and the Gloucestershire knight Sir John Pauncefoot†, among others.7 E159/210, recorda Mich. rot. 31d; 217, recorda Mich. rot. 19; E13/141, rot. 47d. Over a six-year period from 1437 the dean and canons of St. George’s chapel at Windsor regularly paid him an annual fee of 13s. 4d. to conduct suits in the barons’ court on their behalf.8 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs., XV.48.14, m. 6;16, m. 4;18, m. 4. Later on, his most important client was Richard, duke of York, whom he not only served as an attorney in the early 1440s but also represented in Easter term 1450 (while his third Parliament was in progress), in an attempt to obtain payment of over £2,466 which had been assigned to the duke on the customs revenues of Kingston-upon-Hull.9 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 703, notes 41, 61; Egerton roll 8782; E13/141, rot. 43. Evidently a well-trusted official found deserving of other rewards, in July 1448 and March 1453 he was one of those who received letters patent granting the keeping of lands in Dodmerton, Gloucestershire. Among his mainpernors for the second grant was Andrew Kebell*, the comptroller of the pipe at the Exchequer (and thus his close colleague), who was returned to Parliament for Melcombe Regis in November 1449 as his fellow Member, while a surety on the earlier occasion, William Essex*, also a clerk at the Exchequer, sat in the same Parliament for a different Dorset borough.10 CFR, xviii. 91; xix. 20. Gloucester had been returned for Melcombe in the previous Parliament, and was also to represent it, for the third time running, in 1450, although he had no recorded links with the impoverished town or its burgesses. Perhaps he had offered to serve in the Commons free of charge. From the Crown’s point of view it may have been hoped that the presence in the Commons of experienced Exchequer clerks such as Gloucester, Essex and Kebell would help to put through the strict financial measures necessary at a time of severe crisis in the country’s finances.

Like many other Exchequer officials Gloucester joined one of the Inns of Court, albeit late in his career. In May 1451 he and his colleague Kebell were among those admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, neither of them as students.11 L. Inn Adm. i. 11. When sued in 1465 for maintenance of a suit in the Exchequer in 1451, Gloucester pleaded that he was ‘homo in lege terre eruditus’ and had been retained as counsel: KB27/817, rot. 100. The two men remained close associates and perhaps also friends, sometimes acting as mainpernors for each other, and two months later they both provided securities for John Holme, one of the barons of the Exchequer.12 CFR, xviii. 217. Gloucester was described later that year as a ‘servant’ of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, the treasurer of the Household, but in what capacity he had been retained by Stourton is not explained.13 E13/145A, rot. 28. Exchequer officials sometimes made loans to the Crown in this period of financial difficulty, and Gloucester was no exception. Thus he joined with Kebell and others early in 1453 in making a loan of £25 6s. 8d., which he followed on 5 Mar. that year with another of £100, for which he did not receive an assignment for repayment until 13 May.14 E401/830, mm. 24, 39; E403/791, m. 10, 793, m. 3. Later loans were of smaller amounts: £20 in July 1457, and £16 13s. 4d. in March 1460 (although there is no indication that the latter was ever repaid).15 E401/856, m. 16, 868, mm. 19, 20; E403/810, m. 10. The 1450s saw Gloucester kept busy, especially when a Parliament was in session. On 17 July 1454 he received a reward for his ‘labour, diligence and attendance’ at Westminster after being instructed to make searches through the customs’ accounts for all the ports of England, as well as for other sources of revenue, in order that a detailed statement of the ‘state of the realm’ might be compiled for the treasurer to declare to the Lords and Commons in the recent session, and in the following December his clerks were tardily rewarded for searching through the pipe rolls to provide information for the royal council while Parliament had been in progress. Then, in early May 1455 he and the two Exchequer remembrancers, William Essex and Richard Ford, were each given £10 for their work in making searches and writing down matters contained in the rolls and memoranda to provide an over-view of the current state of the nation’s finances for presentation to the King and council. More rewards came their way in October 1456 for their attendance during vacations to carry out similar tasks.16 E403/798, m. 13, 800, m. 6, 801, m. 3, 809, m. 2.

Throughout his career at the Exchequer Gloucester had strong links with London, where, described either as a ‘gentleman of London’ or simply as ‘of the Exchequer’, he was among the recipients of a large number of ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels. These may indicate some involvement in business transactions, possibly in a legal capacity.17 CCR, 1435-41, p. 107; 1441-7, p. 153; 1447-54, p. 266; 1454-61, pp. 58, 174, 189, 192; 1461-8, pp. 58-59, 70. He was pardoned twice as a ‘gentleman of London’, first in November 1452, when his alias of Jones was also given, and for a second time in February 1462, when he was described as ‘former engrosser of the Exchequer’.18 C67/40, m.9, 45, m. 39. By then he had acquired property in several parts of the city, one such acquisition concerning messuages, lands and tenements in Fleet Street. By an agreement made in November 1458 with the heir to the property, the woodmonger Thomas Hyngesworth, he agreed to release Hyngesworth from a debt if the latter recovered the property by legal process; he would then make Hyngesworth and his wife an estate in one of the messuages, worth 46s. 8d. p.a., but would keep the rest.19 Huntington Lib. San Marino, California, Battle Abbey mss, vol. 52, no. 1468. Elsewhere, Gloucester held a large house and some shops in the parish of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, conveyed to him in 1459, and tenements in that of St. Peter Paul’s Wharf which he had acquired before April 1468 and subsequently placed in the hands of two of his junior associates at the Exchequer, Nicholas Statham† and Richard Heton.20 Corp. London RO, hr 188/21, 198/9. Not all of Gloucester’s dealings with Londoners were always amicable, however. As a feoffee-to-use of John Hatherley* (d.1460/1), he became involved in a dispute with the latter’s executors, who tried to recover £37 in rents from the properties concerned, and alleged that he had refused to release his right in two messuages and five wharves belonging to the deceased.21 C1/29/259-60.

Probably using the profits of office, Gloucester established himself not only in the city, but also as an owner of land a few miles from London. Before February 1440 he and a group of feoffees had acquired a large estate comprising a manor, some 540 acres of land and 26s. 8d. of rent in Willesden and Hendon in Middlesex. This was evidently for Gloucester’s benefit, for soon afterwards, in June 1442, he was described as lord of various places in Willesden when he was granted a papal indult for a portable altar.22 VCH Mdx. vii. 216; E40/5752; CPL, ix. 315. Seven years later these holdings were settled on him and his wife Joan in jointure, and he added to them subsequently by acquiring more land in the vicinity.23 E40/5767, 5773, 7253. By 1449, therefore, he was a substantial landholder in that part of Middlesex, and although he was never returned to Parliament for the county he did attest the electoral indenture in the autumn of that year. This is further indication that he was in breach of the statutes which required MPs to be resident in the constituencies they represented; clearly, Gloucester was not living in Melcombe. After his parliamentary career was over he came to be of sufficient standing in Middlesex to be appointed to several commissions of array in the shire. Moreover, his legal experience at the Exchequer led him to be named as a j.p. on all 13 commissions appointed for the county between 1455 and 1467, invariably as a member of the quorum.

Besides his holdings in London and Middlesex, Gloucester also acquired an estate at Kimpton in Hertfordshire, where he sometimes lived,24 CAD, v. A12183. and this became the scene of drama in 1454. In that year Gloucester’s connexion with the Witchingham family of Norfolk brought him into conflict with James Arblaster of Fishley, who had designs on the lands of Robert Witchingham, a former tenant-in-chief of the King. In the early summer, Robert’s widow, Agnes, took her young son, John Witchingham, to Gloucester’s house at Kimpton for his protection, but, according to a suit put up by Gloucester in the Exchequer, on 1 June Arblaster, John Berney* and others forcibly entered the property, after they had discovered where the heir had been taken. At the same time Arblaster filed a suit alleging that Gloucester had himself illegally entered his property in Fishley.25 E13/145B, rots. 4, 16d. As might be expected, the court in which Gloucester worked favoured his version of events, and on 27 Jan. following he secured a royal grant of John’s wardship and marriage. The lands concerned probably included the manor of Little Totham in Essex, and later that year the ward’s relative Edmund Witchingham made an unsuccessful attempt to sue the manor and other properties out of the King’s and Gloucester’s hands.26 CFR, xix. 127-8, 139. More trouble was to come, for in November 1456 commissioners, headed by Sir Edward Doddyngselles*, were ordered to investigate John Witchingham’s abduction from a house belonging to Gloucester’s kinsman Thomas Cotes esquire, in Hunningham, Warwickshire, where he had been staying at Gloucester’s request. The return of the inquisition stated that on the afternoon of the previous 26 Sept. Arblaster, assisted by more than 40 armed men, had forced his way into Cotes’s property, terrorized his wife, and abducted the ward. Despite these events the matter does not appear to have gone any further, for by June 1458 Arblaster had married Agnes Witchingham, hence becoming the stepfather of both John and his sister Blanche.27 KB27/783, rot. 24d; 784, rot. 54d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 344; C145/316/3; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 99, 340.

Although Gloucester lost his post at the Exchequer soon after Edward IV took the throne, his continued employment as a j.p. indicates that he was not deemed to be an enemy of the new regime. However, in other respects, his final years were troubled ones. In 1466 he lost a lawsuit over eight acres of land at Willesden and was required to pay substantial damages.28 CP40/820, rot. 154. A year later he and his second wife, Margery, submitted a petition to Chancery claiming that John Fust†, the former escheator of Surrey and Sussex, had withheld £22 owing to Margery since February 1462, when she was still unmarried, and that the money was now worth only 20 marks. Fust eventually conceded that he had written an obligation for the money, and handed over an extra 40s. to compensate for the deterioration in the value of the original debt.29 E13/153, rot. 79. It is not clear exactly when Gloucester died, but his death occurred between May 1468 and June 1471. The circumstances of his death, reported in a petition of July 1473, suggest that not all had gone well for him since his retirement from the Exchequer. In the petition John Wood III* stated that Gloucester had lent £40 to John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, 18 years earlier (when Tiptoft was treasurer of England and Wood his deputy), and that at the earl’s request he, Wood, was bound to Gloucester to ensure his reimbursement. Although the sum was repaid, Gloucester was unable to find the obligation when Wood asked for it and so wrote out a bill of discharge which Wood, in his turn, managed to mislay. After Gloucester had died intestate, his widow found the original obligation but refused to return it to Wood and began proceedings at common law for the repayment of the non-existent debt. In his defence Wood cited the fact that Gloucester had never sought to recover £40 from him at any time over the 18 year period, ‘notwithstanding the wrechednesse and misery that he was in’. He reported that our MP was ‘greetly endetted to many persones within the city of London ... and for dette he died in prison’.30 C1/45/278.

Gloucester’s heir was his only daughter, Joan. In a curious arrangement made at Michaelmas 1464, he had been admitted to repasts at Lincoln’s Inn until such time as his daughter married or took the veil.31 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 38. The marriage he arranged for the girl enhanced the status of their family by allying them to gentry from the Midlands. Shortly before May 1468 he agreed that she should wed John Staunton esquire, the eldest son of Thomas Staunton*, formerly a prominent Lancastrian official, whose own father had been one of Gloucester’s earliest colleagues at the Exchequer. Settlements of Gloucester’s landed holdings at Willesden and Kimpton, worth at least £20 p.a., ensured that after his death Joan and her husband would hold them in jointure, and that they would pass in Joan’s line, with successive remainders to certain Gloucestershire men, presumably the MP’s relations. The couple also acquired a handsome jointure in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire from John’s father. But not long after Gloucester’s death Staunton persuaded his wife to sell her place in London and lands in Hertfordshire, for a total of 450 marks, and in 1471 to settle the rest of her property with ultimate remainder to his own right heirs. Left a widow in 1476, Joan was forced to bring actions in the law courts against her in-laws both regarding the loss of her inheritance and the failure of the Stauntons to provide the jointure they had promised.32 CAD, v. A12183; C1/58/322; CP25(1)/294/76/77.