Family and Education

b. by 1501, s. of Hugh Goldston. m. 2s. 3da.1

Offices Held

Bailiff, Bridgnorth 1523-4, 1536-7, 1545-6, 1550, alderman by 1543; commr. subsidy, Salop 1524.2

Biography

There is some trace of the Goldston family in Shropshire in the early 15th century, but the pedigree in the heraldic visitation begins only with Humphrey Goldston’s father. The first glimpse of Goldston himself comes in 1522 when he was admitted to the freedom of Bridgnorth on payment of £1 6s.8d. A year later he was chosen one of the two bailiffs: he was to hold this office three more times, on the last occasion, in 1550, as replacement for a man who died in mid-term. One of Goldston’s sons was bailiff for the year 1550-1.3

Unless he sat in the Parliament of 1523, for which the names are lost, Goldston’s entry to the Commons followed several years after his first term as bailiff, and he took precedence over his fellow-townsman George Hayward. Nothing is known of his part in the proceedings of this Parliament, but he probably represented Bridgnorth again in its successor of 1536, when the King asked for the re-election of the previous Members, and perhaps also in 1539, both being Parliaments for which the names of the borough’s Members are missing.

It transpires from a chancery suit brought against Goldston, during More’s tenure of the great seal, that he had been supplying wool to the West Riding cloth industry, but whether this was his principal business activity does not appear: his only other known one, mentioned in 1541, was that of receiving the income of lands at Astley Abbotts, north of Bridgnorth, formerly belonging to Shrewsbury abbey. Two years later his name stands fourth in a list of the 24 aldermen of Bridgnorth. No member of the family appears in a similar list of 1565, Goldston having died in 1556 and been buried in the church of St. Leonard on 22 Sept. At Bridgnorth his family is still commemorated by ‘Goldston’s furlong’.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Harding

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from admission as freeman. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 203.
• 2. Bridgnorth mss 9(1), ff. 45, 168, 190; 9(2), ff. 557, 561; LP Hen. VIII, iv.
• 3. H. Owen and J. B. Blakeway, Shrewsbury, i. 315; Bridgnorth mss 9(2), f. 563.
• 4. LP Hen. VIII, xvi, xix; Bridgnorth mss 9(2), ff. 14, 540; Shrewsbury lib., T/S par. reg. St. Leonard’s Bridgnorth; information from J. F. A. Mason.