GAYTON, Robert

Robert was born in Lincolnshire to the Gaytons who lived at Spalding.3 SC8/85/4219. Although there is a possibility that they were related to John Gayton, the London fishmonger who died in 1413, their relationship cannot have been a particularly close one, for the fishmonger chose to leave his property to be sold to pay his debts and to maintain a chantry, rather than to preserve it for his family.4 Cal. Wills Ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii (2), 399-400. The MP is not to be identified with a namesake who, one of the sons of another John Gayton, petitioned the chancellor in Edw. IV’s reign regarding his exclusion from a number of properties, including a wharf, at Stratford-le-Bow, which his father had intended him to have: C1/34/34, 35. Rather, the young Robert’s introduction to the capital and its trade was furthered by another kinsman, the grocer William Oliver†, who, similarly coming from Lincolnshire, was associated with Robert’s putative father William Gayton in a lawsuit in the court of common pleas in 1420, which the two of them brought against a husbandman for breaking into their close at Spalding, where his livestock consumed their hay.5 CP40/638, rot. 258. It was Oliver’s Company in London that the future MP joined within the next few years. When he began his apprenticeship is unknown, although at Christmas 1428 he was listed in the Grocers’ accounts among the ‘householders and bachelors’ not yet entitled to wear the Company livery. He was then lodging ‘wt Welles aldyrman’, which suggests that he was apprenticed to one of the most prominent members of the fellowship, the wealthy John Welles II*. Gayton is recorded owing 20s. to the Company as rent in 1432, and at some point in the accounting year running from that July he entered the livery on payment of 3s. 4d.6 Ms. Archs. Grocers Co. ii. 177, 198, 221, 224. Evidence of his independent commercial dealings dates from two years earlier, when he owed money to a merchant from Bologna,7 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 251. and from then on he was often recorded in association with other members of his Company in business transactions. Formal ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels were frequently made in the course of trade, as security for merchandise which was bought on credit, and Gayton was often a recipient of such transfers. This may indicate that he was active as a wholesale supplier of commodities, particularly to his fellow grocers, although other of his dealings in the 1440s associated him with an esquire named John Rysley and with Richard Lyon the vintner.8 CCR, 1435-41, p. 342; 1441-7, pp. 48, 231; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 173.

To judge from later lawsuits, Gayton supplied dye-stuffs to the cloth industry, having dealings with fullers, dyers and weavers of the west Midlands, some of whom he subsequently sued for debt.9 e.g. CP40/760, rot. 45. Indeed, Gayton was hard-headed when it came to pursuing his debtors in the courts at Westminster: an innkeeper from Brentwood was outlawed at his suit, and among the actions he brought was one against a fishmonger and his wife for sums amounting to over £36. He successfully pursued another London citizen who had failed to honour a bond. When Andrew Dyer died owing him £60 he took action against the man entrusted with Dyer’s messuage in Oxford, by petitioning the chancellor in 1445. Two of his fellow grocers provided pledges guaranteeing the truth of his claim,10 CPR, 1436-41, p. 108; Cal. P. and M. London 1437-57, p. 95; CP40/743, rot. 306; C1/13/229. and he evidently proved capable of maintaining friendships with other members of his Company for long periods of time. Thus, on behalf of John Welles he acted as a feoffee of property in the London parish of St. Michael Paternoster Royal and of land in Kent, offering the kind of support which led Welles to make him a bequest of a silver-gilt standing cup,11 Reg. Chichele, ii. 617; CCR, 1441-7, p. 226; CPR, 1452-61, p. 284. while, together with Thomas Burgoyne*, the under sheriff of London, he took on the executorship of the will of another grocer, John Wood.12 CPR, 1446-52, p. 492; 1452-61, pp. 2, 620; CP40/741, rots. 445, 447; 744, rot. 375. In addition, Gayton was asked to be a trustee of the Essex manor of Earls in Havering atte Bower, which he held in association with the bishops of Chichester and Norwich before conveying it to the draper Thomas Cook II* and his nominees.13 CPR, 1446-52, p. 517.

Over the years Gayton gradually established for himself substantial interests in property in London. His most notable acquisition came early in his career, when, in 1429, his kinsman William Oliver conveyed to him his capital tenement called The Star and its four adjacent shops situated in Bread Street, along with a rental income of 74s. p.a. The intention was that he should confirm Oliver and his wife Maud in possession of these properties for the rest of their lives, with reversion to Oliver’s feoffees, who were headed by another grocer, Thomas Catworth*. Gayton duly made the conveyance of the reversionary interest to Catworth and the rest on 4 Nov. 1432, but then, just four days later, he entered an agreement to pay them 500 marks for it, in instalments spread over ten years. It seems likely that this arrangement accorded with Oliver’s plans for the foundation of chantries in the church of St. Thomas Acon, as revealed in an undated will which was enrolled in the court of husting at the end of the same month, yet, as a consequence of the muddled state of Oliver’s affairs following his death, Gayton, Catworth and the other feoffees lost a lawsuit regarding the rental income levied on the property. Nevertheless, Gayton eventually took possession of The Star, doing so at least by July 1446, when, belatedly seeking to carry out his kinsman’s wishes, he made settlements of a rent of 18 marks arising from the inn and shops, and promised to amortize land providing the same income to support two chantry priests.14 Corp. London RO, hr 161/6, 11, 16, 175/7, 8; London Possessory Assizes (London Rec. Soc. i.), no. 247. Oliver left him £5 in his will of 17 Dec. 1432: Guildhall Lib. London, commissary ct. wills, 9171/3, f. 331. As well as The Star, Gayton later held property close by in the neighbouring parish of St. Mary le Bow. However, it may not have been there that he lived on a permanent basis, for in 1461 he was listed among the inhabitants of Dowgate Ward, which lay next to the Thames.15 CPR, 1452-61, p. 463; CCR, 1454-61, p. 393; Cal. London Letter Bk. K, 397. While there is no evidence to enable a valuation of his holdings to be made at that late stage of his career, several years earlier, in 1436, assessments made for the purposes of taxation had listed him with an income of £20 p.a. from real estate in London and Northamptonshire.16 E179/238/90. The whereabouts of his lands in the latter county have not been discovered, nor is it known how he came to acquire them.

For a substantial part of his life Gayton avoided public office, both by royal appointment and through promotion by his fellow grocers and citizens. He even took the trouble to obtain, on 25 Jan. 1444, formal letters granting him exemption from any such service to the Crown.17 CPR, 1441-6, p. 235. Nevertheless, later that same year he did agree to become warden of his Company, and then held this post for two consecutive years. He contributed 13s. 4d. towards the Company’s levy for soldiers to be sent to Calais at the end of the decade, although he was tardy in contributing the sum of 53s. 4d. assessed as his share of the £100 granted by the Grocers towards the defence of London in 1450-1.18 Ms. Archs. Grocers Co. 301, 316. It would seem that in the meantime Gayton’s interests had broadened beyond the confines of the City, for in Hilary term 1451 he was bringing suits in the court of common pleas in his capacity as a Lincolnshire landowner as well as a citizen of London. As ‘of Spalding, Lincolnshire, esquire’, he sued the Yorkshire knight Sir William Euer* and his son Henry* for money they owed him, and when, in November 1452, he took out a royal pardon, he was described in it not simply as ‘of London, grocer’, but also with his Lincolnshire address and status, and it was also styled ‘esquire’ that he sued a yeoman from Spalding for a debt of £40, albeit without securing a satisfactory outcome.19 CP40/760, rot. 45; C67/40, m. 12; CPR, 1452-61, p. 378. It would seem that his new status as a member of the gentry had come about through his inheritance or acquisition of a landed estate there. As he said in a later petition, having been born in Lincolnshire his natural inclination was to live in the county where he grew up. Accordingly, he purchased land in Spalding, Pinchbeck and Gosberton, only for his title to be challenged in the courts by one Thomas Benet, thanks to the unlawful maintenance of Gilbert Haltoft (d.1458), a baron of the Exchequer, who corrupted the sheriff, Richard Waterton*.20 SC8/85/4219. This must have been during Waterton’s first shrievalty, of 1453-4, and the final concord of 1455 to which both Gayton and Benet were party may have been part of an attempt at reconciliation.21 CP25(1)/145/161/17.

Leaving Gayton’s foray into the land market aside, it was his standing in the Grocers’ Company which led to his appointment to two extraordinary royal commissions, concerning the means which might be employed by Henry VI’s cash-strapped government to increase the number of coins in circulation. The first, dated 17 May 1456, took as its premise that ‘an abundance of coinage engenders universal prosperity’, and deputed two mercers, two goldsmiths, two grocers (of whom Gayton was one) and two drapers, all from London, to assist the warden of the change to investigate the truth about current rumours that base metals had been successfully transmuted into gold. The commissioners were to make a report in writing to the King and Council at the beginning of July, but if they did so it cannot have proved conclusive, for in March following Gayton was appointed again to make inquiries about alchemical means for the settlement of the Crown’s debts.22 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 286, 339. Although that same year (1457) he once more took on the wardenship of the Grocers’ Company, there is no sign that he wished to become closely involved in the government of the city of London itself, or that he was considered worthy to do so. It looks as if in the late 1450s his trade with the Mediterranean, like that of many of his fellows, was undergoing severe difficulties, both a consequence and a cause of the hostility shown to Italian merchants by the people of London. As a response, in January 1459 he was among 20 men who each made recognizance to the King in £400, to provide bail for four Genoese merchants held in the Fleet prison, and a guarantee that they would appear before the Council to answer certain charges.23 CCR, 1454-61, p. 333.

The background to this London grocer’s election to the Parliament of 1460 for the Sussex borough of Steyning remains obscure, especially as no evidence of any connexion between him and the local burgesses has been found. But he was not the only Londoner to succeed in gaining election for a Sussex borough at that time: John Harowe*, the mercer, and John Worsop*, the draper, were also returned, both of them as representatives of the borough of Horsham, which belonged to John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. It is significant that the duke was the dominant landlord in Steyning, too, leading to the suggestion that it was through contact with him or his advisers that the three Londoners secured election to what promised to be an eventful and politically critical Parliament. It had been summoned following the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton, and with the prospect of Richard, duke of York’s imminent return to England, perhaps intending to seize the throne. Norfolk, York’s ally, may have hoped that the Londoners would support their cause in the Commons. They may also have been expected to promote the interests of their fellow citizens of London, who from the time the Yorkist earls had entered the city on 4 July had given them practical financial support (to the tune of loans which amounted to £11,000 in the course of the following nine months). Early in October 1460, a matter of days before the Parliament was due to assemble on the 7th, the governing body of London set up an ad hoc committee to discuss ways of ensuring that the City’s interests would be represented at Westminster. In this respect Londoners sitting for other constituencies could stand beside the City’s own four MPs to present a common front.24 Corp. London RO, jnl. 6, ff. 245, 249; C.M. Barron, ‘London and the Crown’, in Crown and Local Communities ed. Highfield and Jeffs, 97-98, 103-4, 107. At that time Gayton may well have adopted the same political stance as Harowe, a committed Yorkist, especially as members of his Company had hastened to make loans to the victors of Northampton. Nevertheless, the Londoners may not have gone so far as to wish to see Henry VI deposed; indeed, when challenged on this important constitutional matter the Lords and Commons denied the duke of York the crown, albeit promising him the succession after the King’s death. This was unacceptable to Queen Margaret and her supporters, and during the parliamentary recess at the end of the year York was defeated and killed at Wakefield (where Harowe also lost his life). It was at this point, with the queen’s army marching south to threaten London that, on 12 Jan. 1461, Gayton transferred possession of his moveable goods and chattels to two fellow grocers, the mayor of London Richard Lee* and the latter’s son-in-law George Ireland†. This was evidently a precautionary measure, perhaps taken in order to raise money, but that there remained a crisis in his own affairs, as well as in the nation’s, is evident from the fact that he renewed this grant in the following August, after the accession of Edward IV. Furthermore, four months later, on 21 Dec., he and his wife conveyed to Lee and his wife, Ireland and two other grocers their principal properties: The Star and the shops in Bread Street.25 Cal. P. and M. London 1458-82, p. 158; London hr 191/31, 32. The date of this transaction, the very day of the prorogation of the first Parliament of the reign, a Parliament which had attainted the leading Lancastrians, suggests a reason why Gayton divested himself of legal ownership of all his possessions: namely, to protect them from forfeiture. If so, it might be thought that he had shown some ambivalence towards the new regime.

Yet there is always the possibility that Gayton had simply decided that the time was right to leave the capital and return to his roots. When it came to his renewed attempts to recover the lands he had purchased in Lincolnshire, he was ready to affirm in a petition to Edward IV that it was God’s will that Lancastrian rule had ended. Having complained about the unfair award the former chief justice (Sir) John Fortescue* had made, whereby he had been deprived of lands worth seven marks a year as well as 40 marks in money, he declared that Henry VI had taken ‘no heed of the lamentable wrongs extortions murders misguiding of the law by colourable cruelties but let all things run under his authority by cruel tyranny’. Accordingly, God had brought him down.26 SC8/85/4219. Gayton disappeared from the records for the next few years. Then, in Easter term 1465 he attempted to sue a woman from Stamford in Lincolnshire for failing to pay him £8 for two butts of wine she had purchased from him six years before, only to be amerced for making a false claim. Finally, in July 1468 he and his brother Reynold were recorded as recipients of the moveable possessions of a man from Spalding, and in November that year a clerk from Shrewsbury was pardoned his outlawry arising from a suit for debt Gayton had brought against him.27 CP40/815, rot. 311d; CCR, 1468-76, no. 103; CPR, 1467-77, p. 80. The MP is not recorded thereafter.