ALANSON, Richard

Nothing is known for certain of Alanson’s origins, but it may be that he was a native of the borough he represented. In 1400 John Alanson was a litigant in the Carlisle mayor’s court; and in 1453, when our MP was elected for the borough, Thomas Alanson was an attestor to the joint return for Cumberland and Carlisle.1 H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, i. 372; C219/16/2. It is a reasonable surmise that both men numbered among Richard’s kinsmen, particularly in the context of other evidence tying him to the county and city. While he was generally described as ‘of London, gentleman’, in 1451 he was styled ‘of Cumberland’. Such local connexions would explain how he came to be in the service of Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle from 1429. There can be no doubt that it was Lumley, who, after becoming treasurer in December 1446, found him a place in the Exchequer. Alanson had begun his career there by the autumn of 1447, when he received reassignments on behalf of John, duke of Norfolk, Richard, earl of Salisbury, and Richard, duke of York.2 CFR, xviii. 190; E403/769, m. 2. More interestingly, on 30 Nov. 1447, specifically described as a servant of the treasurer, he was rewarded with an assignment of 20 marks for his costs in riding to Windsor, Easthampstead and certain ports with letters from the treasurer to customers. He was similarly described in the following October, when he was reimbursed for the purchase of seven yards of damask given to John Dormond, an esquire of the queen’s brother, John, duke of Calabria; and later, when sued in Chancery to surrender certain financial indentures to Robert Forster as treasurer of the east march, he is called ‘late clerk’ to the bishop.3 E403/769, m. 5; 773, m. 2; E404/65/58; C1/19/350. These descriptions, together with the fact that his career at the Exchequer began with Lumley’s appointment, suggests that he numbered among the bishop’s personal servants, and had been brought by the bishop from his diocese to serve him while treasurer.

This personal connexion ensured that Alanson was well rewarded: on 1 Apr. 1448 he was appointed as controller of customs in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull at a daily fee of 7½d. His parliamentary service was probably another aspect of his service to Lumley. His first election, in January 1449, came at a time of crisis in Carlisle’s affairs. In the previous autumn the Scots had raided and burned the suburbs of the city, and the continued threat they posed later led the Crown to exempt the northern nobility from attendance at the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster in the following February. These circumstances may, from the bishop’s point of view, have placed a particular premium on competent representation in the Commons, and it is surely more than coincidental that the other Carlisle MP was another of his servants, Robert Carlisle II*, steward of his lands at Dalston and Linstock. Alanson’s service there evidently satisfied his master for, on the following 14 July, two days before the dissolution, he was re-granted his customs office.4 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 144, 265; C219/15/6. Supervision of the customs was an important part of his work in the Exchequer. On 29 July 1449 he was paid £10 for his labour at diverse ports: E403/775, m. 10.

Lumley’s resignation as treasurer in September 1449 and his translation to the bishopric of Lincoln a few months later had, perhaps surprisingly, no adverse impact on Alanson’s career. He continued to serve in the Exchequer and moved into the service of the new bishop of Carlisle, Nicholas Close, one of the King’s chaplains. He also continued his career in the Commons, although some irregularity appears to have attached to his second election. In the indenture, attesting the return of Cumberland and Carlisle and dated at the county court held at Carlisle on 17 Oct. 1450, the names of the borough Members – Alanson and Avery Mauleverer* – have been written over an erasure, save for the final ‘r’ of ‘Mauleverer’. Further, the document itself gives the impression of having been hurriedly and untidily compiled, and it is probable that neither Alanson nor his colleague was the original choice of the burgesses of Carlisle. One can only speculate as to what lay behind this apparent amendment. The county attestors returned a prominent retainer of Percy and another of Neville; but the borough Members did not represent the same balance of interests, for Mauleverer was certainly a servant of Percy, and later evidence suggests that Alanson’s own sympathies were with Percy rather than Neville.5 C219/16/1.

Alanson’s later apparent support for Percy arose both out of the consecration, in 1452, of William, son of Henry Percy (d.1455), earl of Northumberland, as bishop of Carlisle in succession to Close, and his own connexions within the royal household. During the early 1450s he established a close association with a rising star of the Lancastrian court, Richard Tunstall, who was, like him, a northerner. The two men first acted together in June 1449, when they stood mainpernors when the keeping of the estates of the late duke of Warwick were committed to John, Lord Tiptoft. In March 1451 and January 1453 our MP gave surety for royal grants made to Tunstall, and, more significantly, in June 1451, he shared with him the valuable office of money changer in Calais and England.6 CFR, xviii. 111, 204-5; xix. 22. Such connexions explain why he was again elected in 1453 to a Parliament far more supportive of the government than its immediate predecessors. Thereafter, however, the King’s madness brought political changes that were probably unwelcome to Alanson.7 C219/16/2. According to HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 3, on 20 Sept. 1453, during the prorogation, he was robbed at Islington. Wedgwood quotes KB9 (Her. Coll.), but I have been unable to find the indictment in KB9/75, 270A-9. Although twice early in 1454 he received assignments in the Exchequer on behalf of the duke of York, more significant as an indicator of his political sympathies is his apparent loss of his position in the Exchequer while the duke was Protector. He no longer appears as the recipient of assignments after July 1454, when, perhaps significantly, he did so on behalf of the earl of Northumberland and Sir Henry Percy as warden of the east march.8 E403/796, m. 9; 798, m. 10. He had also received assignments on the Percys’ behalf in Feb. and May 1453: E403/791, m. 9; 793, m. 4. Not until the duke had lost his influence did our MP regain favour. On 3 Mar. 1455 the temporalities of the abbey of Burton-upon-Trent were committed to him and a clerk, John Whelpdale, as the administrators of the late Bishop Close, perhaps to discharge debts owed by the Crown to him.9 CFR, xix. 122; E159/230, recorda Trin. rot. 23.

The brief interlude of the duke of York’s second protectorate appears to have brought Alanson some further difficulties. In Michaelmas term 1455 he and Tunstall were each fined 100 marks because a Yorkshire gentleman, for whom they had stood mainprise, had failed to find surety of the peace, and it is not surprising that Alanson should have taken the precaution of suing a general pardon in the following November.10 KB27/775, rex rot. 22; 778, fines rot. 1d; C67/41, m. 20. Thereafter his connexions with the royal court and the Percys become closer as politics became increasingly polarized. In November 1456 he offered mainprise when the King’s master cook, John Gourney, was entrusted with the keeping of the lodges in Westminster palace.11 CFR, xix. 177. Much more significantly, on the following 14 May, in the company of two prominent supporters of the Lancastrian government, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Eleanor, countess of Northumberland, he and others entered in a bond in the massive sum of £16,000, undertaking that the countess’s son, Richard Percy, would be a ‘true prisoner’ in the Marshalsea.12 CCR, 1454-61, p. 223. Such loyalties would probably have drawn our MP into an active role in the civil war of 1459-61, but death spared him this difficulty. He died in London on 7 Sept. 1457, and a month later administration of his goods was granted to his brother, Henry Alanson, a London grocer.13 E159/234, recorda Mich. rot. 53; E13/149, rot. 12d.

Alanson appears to have left his unfortunate brother a difficult task. On 12 Dec. 1457 Henry granted all his goods to trustees headed by three lawyers, Thomas Bryan, William Eland* and Thomas Luyt*, presumably to protect them from our MP’s creditors. In the short term it did him little good. A month later he found himself confined to the Fleet for his failure to account for £110 that our MP had received from the Staffordshire tax collectors. In August 1462, however, he obtained a general pardon as our MP’s executor and was thus able to extinguish the Crown’s claims.14 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, 149; E159/234, recorda Mich. rot. 53; C67/45, m. 16.