Family and Education

b. by 1518. educ. l. Temple. m. (1) Mildred (d.1544), da. and coin. of George Congehurst of Hawkhurst, Kent, wid. of Thomas Scott; (2) c.1548, Margaret, da. of John Gainsford of Lingfield, 2da.

Offices Held

City of London steward in Southwark by 1539-d.; Surr. 1547, q. by 1554; commr. relief, Southwark and Surr. 1550.

Biography

Eston was a London lawyer and grocer whose subsidy assessments in Southwark and Clapham were among the highest. By the beginning of this period he was also an active county official in Surrey and Essex, where he owned property at West Thurrock and Purfleet. Early in Elizabeth’s reign he obtained a patent for his lease of the ruined Purfleet mill at a rent of £26 13s.4d. He was to have £200 from the Exchequer to rebuild it, along with the waterworks and a portion of the Thames embankment. He made his will in April 1565, describing himself as ‘one of the Christian creatures of Almighty God, and one of the number of the faithful and Christian congregation of Jesus Christ, our only Saviour and Redeemer’. He asked his wife, the sole executrix, to have his ‘court rolls for the court of the borough of Southwark sufficiently engrossed and made perfect’, and delivered ‘into the bridge house’. He died 8 May 1565 and was buried, as he asked in his will, at St. Olave’s, Southwark.

PCC 40 Bodfelde, 32 Morrison; Req. 2/17/106; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 93; CPR, 1547-8, p. 90; 1553-4, pp. 24, 357, 362; 1560-3, p. 496; LP Hen. VIII, xix(1), p. 648; London Rep. 10, ff. 181, 268; 13, ii. f. 495; 15, ff. 440, 454; I.T. Recs. i. 143; St. Ch. 3/3/23; Manning and Bray, Surr. iii. 605; A. B. Beaven, Aldermen, i. 299; Surr. Arch. Colls. xxxii. 102.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes