Preston, Christopher (c.1355–1422), lord of Gormanston, was son of Sir Robert Preston (qv) and his wife Margaret, daughter of Walter de Bermingham (qv), and succeeded to his father's lands in 1396. One of his first acts as lord of Gormanston appears to have been to collect the legal documents kept by his father into a single register, and also to seek a confirmation under the great seal of his father's lands. His marriage to one of the co-heiresses of William de Londres also gave him a portion of the barony of Naas. Although Preston secured (c.1398) a licence that prevented him from being appointed to any administrative or legal position without his consent, he appears to have been willing to act as a JP for Meath, a position to which he was appointed on several occasions during the reign of Henry IV.
In June 1418 he was arrested – with Gerald fitz Maurice FitzGerald (qv), 5th earl of Kildare, and Sir John Bellew – and charged with treason by the lieutenant, John Talbot (qv), Lord Furnival. The events surrounding the arrest are connected to the unrest of the Anglo-Irish community concerning Furnival's period as lieutenant, and the emerging dispute between Furnival and James Butler (qv), 4th earl of Ormond. Marlborough's chronicle states that Preston and Kildare were arrested for ‘attempting to commune with the prior of Kilmainham [Thomas Butler (qv)]’. The fact that Preston was carrying copies of the coronation oath and the ‘Modus tenendi parliamentum’ when he was arrested suggests that the group was opposed to Furnival and was looking for a way to remove him legally from office. Although Preston's manor of Gormanston was granted (February 1419) to Furnival's brother, Thomas Talbot, Preston was soon cleared of the charges of treason when the case was heard in England, and his lands were restored. In 1421, the year before his death, he was one of the men sent as an emissary by the Irish parliament with a series of complaints concerning Furnival's term as lieutenant.
