FORTHEY, John

More can be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 111-12.

In Hilary term 1418 the city of Worcester nominated Forthey as its attorney in the court of King’s bench, with a brief to act for the citizens in any matter touching their liberties. By 1420 he was also working as an attorney in the common pleas, representing clients in cases emanating from Worcestershire and Shropshire. During the 1420s these clients included Katherine, widow and executrix of Sir William Beauchamp† of Powick, Sir Hugh Cokesey* and Richard Oseney* of Worcester. By the first half of the 1430s he was acting as an attorney at Westminster for Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Roger Clitheroe in lawsuits arising from Wiltshire, Sussex and Kent. In the latter part of Henry V’s reign and the earlier years of that of Henry VI, a ‘Forthey’ was a filacer in the common pleas for suits from Suffolk, but it is unclear whether he was the MP.4 KB27/627, att. rot. 2; 693 rot. 67; CP40/641, rot. 113, 113d; 643, rots. 115, 115d, 477d; 661, rot. 302d; 663, rot. 109d; 667, rot. 574; 691, rot. 226d.

During Forthey’s last Parliament, the short assembly of 1431, the Commons complained to the Crown about the activities of ‘Welshmen’ and others who impeded the free transport of goods to Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester and other settlements situated by the Severn. Given its subject, it is possible that Forthey and his fellow burgess, William Poleyn*, played some part in preparing or promoting the petition, to which the King responded by ordering that his lieges should enjoy the right of free passage on the river for their rafts or barges.5 SC8/25/1241; PROME, x. 470-1; Statutes, ii. 265.

Given his association with London, it may well be that Forthey was the John Forthey against whom the executors of the late Hugh Rye of Sandwich began proceedings in the common pleas in the late 1430s. They alleged that the defendant had entered into a bond with Rye at London in 1434, by which he had promised to pay Rye eight marks by a certain date, an undertaking he had failed to honour. As so often with such cases, the plea roll does not record the reason for the bond.6 CP40/712, rot. 510.

In the early 1440s, Forthey stood surety for Richard Bykenell, a fellow Worcester man suspected of felony. As a result, he was the subject of writs of exigent arising from the failure of him and a fellow surety, William Holder of Warwickshire, to ensure that Bykenell appeared in the court of King’s bench, a matter that the authorities were still pursuing in late 1443.7 KB27/726, rex rot. 11d; 730, rex rot. 11d.

In Michaelmas term 1450 William Bayly began a suit in the common pleas against one Maud Forthey for £18, a debt contracted in Gloucestershire. In the plea roll Maud is referred to as ‘late of Worcester, widow’, so it is possible that she was Forthey’s widow. A John Forthey was a plaintiff in the same court five years later, but he was a namesake, a wool merchant from Northleach in Gloucestershire who died in 1458. His fine brass survives in Northleach parish church.8 CP40/759, rots. 6d, 232d; 779, rot. 638; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Glos. 1: The Cotswolds, 515. While he was probably not related to the Member for Worcester, it seems likely that Richard Forthey, esquire, of Bristol and ‘lately of Worcester’, a defendant in a suit for debt at Westminster in 1476, was from the same family as the MP.9 CP40/859, rot. 318d.