ANNE, Alexander

Originally from the south of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Anne’s synonymous father had made a prestigious marriage in his native region, but had nevertheless been drawn to London by the profits available to a man of law in the royal courts. He had made enough of a name for himself in his profession to be called to take the degree of serjeant-at-law, but died less than three months after receiving the call, on 1 Oct. 1423. By this date the family was evidently already resident at Hackney in Middlesex where the elder Alexander was commemorated by a flattering epitaph:

Dormit Alexander Anne hic sub marmore magnus?

Dum vixit genio maior et ingenio

Maximus et merito; sacer ecclesieque deique

Cultor, et in populo pacificator erat.

Hunc seruum legis elegit septima Julij lux,

Octobris et hunc prima, Deo rapuit

Seno ter deno bis centeno quater anno

Milleno domini qui pius afit ei.

Pro quo defunctisque fidelibus omnibus aue

Sit quicunque pater noster ait vel aue.12 J. Weever, Funeral Mons. 305.

Whether or not Anne’s father really had been as eminent in his profession as this inscription would have it, the younger Alexander (who may have commissioned the monument) was clearly seeking some reflected glory for his own legal career. He had probably entered the prestigious law school of Gray’s Inn (which customarily supplied the city of London’s law officers) in his father’s lifetime, as by the beginning of 1423 he was serving as one of the two under sheriffs of London, a judicial appointment of rather greater importance than the functions of an enforcement officer which the under sheriff fulfilled in other counties.13 Readers and Readings, 19. The terms of office of the London under sheriffs were not tied to those of the sheriffs, and Anne probably surrendered his post in February 1423, when he was appointed to the more prestigious one of the city’s common serjeant.14 Corp. London RO, jnl. 2, ff. 4, 4v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 81, 169; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 246, 286; 1437-47, p. 286. He held this office for over a decade, attending regularly at the guildhall, as well as in the King’s courts, and also pursuing the Crown’s debts owing to the corporation in the Exchequer.15 Barron, ‘Govt. of London’, 563; jnl. 2, ff. 16v, 55v, 88v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 59; E403/673, mm. 1, 6; 675, m. 4; 688, m. 11; 689, mm. 8, 13; 692, m. 12.

In the autumn of 1435 Anne received further advancement to the lucrative and prestigious post of city recorder, the pinnacle of the civic official hierarchy below aldermanic rank.16 The exact date of Anne’s appointment is uncertain. His predecessor, John Symond, was still in post on 13 Oct., and he is first recorded in office on 29 Nov.: Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 193, 194, 195, 207, 218; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 291, 298. There is some suggestion that his conduct in office caused consternation, if not bad feeling, among the citizens, for throughout his tenure of the post he continued, as previously, to conduct an extensive private practice. The clients whom he served as a mainpernor or feoffee, whose property deeds he attested and whose disputes he mediated, included leading London citizens and livery companies, like the Merchant Taylors and the Grocers (the latter of which admitted him to their ranks), religious houses, like the priory of St. Bartholomew in West Smithfield, and also country gentry from the south-east (like Thomas, son and heir of the Essex and Middlesex landowner Helming Leget†, for whom he acted in the transfer of the manor of Mockings to John Gedney*),17 London Metropolitan Archs., Tottenham manorial deeds, ACC1068/9-16, 18, 20; CFR, xv. 113; xvi. 6; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 143; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 38, 178, 291; hr 153/31, 155/49, 157/15, 158/37, 159/40, 41, 43, 162/58, 163/42, 164/2; jnl. 2, ff. 23v, 37, 64, 111v; 3, f. 119; Birmingham Archs., Elford Hall mss, 3878/39-40; CP25(1)/114/298/103; Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber, i (Selden Soc. li), 52, 64, 67; A.H. Johnson, Hist. Drapers’ Co. i. 291, 296, 315, 318, 323, 325, 327, 329, 332. and the Kentish esquire William Cromer*.18 CP40/680, rot. 415; 686, rot. 82d; 691, rot. 653d. Further afield, in 1436 Anne was among the arbiters in the protracted dispute over the Sussex manor of Glynde between Robert, Lord Poynings, and the sisters and heirs general of John Waleys,19 E. Suss. RO, Glynde Place mss, GLY/8. and by that date he may already have been serving as steward of the earl of Warwick’s manor of Walthamstow Thony and bailiff of the liberty of Waltham abbey.20 E368/210, rot. 4; 211, rot. 3; SC12/18/45. The citizens of London were less than pleased with their recorder’s extensive private practice and in 1438 when choosing his replacement were at pains to stipulate that henceforth ‘according to the old statutes each Recorder should reject all other fees and receive only that of the city’.21 Jnl. 3, f. 163.

The Londoners had some cause to feel aggrieved, for, his private legal work aside, Anne also found employment in the service of the young Henry VI’s administration. He had first come to the Crown’s attention in the early 1420s, when he was appointed steward of the royal lordship and manor of Havering, of which Henry IV’s disgraced queen, Joan of Navarre, had recently been stripped. The circumstances of the appointment are uncertain, but it is likely that Anne owed it to his father-in-law, John Burgh, who had been Queen Joan’s bailiff of the manor. Under Henry VI, Anne received periodic appointments to administrative commissions in the south-east, sat on the county benches of Middlesex and Yorkshire and from 1432 to 1434 served an extended term as escheator of Kent and Middlesex. During the same period, he twice (in 1429 and 1433) attended the Middlesex shire elections, and was himself returned to the Parliaments of 1431, 1432 and 1437. Here, at least, he was active on the Londoners’ behalf. In March 1431 he petitioned the Lords in the citizens’ name to have execution of the council’s judgement against one John Newman, who from the safety of the sanctuary of Westminster abbey had brought charges of high treason against the distinguished mercer and alderman John Coventry, the draper William Weston†, the grocers Robert Arnold and William Cottesbroke* and another citizen, and had been condemned to the pillory and imprisonment at the King’s pleasure.22 SC8/88/4397, 198/9855; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 821.

Partly by marriage and inheritance, and partly by purchase, Anne assembled a considerable landed estate, stretching over five counties. His patrimony included property at Hackney, where he normally resided, the Oxfordshire manor of North Aston, and the Yorkshire manor of Moorhouse and land at Clayton and ‘Stubbes near Hampoll’ in the same shire. By the end of his life, he had added to this property in Kent and a tenement over London’s Aldgate, which he was granted by the citizens in 1429.23 CCR, 1461-8, p. 323; Feudal Aids, vi. 276, 277; jnl. 2, f. 132; Barron, London in the Middle Ages, 189. By early 1422 Anne had married a Somerset widow, Alice, the former wife of the recently deceased John Durburgh of Withycombe, and a daughter of the south-eastern landowner John Burgh, who brought him a share of her first husband’s estates. Alice’s claim to her dower was, however, challenged by Durburgh’s uncle and heir-male, Ralph, and was only settled after a period of litigation in Chancery by the arbitration of the treasurer, William Kynwolmarsh, and the Exeter lawyer William Wynard. Under the terms of their award Alice gained two thirds of the manor of Withycombe and a moiety of the manor of Batheaston, properties which in 1436 the couple leased to John Courtenay and John Bluet for an annual rent of 48 marks.24 CFR, xiv. 176, 370; C1/4/127; Some Som. Manors (Som. Rec. Soc. extra ser. 1931), 48, 49, 261; Feudal Aids, iv. 430; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 59, 63, 69, 83, 93. In the same year, Anne’s complete estate was said to be worth some £44 p.a., probably an under-assessment, since his Hackney holdings alone were valued at 100s.25 E179/240/269, rot. 6; EHR, xlix. 637; Westminster Abbey muns. 12357. This landed wealth gave him sufficient standing to rank among the Middlesex gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance in 1434.26 CPR, 1429-36, p. 408.

Naturally, Anne’s career was not without the occasional setback. In July 1437, following the death of Queen Joan, who had recovered her estates in 1424 and had deprived our MP of the stewardship of Havering in favour of the prominent Crown servant Lewis John*, Anne once more procured a Crown grant of the office, but it took just days for John to use his own superior access to royal patronage to overturn this patent.27 M.K. McIntosh, Autonomy and Community, 270; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 68, 69, 117, 179, 181. Similarly, in 1434-5 Anne had secured for himself the custody of Isabel, one of the young daughters of the London fishmonger Nicholas James* (a former associate of his) and of her valuable inheritance of £200 in cash and goods, perhaps with a view to marrying her to one of his three sons, but in spite of his best efforts before the justices of King’s bench he failed to secure his title, and the girl was ultimately married to John Ellingbridge*, the son and heir of her stepfather Roger Ellingbridge, who (with the aid of his parents) had seized the initiative and the bride.28 KB27/704, rots. 12d, 56d; C1/12/125.

Anne made his will on 27 Sept. 1438, and died before the following 8 Oct., when probate was granted. He left bequests to the parish church of Hackney, his wife and children, but otherwise stipulated only that his funeral should be humble and without pomp. He named the mercers William Estfield* and Henry Frowyk I*, as well as his fellow lawyers John Markham (the future chief justice), John Carpenter II* and Simon Elrington alias Proctour as his executors, the burden of the execution falling on the Westminster filacer Elrington. Perhaps alerted to the dangers of stepfathers from his experience with the Ellingbridges, he stipulated in a codicil that in the event of his wife’s remarriage after his death the legacies left to their children should be removed from her control and administrated by the executors.29 Commissary ct. wills, 9171/3, ff. 514-15; C67/39, m. 17; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-47, p. 26.

As Anne had foreseen, his widow did indeed remarry, taking as her third husband the grocer William Furnival.30 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-47, p. 26. Alexander was succeeded by his eldest son, William, who followed him into Gray’s Inn, died childless on Christmas Eve 1451, leaving the bulk of his property to his brother John, and was buried in the church of the London Greyfriars.31 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. xxi), p. xx; Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, v. 284; PCC 17 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 129v). John for his part had been apprenticed to the grocer John Rokesley* and survived until 1500.32 Cal. Letter Bks. London, K, 331, 369. Anne’s 3rd son, named Alexander after his fa. and gdfa., and his sister Amy died before Nov. 1444: Cal. Letter Bks. London, K, 277; commissary ct. wills, 9171/4, f. 158v; CFR, xxii. 651. Alexander Anne’s daughters Katherine and Grace respectively married William Costantyn (another Gray’s Inn man) and one Bisset (probably the alderman Robert Bisset).33 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-47, p. 29; PCC 5 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 38v).