COLDSTON (GOLDSTONE), Henry (by 1498-1547), of Salisbury, Wilts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1498. m. da. of one Lawrence.2

Offices Held

Steward of the mass of Jesus in St. Edmund’s church, Salisbury in 1519, member of the Forty-Eight 1522, of the Twenty-Four 1530, chamberlain 1522, 1533, subwarden, Holy Trinity hospital 1532-41, 1544-6, auditor 1535, 1537, 1539-40, 1542, 1544-6, mayor 1537-8, clerk of the recognizance of the statute merchant 1541.3

Biography

Henry Coldston was christened in the church of Corsley, near Warminster, Wiltshire, to which he left 20s. in his will. Although his parentage is not known his family may have been connected with Salisbury, since his first appearance in the accounts of the churchwardens of St. Edmund’s in 1519 follows that of a Robert Coldston, probably his brother. Henry Coldston witnessed or took part in many small transactions on behalf of St. Edmund’s and of the stewards of the Jesus mass there. A draper by trade, he gave £5 towards the new tailors’ hall and was one of the 15 citizens who subscribed to a royal loan in 1542, when he paid £6 13s.4d.; in the year of his death Coldston’s goods in the Market ward were assessed for subsidy at £30.4

Like most of his fellow-citizens Coldston seems to have combined loyalty to the King with distaste for the Reformation and particularly for the reforming bishop, Nicholas Shaxton. When he was mayor he presided at the examination in August 1538 of four persons suspected of spreading what purported to be divine warnings about a royal pilgrimage to St. Michael’s Mount, and towards the end of his life he was one of four citizens commissioned to take over St. Edmund’s college for the crown. None the less he joined in the local opposition to Shaxton and during his mayoralty he was appointed with three others to present the city’s case against Shaxton before the Privy Council. At about the same time the bishop’s under bailiff John Goodale complained to Cromwell that Coldston refused to let him punish the city’s serjeants for their misdemeanours, including non-attendance at the bishop’s court.5

Coldston’s sympathies were shared by Robert South, with whom he was returned to Parliament on 31 Mar. 1539, but the quarrel with the bishop was soon to end with Shaxton’s enforced resignation after the passage of the Six Articles. Coldston presumably attended all three sessions of this Parliament, for on 14 Nov. 1540 he claimed £18 for 180 days’ attendance, a sum which represented the statutory rate of 2s. a day; on 3 Dec., however, he remitted £3 of the claim, whereupon the chamberlains were ordered to pay the remaining £15 ‘out of hand’. He survived his fellow-Member South by seven years, during which he remained active locally but was not returned to Parliament again.6

In his will of 3 Jan. 1547 Coldston asked to be buried near his wife’s pew in St. Edmund’s church and left small sums to the church, the mass of Jesus, the cathedral, the hospital of the Holy Trinity and the parish church at Corsley. Neither wife nor child appears to have survived him, since the nearest relatives mentioned are Alice, his brother Robert’s daughter, who received 40s., Robert Lawrence ‘my wife’s brother’s son’, who was left property in Salisbury. Two more tenements, in Green Cross Street, were left to the corporation and several others were to be sold, including one at Dorchester inhabited by Thomas Chaffyn II. A black gown and £5 apiece were bequeathed to the executors Richard Holt and Fulk Mounslowe, and 40s. to the overseer Robert Griffith, with an additional 26s.8d. for a black gown. The will was proved on 8 Mar. 1547.7

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. F.T. Baker

Notes

  • 1. Salisbury corp. ledger B, f. 289; E159/319, brev. ret. Mich. r. [1-2].
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. PCC 4 Populwell.
  • 3. Ledger B, ff. 246-301 passim; VCH Wilts. iii. 361; LP Hen. VIII, xii.
  • 4. Churchwardens’ Accts. of St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum (Wilts. Rec. Soc. 1896), 64, 66, 68-69, 71, 79, 81, 89, 236, 266, 268-70, 373, 381; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 376; E179/197/240, 259/19.
  • 5. LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xxi; HMC Var. iv. 218; Elton, Policy and Police, 100-7.
  • 6. Ledger B, ff. 289, 293, 293v.
  • 7. PCC 4 Populwell.