ALESTRE, Thomas

The Alestres were one of the leading families of Nottingham. Thomas’s father and grandfather both represented the borough in Parliament and his father, who greatly extended the family’s holdings in the town, was elected to the mayoralty on no fewer than five occasions. Our MP was still a boy when he first appears in the records. On 13 Sept. 1413 he was joint feoffee with his father in three acres of arable land and 16s. rent in Nottingham, all once of Roger de Hopwell, twice mayor of the town in the 1360s; and, on the following 2 July, his father and grandfather, Nicholas†, granted a messuage in Long Row to him and two chaplains.2 Notts. Archs., Nottingham recs. ct. rolls CA1307, rot. 25d; 1308, rot. 21d.

These grants were clearly intended to provide for him on his coming of age. He was still a minor when his father drew up his will on 20 Apr. 1422: he was bequeathed 100 marks and a bed should he reach the age of 20. His youth did not deter his father from naming him as an executor, probably because the will was not compiled when his father felt himself in the shadow of death. Indeed, John lived for nearly another ten years during which his own father’s death reunited the family inheritance in his hands. John died while serving his fifth term as mayor, and our MP then quickly assumed his prominent part in the affairs of the town. This prominence was underpinned by the family’s considerable landed wealth. In the subsidy returns of both 1435-6 and 1450-1 Thomas’s income was assessed at as much as £20, nearly all of which was derived from property in Nottingham. He attested his first parliamentary election in March 1432 and it was not long before he was elected to the mayoralty. In June 1437, during his term of office, he sued out a general pardon in which he was described as a merchant. His career continued in a similar rhythm to that of his father. In December 1441 he was elected to represent the borough in Parliament and three years later he was chosen as mayor for the second time.3 E179/240/266, 238/78, no. 6; C219/14/3, 15/2; C67/38, m. 21. On 26 Apr. 1446 he headed the jury of townsmen sitting before royal commissioners inquiring into who was responsible for repairing the bridge over the river Leen. Again elected to Parliament on 14 Jan. 1449, he was one of the original body of seven aldermen established by the royal charter granted in June of that year, and his second successive election on the following 13 Oct. further underlined his local importance. Since his fellow MP in each of these two Parliaments was Thomas Thurland*, who was even richer than himself, it is clear that the electors attached particular importance to these two assemblies: on the first occasion this was probably because representations were being made for the grant of a new royal charter.4 Nottingham Recs. ii. 229; C219/15/6, 7, 16/1.

To his busy role in the administration of his native town, Alestre added trading interests more extensive than those of his father or grandfather. By 1449 he was numbered among the merchants of the Calais staple and had almost certainly enjoyed that status for some time. In this context his election to the second Parliament of that year had a particular personal significance for both him and Thurland, who was also a stapler. It came at a time when arrangements were being made for the repayment of substantial loans made by the staplers to the Crown. On 20 Oct., before Parliament met but a week after the two Nottingham merchants had been elected, a series of royal licences were granted for the repayment of £10,700 loaned by the staplers to the Crown since the mid 1440s. Our MP and two of his close associates, John Plumptre* and Stephen Marshall, had licence to export wool from Kingston-upon-Hull free of customs for four years in repayment of their contribution of £266 0s. 8d.5 CPR, 1446-52, p. 315. Although over £130 of this contribution remained outstanding in October 1454 when this licence was renewed, Alestre continued to lend, albeit modestly. In 1451 he joined Plumptre and Thomas Isham in contributing £45 towards the loan of 4,000 marks made by the staplers.6 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 209, 211-12; E159/232, brevia Hil. rot. 28d; Customs Accts. Hull, 1453-90 (Yorks. Arch. Rec. Ser. cxliv), 17. His membership of the Calais staple had social as well as financial implications. In 1453 he married his daughter Elizabeth to a fellow stapler, William Goldsmith of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, a marriage which took place in the Nottingham church of St. Mary.7 Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 332.

The political crisis of 1459-61 placed financial demands of another sort on Alestre and other of the Nottingham elite. In the summer of 1460 he paid £2 towards the sum of over £23 the leading townsmen contributed in support of the Lancastrian cause at the battle of Northampton; and in March 1461 he paid as much as £10 towards the ‘gift’ they made to Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, when the Lancastrian army was in the town shortly before the battle of Towton. It is unlikely that these were voluntary contributions and cannot be considered as indicative of the contributors’ political sympathies.8 Nottingham recs. CA7452.

In any event, Alestre’s career was unaffected by the change of regime. Despite his advanced age, he continued to play an active part in the borough’s affairs. He was elected mayor at the first mayoral election of the new reign, and it was as mayor that he took a part in securing the confirmation of the borough’s charters. At Easter 1462, with the town’s two MPs in the 1461 Parliament (then in prorogation), Thurland and Thomas Babington II*, and another leading townsman, John Hunt†, he travelled to Leicester, ‘pro exhibitione unius billae Domino Regi pro rewardo habendo villae’, presumably in respect of aid rendered during the Towton campaign. Their mission appears to have been successful for soon afterwards the borough’s charters were confirmed and its fee farm reduced.9 Nottingham Recs. iii. 414; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 186, 243.

Later Alestre played an important part in the town’s dispute with its powerful neighbour Sir Henry Pierrepont† over a mill obstructing the river Leen, and on 29 Apr. 1465, with the mayor, recorder and other aldermen, he heard indictments against Pierrepont’s servants for riot. Two years later, on 25 Mar. 1467, Pierrepont entered into a bond for the sum of 300 marks to Alestre and two other leading townsmen, undertaking to abide the arbitration. The importance of the dispute is reflected in the standing of the arbiters and umpires: Richard Neel*, serjeant-at-law, Henry Sotehill, the King’s attorney, John Dyve*, the queen’s attorney, and Robert Staunton* were ‘indifferently’ chosen to act between the parties, and, if they failed, the disputants were to be reconciled by the judgement of Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, and William, Lord Hastings. It is not unlikely that soon afterwards the town sought to forward its cause at Westminster. On the following 4 May Alestre and the recorder, Thomas Babington II*, were elected to represent Nottingham in Parliament, a reflection of both their stature in the town and their involvement in the dispute. The arbiters returned their award on 8 July, a week after the first prorogation of this Parliament, and, a little over three weeks later, our MP was one of those who swore an oath in the church of St. Mary in accordance with the award’s terms. His last term as mayor began in September 1469, no less than 56 years after his first appearance in the records.10 Ibid. CA7500; KB9/313/4; C219/17/1; Nottingham Recs. ii. 383.

In view of Alestre’s pre-eminent place in Nottingham’s administration during these years, it is not surprising that he became very closely associated with other leading townsmen. His mother married John Orgrave, who served as mayor of the borough on four occasions between 1435 and 1457. His own wife, Margaret Samon, was the daughter of the richest of the townsmen. In his will of 8 Mar. 1456 Richard Samon made bequests to Margaret and his grandson, Richard Alestre, and named our MP as one of his executors.11 CP40/745, rot. 94d; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Abp. Reg. 20, f. 271d. Our MP’s daughter Cecily married Robert English, an alderman and twice mayor of the town in the 1470s. Far more interesting, however, are the associations Alestre formed outside Nottingham with the local gentry, particularly with the leading families of Willoughby and Chaworth. On 2 Sept. 1457 he was one of those to whom Richard Willoughby* conveyed the manor of Wollaton and other properties for the performance of his will, and in 1470 he was involved in Willoughby’s foundation of a chantry in the church of Wollaton. On 8 Nov. 1462 John, younger son of Sir Thomas Chaworth*, named him an executor of his will. Moreover, one at least of his daughters married into the gentry: his daughter Marion took as her husband, probably in the late 1450s, Thomas Bingham of Car Colston, who held the influential office of clerk of the peace in the county. He also enjoyed other more tenuous associations. In February 1469, before the assize judges sitting at Nottingham, he was among those who won 45 marks in costs and damages from Richard Jakson and Margaret, his wife, for the disseisin of 19 messuages and three tofts in the town: among his co-plaintiffs were two of the leading men of the county, Sir Richard Bingham, j.KB, the cousin of his son-in-law, and William Babington*. More significant is his appearance in 1464 among the feoffees of Sir William Plumpton*. This feoffment was made for the fulfilment of agreements Plumpton had entered into on the marriage of Elizabeth, his daughter and coheiress-presumptive, to John, son and heir of the King’s attorney Sotehill. It is thus possible that Alestre was one of Sotehill’s nominees rather than one of Plumpton’s.12 CPR, 1467-77, p.231; Test. Ebor. ii. (Surtees Soc. xxx), 156n; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi D 4770, Mi 1/4/1; JUST1/1547, rot. 12; Plumpton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. iv), p. lxxii n.

Alestre made his will on 24 Dec. 1470. It is an unrevealing document concerned largely with minor charitable bequests and containing none of the substantial legacies that had characterized his father’s will. He bequeathed 40s. each to the fabrics of the church of St. Mary, of Hethbeth bridge, and of the priory of Shelford, and smaller sums to the town’s Friars Minor and Carmelite, the church of St. Nicholas, and the guilds of Holy Trinity and St. George. The only two of his children favoured with specific bequests were Cecily English and Marion Bingham. He named as his executors his wife, his son John, his son-in-law Robert English, and John Hurt, vicar of St. Mary’s. In the course of the military campaign of the following year, during which the town briefly afforded a base for Edward IV, he was again called upon to contribute to the exactions suffered by the townsmen. On 26 Mar. he paid five marks to the maintenance of soldiers in the mansion of the Holy Trinity guild and a month later he contributed a further mark. On 18 May, as the townsmen raised a force to go to resist the rebellion of the Bastard of Fauconberg in Kent, he paid a further 11s. 8d. He was dead by the following 30 Aug. when his will was proved. For an unknown reason, two of his executors, English and Hurt, declined to act. Although in his will he had expressed no preference with respect to his place of burial, he was buried in the church of St. Mary.13 Nottingham recs. CA 7452; Borthwick Inst. York registry wills, prob. reg. 4, f. 34.

The bulk of Alestre’s landed property remained in the hands of his widow. In 1473 she was assessed at £3 5s. 7½d for a tenth part of her freehold in Nottingham. Only Thomas Thurland was assessed at a greater sum. In 1477 Margaret and her fellow executors had an action pending against John Bingham, father of Thomas Bingham, for a debt of as much as 200 marks.14 Nottingham Recs. ii. 290; CP40/863, rot. 441d. Soon after, there was a serious crisis in the family’s affairs. On 9 Apr. 1478 our MP’s brother, Robert Alestre, even though an old man, perpetrated a violent assault on one John Hill, a yeoman of Westminster. A few days later the victim died of his injuries, and on 18 Apr. Robert, described as a gentleman, was duly indicted before the Nottingham coroners for the murder with our MP’s son Thomas, also styled ‘gentleman’, being named as an accessory. On 3 May Robert took sanctuary in Beverley Minster and appears to have remained there until his death, which occurred shortly afterwards. In Easter term Thomas appeared in the court of King’s bench to record that his uncle was dead.15 KB27/872, rot. 1; 874, rex rot. 3d; G. Poulson, Beverlac, i. 249. Very little is known of Robert Alestre. Each of his children were bequeathed 20s. in our MP’s will.

Margaret was a very old woman when she came to draw up her will on 20 Mar. 1491. She wished to be buried next to the tomb of her late husband and left £42 to provide for three chaplains to celebrate divine service for his soul and hers for three years after her death. In a very lengthy codicil she added on the following day she took the trouble to specify in detail what part of her moveable goods each of her many children, grandchildren and other legatees were to have. This shows that she was possessed of a considerable amount of plate, all or most of which had presumably once been the property of her late husband. Among the more interesting items were ‘a silver pece called the litill halowe beel’, which Sir Thomas Chaworth had given her. Since many of her bequests were identified by their place in her house, the codicil also shows how extensive was the mansion in which the family lived. She refers to several chambers described as ‘nether’ or ‘neder’, ‘maydynes’, ‘spynnyng’, ‘garret’ and ‘myne own’, together with a room called ‘Somerhall’. Another part of the property was set aside for the purposes of brewing on a commercial scale: she bequeathed several ledes and referred to her ‘gilehouse’ together with ‘the shop at the gates’ and the gown she wore ‘on Warke dayes’.16 Borthwick Inst., Abp. Reg. 23, ff. 356d-358d (partially calendared in Test. Ebor. iv (Surtees Soc. liii), 63-64). Margaret’s long survival explains why our MP’s eldest son, Richard, had a rather obscure career, although he did serve as the town’s mayor in 1485-6.17 Nottingham Recs. iii. 459.