king to Boulogne, and attended him at the meeting with the French commissioners for peace immediately after. On 1 Feb. 1493 he was given the wardship and marriage of Thomas, grandson and heir of Sir Thomas Delamere (Patent, 8 Hen. VII, p. 2, m. 10). On 19 July he lost his father, Sir John Guildford, a privy councillor like himself, who was buried in Canterbury Cathedral (Weever, Funerall Monuments, 1st ed. p. 235). In the 9th Henry VII, being then sheriff of Kent, 100l. was given him for his charges in that office, and in the same year (1 Dec.) he had a new grant of the office of master of the armoury to him and his son Edward. In November 1494 he was at Westminster at the creation of the king's second son Henry as Duke of York. About 1495 he was named one of six commissioners to arrange with the Spanish ambassador about the marriage of Arthur and Catherine (Cal. State Papers, Spanish, i. No. 118). In the summer of that year, after Perkin Warbeck's attempt to land at Deal, he was sent by the king into Kent to thank the inhabitants for their loyalty. In the parliament which assembled in October following he was one of those members who announced to the chancellor the election of the speaker (Rolls of Parl. vi. 4586). In that parliament he obtained an act for disgavelling his lands in Kent (ib. p. 4876). About this time we find him mentioned as controller of the royal household (ib. p. 461), an office which his father had held before him, and one of his sons held after him. On 21 April 1496 he was made steward of the lands which had belonged to the Duchess of York in Surrey and Sussex; and in 12 Henry VII he was again appointed one of a set of trustees for the king in a deed confirmed in parliament (ib. vi. 5106).
On 17 June 1497 he assisted in defeating the Cornish rebels at Blackheath, for which service he was created a banneret. About this time he seems to have made an exchange of lands with two abbots in Kent and Sussex; for on 5 June two royal licenses were granted, the first to the abbot of Faversham, to enable him to acquire lands from any one of the annual value of 20l., and also to alienate twelve hundred acres in Cranbrook and Frittenden to Sir Richard Guildford; the second to the abbot of Robertsbridge, enabling him to acquire lands to the annual value of 40l., and to alienate to Sir Richard three thousand acres of salt marsh in the parishes of Playden, Iden, Ivychurch, Fairlight, Pett, and Broomhill. On 4 July 1498 the custody of the lands of Catherine Whitehed, an idiot, was granted to him and others. In 1499 he and Richard Hatton were commissioned by the king to go in quest of Edmund De la Pole, earl of Suffolk, after his first flight to the continent, and persuade him to come back. He had a further charge to go to the Archduke Philip; but so important was the bringing back of De la Pole that he was instructed to forego that journey if the refugee would not return without him. In 1500 he went over with the king to the meeting with the archduke at Calais. In the same year he was elected a knight of the Garter. In 1501, as controller of the household, he had much to do with the arrangements for the reception of Catherine of Arragon at her first arrival in England.
On 7 May 1503 his absence was excused at St. George's feast, which he appears to have pretty generally attended in other years. In 19 Henry VII his name occurs among the collectors appointed by parliament to levy the aid granted to the king on account of the creation of the late Prince Arthur, and of the marriage and conveyance of the Princess Margaret to Scotland (ib. vi. 538). In the same year (1504) he obtained an exemplification under the great seal of the act for disgavelling his lands, and of a proviso in his favour in the act of resumption 1 Henry VII.. On 4 April 1506 he had what was called a special pardon—really a discharge of liabilities in respect of his offices of master of the ordnance and of the armoury, and also as master of the horse (Patent, 21 Henry VII, pt. i. m. 30). About the same time, in 21 Henry VII, he had also some confirmations of former grants, and, according to Ellis, a grant of free warren in his manor of Cotmanton.
On 7 April in the same year he made his will. Next day he embarked at Rye along with John Whitby, prior of Gisburn in Yorkshire, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They landed next day in Normandy, and passed through France, Savoy, and the north of Italy to Venice, whence, after some stay, they sailed on 3 July. After visiting Crete and Cyprus on their way they reached Jaffa, on 18 Aug. But before they durst land they had to send a message to Jerusalem to the warden of Mount Sion, and they remained seven days in their galley till he came with the lords of Jerusalem and Rama, without whose escort no pilgrims were allowed to pass. Two more days were spent in debating the tribute to be paid by the company before they could be suffered to land, so that they only disembarked on 27 Aug. They were forced by the Mamelukes to spend a night and a day in a cave, and when allowed to proceed upon their journey both Guildford and the prior fell ill. They did reach Jerusalem, but the prior died there on 5 Sept.,
