ALESTRE, John

It was not mentioned in the earlier biography, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 22-23. that shortly after his first Parliament Alestre was faced with a serious crisis in his affairs. On 17 Feb. 1417 an approver, a goldsmith of Nottingham named William Buxum, came before the King’s coroner and appealed him of treason. The goldsmith claimed that, at about Ascension Day 1414, he had witnessed Alestre purchasing a messuage in Nottingham with £20 in gold nobles that the purchaser had clipped. The two men had, seemingly, once been on good terms: Buxum had been one of the rioting townsmen who had called for Alestre’s election as mayor in September 1412. Later, however, at a view of frankpledge held before Alestre as mayor on 15 Oct. 1414, Buxum had been indicted of coinage offences, and it was perhaps this that prompted him to seek revenge. The probability is that the appeal was false, and Alestre was acquitted at the 1417 summer assizes at Nottingham. KB27/614, rex rot. 51; 624, rex rot. 13d; CIMisc. vii. 469.

There a few incidental details to be added to the earlier biography. In 1419 Alestre, with two other Nottingham MPs, Richard Samon† and Robert Glade†, was sued by a local knight, Sir Edmund Pierrepont, for hunting in his free warren at Holme Pierrepont and Bassingfield. John Leek, who married Alestre’s daughter Emma, was probably son of Ralph Leek, younger son of William Leek† of Screveton (Nottinghamshire), an indication of the connexions between the Alestres, as a leading family of the county town, and the leading local gentry. Our MP’s widow Cecily married John Orgrave, four times mayor of the town between 1435 and 1457. CP40/634, rot. 166; 635, rot. 243; 745, rot. 94d; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 248.