GEDNEY, John

More can be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 170-2.

The manor of Mockings in Tottenham came to Gedney from Thomas, son and heir of the Essex landowner Helming Leget†, initially by way of a mortgage. After Thomas Leget’s death, which occurred in about 1432, his sister Anne, the wife of Edward Doyle (d.1468), and following her death her young son John Doyle unsuccessfully attempted to assert their title to the property which descended with the remainder of the Tottenham properties to the draper’s heirs.6 C1/12/31, 68/50; CP40/710, rot. 121; 719, rot. 339; VCH Mdx. v. 326; C241/228/76; CIPM, xxii. 742; Totenham manorial recs., MR/44; London Metropolitan Archs., Tottenham manorial deeds, ACC/1068/007-020.

Gedney’s prominence in London and among members of the Drapers’ Company was exemplified by his admission in 1412-13 to the well-connected fraternity of St. John the Baptist, maintained by the city’s tailors. He was married three times in all. Nothing is known of his first wife, other than her name, which was recorded among those whose souls were to benefit from a chantry which was finally established in the church of St. Christopher le Stocks in 1483. The bede roll also included a son, another John Gedney, although nothing further is recorded of him and it is likely that he predeceased his father. The endowment of the chantry and its associated anniversary, to be held on 12 Feb., was made up of property in the parish that had come into the possession of a London shearman, John Plonket, who was evidently the last in a succession of trustees of the holdings. Plonket’s will set out detailed arrangements for the performance of the religious services, to be carried out by the rector and wardens of the church in the first instance, or failing that by the wardens of Gedney’s own company, the Drapers. His second wife, Elizabeth, was a daughter of a prominent Suffolk landowner, William Clopton, and the widow of a lawyer from that county, Robert Cavendish. Along with other individuals who married into the Clopton family, the portraits of Gedney and Cavendish were among those depicted in stained-glass windows in Long Melford church. The commissioning of the glass and other rebuilding work was largely carried out in the 1480s and 1490s at the expense of Elizabeth’s brother, John Clopton, who had earlier acted as one of Gedney’s executors.7 Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 68v; Erler, 174; Wills, Leases and Memoranda, 9-12; Vis. Suff. 24; E. Lauriston Conder, Church of the Holy Trinity, Long Melford, 87.

The provision of cloth for liveries may have been one of Gedney’s commercial specialisms: besides the London Grocers’ Company and the royal household he also supplied the royal college of St. George in Windsor castle with fabric.8 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV.48.8, 12, 13.

In the final months of Gedney’s life, his wife Joan (who had brought her new husband the vast sum of 4,000 marks in dower from her previous husband, Robert Large),9 For Joan’s dower, erroneously given as 400 marks in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 171, see Erler, 172. became embroiled in a curious and otherwise unexplained incident in the north of England. In early 1449 the j.p.s for the West Riding of Yorkshire heard the indictment of a labourer and a husbandman from Tottenham, Roger Metcalf and Richard Thornton, for the premeditated murder of a London gentleman, James del Rowe, at Barnsley on the previous 4 Dec. Joan Gedney, for her part, was accused of having aided and abetted the murderers in their felony. Thomas del Rowe*, the brother and heir of the murdered man, brought an appeal of the death and in 1451 alleged in the court of common pleas (where he was a prominent clerk) that Joan and her son Richard Turnaunt had illegally maintained the felons, whom he identified as nine men from Tottenham. He sought 1,000 marks in damages.10 KB27/758, rex rots. 3, 4; CP40/761, rot. 368d.