John Gostwick

Sir John Gostwick (c.1480 – 15 April 1545) was an English courtier, administrator and MP.

Life
Dovecote at Willington Manor; it was constructed by Sir John Gostwick to house 1500 pigeons.[1] Materials from Newnham Priory (dissolved 1535) may have been used.[2]

He was born the son of John Gostwick in Willington, Bedfordshire, and educated in Potton. Around 1510 he entered the service of Cardinal Wolsey and became a Gentleman Usher to Henry VII. He was also a merchant importing caps and hats from the continent of Europe. By 1517 he was a wax chandler. In 1523 he took on an auditorship at court, and pursued a career as a financial officer.[3]

In 1529, Gostwick bought Willington Manor from Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. He became a member of Gray's Inn and a JP (Justice of the Peace) for Bedfordshire. After Wolsey's death he worked for his successor Thomas Cromwell in a number of important and lucrative roles, acting as a personal paymaster.[4] During the Dissolution of the Monasteries he acquired a considerable number of other properties and in 1538 was one of the judges who sentenced the Abbot of Woburn to be hanged for refusing to sign the Oath of Supremacy. He was knighted in 1540.[5]

In 1539 Gostwick was elected a knight of the shire (MP) for Bedfordshire and in 1540 was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He was re-elected to represent Bedfordshire again in December 1544 but died before he could take his seat. At some point in his career as MP he made a direct attack on Thomas Cranmer, as a Lutheran in his views on the sacrament. The incident was dated as in 1544 by John Foxe, but scholars now suspect it was earlier, at the time of the debates on the Six Articles.[6][7]

St Lawrence, Willington; the north chapel here (1541), and possibly the whole church, was constructed by Sir John Gostwick.[8]

Gostwick died in 1545 and was buried in Willington church. He had married Joan and had a son William, who died shortly after his own death. The estates passed to his brother William.

Sources
  1. Matthew M. Vriends, Pigeons (1988), p. 7; Internet Archive.
  2. British Listed Buildings
  3. Stanley T. Bindoff, John S. Roskell, Lewis Namier, Romney Sedgwick, David Hayton, Eveline Cruickshanks, R. G. Thorne, P. W. Hasler, The House of Commons: 1509 - 1558 ; 1, Appendices, constituencies, members A - C, Volume 4 (1982), p. 238; Google Books.
  4. Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, England under the Tudors (1991), p. 181; Google Books.
  5. Bindoff 1982.
  6. Paul Ayris, David Selwyn (editors), Thomas Cranmer: churchman and scholar (1999), p. 28; Google Books.
  7. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1996), p. 252.
  8. British Listed Buildings
  • Carter, P. R. N. "Gostwick, Sir John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65949. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • S.T. Bindoff, ed. (1982). "Gostwick, John (by 1493-1545) of Wakefield, Yorks and Willington, Beds". The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558.
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"Sir John Gostwick". bedfordsire.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 3 November 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2013.

Political offices
Preceded by
Sir Ralph Verney		 High Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire
1541–1542		 Succeeded by
John Gascoigne
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