Nicholas Gaynesford
Nicholas Gainsford, also written Gaynesford or Gaynesforde, (about 1427–1498) of Carshalton, Surrey, of an armigerous gentry family established at Crowhurst, was a Justice of the Peace, several times Member of Parliament and High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, Constable and Keeper of Odiham Castle and Park, Hampshire, who served in the royal households from around 1461 until his death in 1498.
Rising to high office during the reign of Henry VI, he was an Usher to the Chamber of Edward IV and, by 1476, to his queen Elizabeth Woodville.
He was attainted in 1483, but was soon afterwards pardoned, and fully regained his position and estate as Esquire to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York after the Battle of Bosworth Field.
The Gainsford family[1] acquired manorial estates at Crowhurst, Surrey, during the 1330s, and in 1338 obtained licence to hold divine service in their oratory there.
[7] The infant's mother Elizabeth Warner, meanwhile, remarried to Walter Green, M.P., of Middlesex,[8] who already had children (including daughters Joan, wife of Miles Windsor of Stanwell, and Katherine).
[17] In 1453 Joan (daughter of John Symond of Toppesfield (Essex) and Margaret Gobion),[18] wife of William Gainsford, was buried at Lingfield.
His father's high tomb was raised on the north side of the chancel of Crowhurst church with a brass figure in armour, inscription and shields including the arms of Gainsford impaling Poyle set into the upper slab.
[27] Nicholas, born about 1427, was appointed Controller of petty customs in the Port of London in October 1449,[28] and in 1452–53 he and his brother John were admitted to Lincoln's Inn,[29] 'for services of their family to the profession', their uncle William Gainsford being then its Governor.
Following the formal accession of Edward IV the following March he, with Sir Thomas Cobham, at once received a Commission to imprison Nicholas Carew (formerly Escheator) and others.
[38]) A year later the King had a tun of wine laid in at 'our trusty and well beloved servant's Nicholas Gaynesford's house' for them to enjoy when hunting the hare.
[42] Richard Wakehurst had granted the manor of Bysshe Court at Horne to his younger son John, who died having enfeoffed William Gainsford with it in 1452.
[44] John Gainsford's probate was concluded in 1464: his high tomb stands on the south side of Crowhurst chancel, opposite his father's, also with armoured brass figure, shields and inscription.
[53] During this period suits concerning the Bottreux manors ensued between Robert's mother Eleanor (then wife of Sir Harry Fitz Lowys), his brother Richard, their uncle Sir John Young (Lord Mayor of London 1466–67, sometime husband of John White's sister Agnes[54]), and Richard Newbridge, vicar of Farnham and surviving executor of Robert the grandfather.
[62] Gainsford attended the coronation of Richard III,[63] whose bloody path to the throne drove Nicholas, King Edward's loyal courtier and close Woodville associate, and his son John into the resistance against him.
[75] This grant was confirmed to Nicholas in March 1493, with the wardship and marriage of Robert,[76] for whom Margaret, daughter of John Moyle, was selected as the suitable wife.
Nicholas received Commission of the peace for Surrey annually from 1487 to 1494 and (thrice) in 1497, of gaol delivery in 1486 and 1489, of oyer and terminer in 1487 and 1493 and of array in 1488 and 1491.
Crest: A demi maiden couped below the waist, habited gules crined or, holding in the dexter hand a wreath vert, and in the sinister a rose branch proper.
[92] "And I do ordaine my good maister Sir John Risseley[93] to be the Overseer of the same," Nicholas Gainsford wrote at the end of his will, "to whom I bequeath my brace of Gray howndis and my Crosbowe with all things thereto belongyng, And I beseche hym to accepte this lytell gyfte, for if I hade eny other thinge of pleasure I mowte thynke hit full well to be bestowid uppon hym.
"[94] The tomb memorial to Nicholas and Margaret Gainsford was recorded by Daniel Lysons,[95] and showed them with four sons and four daughters, all looking towards a Trinity in the upper right hand corner.
[96] A brass to Robert White at South Warnborough showed him in armour kneeling in prayer much like his father-in-law: the heraldic shields are lost, which might have indicated his Hungerford parentage.
[98] The Huntington Library MS EL 26.A 13 (Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes with lines from Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate, in part written by John Shirley), inscribed by Nicholas Gainsford, and the British Library MS Royal 18.B.iii, a text of the prose Chronicle of Brut, with inscriptions (fol.
[99] Copies of John Hardyng's Chronicle and Le Receuil des Histoires de Troie which William Gainsford inherited from the Redes of Boarstall[100] can similarly be referred to the descendants of John Gainsford of Crowhurst (died 1460), whose second wife Katherine (Green) remarried to Sir Edmund Rede (see above).
The early (c.1400) recension of Chaucer's translation of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae in British Library Additional MS 10340 (which forms the basis of a published edition[104]) was in the hands of Stephen Kirton, London alderman and Merchant-taylor, son of John Kirton (executor to both Nicholas and Margaret Gainsford) and his wife Margaret White, daughter of the above.
[105] Many ancient documents relating to the Gainsfords of Crowhurst are collected in the Gaynesford Cartulary, an accumulation originally formed by the family themselves.
