MONE, Geoffrey

Mone’s parentage and origins have not been ascertained beyond reasonable doubt, but he may have hailed from Somerset, for in his will he singled out the parish church of Corscombe for a bequest of 6s. 8d.3 Reg. Stafford, f. 162v. Alternatively, however, he may have come from Wilts., where he found his first parlty. seat, and have been related to William Mone who attested the county elections there in 1459: C219/16/5. Although by the end of his life Mone had formed an affinity with London’s legal quarter to the west of the city, it is possible that he had initially been marked out for a career in the Church. If he did indeed ever take minor orders (he was on occasion styled ‘clerk’), he soon abandoned this vocation, married, and found a place in the household of Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells. It was as a ‘donzel’ that in August 1438 the bishop appointed him to the post of apparitor-general throughout his diocese.4 Reg. Stafford, ii. 688. Mone continued to hold this office until Stafford’s translation to Canterbury, and it must have been in the early months of the chancellor’s archiepiscopate that he complained to him of an encroachment on his powers by one Thomas Wareyn of Taunton, for within less than a year, in April 1444, Bishop Bekynton had appointed his own apparitor.5 C1/17/140; Reg. Bekynton, i. 39.

Few other details of Mone’s career have been discovered. In the autumn of 1432 he and one Philip Bukeland were sued by a tailor from Wells for a debt of 60s., in May 1441 Mone served as proctor for John Sperhawke at his institution as vicar of Isle Abbots, and it may also have been he who in November 1445 was among the trustees of the goods and chattels of the London grocer Walter Alwyn.6 CP40/687, rot. 58; Reg. Stafford, ii. 844; CCR, 1447-54, p. 20. Mone made his will just over two years later, on 4 Dec. 1447, asking to be buried in the cemetery of the parish church of St. Clement Danes, if he should die within two miles of it. He assigned rewards to the chaplains, clerks and choirboys who would attend his funeral, and left small bequests to the churches of Corscombe, St. Clements and St. Mary le Strand, to Christ Church priory, Canterbury, and to St. Paul’s cathedral. Any remaining goods were to remain to Mone’s widow and executrix who was to use them at her discretion to make provision for her late husband’s soul, or for any children born from their union. Whether any such children were ever born, or whether the testator was merely expressing a pious hope, is unclear, for Mone died within four months of making his will, which was proved on 1 Apr. 1448.7 Reg. Stafford, f. 162v.