GODSTONE, Thomas

The previous biography of Godstone overlooked a royal pardon he received in early 1415. While his reasons for purchasing it are now impossible to ascertain, the pardon is worthy of note, since it identifies him as the son of John Godstone of Walkhampstead in his native Surrey.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 197-8; C67/37, m. 54.

During the 1420s Godstone became embroiled in a long-running and bitter property dispute between his friend and fellow burgess, John Sumpter*, and Robert Arneburgh. A partisan account of the dispute written some years after his death asserts that he and two other ‘byggesmen’ (burgesses), William Nottingham I* and Simon Mate*, had used the seal of the borough of Colchester to authenticate a document supporting Sumpter. It adds that God had shortened the lives of the three, ‘not withstandyng that they were lykly men and lusty to have lyven mony a yere’, as a punishment for ‘theyre vntrue labour’ on Sumpter’s behalf.4 C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 9, 62-63. He is called ‘John’ in this account, probably (as Carpenter argues) mistakenly. The MP’s brother John did not become a burgess of Colchester until after Thomas’s death in 1432, some six years after the alleged misuse of the seal.

Godstone and Sumpter were also associated with each other as the executors of Robert Tey†, a prominent Essex esquire who died in 1426. Tey’s will is no longer extant but a suit brought by his executors, Godstone, Sumpter, John Bassett and William Persone, features in the records of the court of common pleas. Their action reached pleadings in Hilary term 1429, when Godstone and his co-plaintiffs claimed that the defendant, Robert Fitznichol of Halstead, had failed to settle a debt of £40 that he had contracted with Tey in the spring of 1426. Fitznichol admitted the claim and the court ordered him to pay the plaintiffs that sum and damages of 6s. 8d.5 CP40/672, rot. 302.

The previous biography incorrectly states that Godstone’s brother John inherited all his property in Essex. In fact, the manor of East Newland in St. Lawrence passed to Nicholas Peek*, whose wife Katherine, daughter and heir of John Christian of Colchester, may have been the MP’s stepdaughter.6 VCH Essex, ix. 59; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 573; iii. 197; C1/9/328. Peek also came to hold (in Katherine’s right) a garden in St. Helen’s Street, Colchester, which had formerly belonged to Godstone.7 Essex RO, Colchester bor. recs., ct. roll, 1460-1, D/B 5 Cr71, m. 15.