LEEK, William

It is tempting to identify Leek with his namesake of Langford in Nottinghamshire, the son of John Leek by Alice, daughter and heiress of John Grey of Sandiacre in Derbyshire, but that William died on 29 Nov. 1458, and the MP is known to have survived beyond that date.1 Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 49-50. Even so there can be little doubt that he was of the same influential family. The senior line, settled at Cotham in Nottinghamshire, had failed in the male line in the 1430s, but junior branches long continued to thrive in both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.2 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 44-45.

Leek’s election to the Parliament of 1453, which was highly favourable to the interests of the King, and his appearance at an attestor at the Rutland election to the notorious Coventry Parliament of 1459, make it likely that it was he (rather than his marginally better-documented namesake) who was the esquire in receipt of Household robes from 1443 down to the failure of the accounts in 1452.3 C219/16/2, 5; E101/409/11, f. 38v; 410/9. If this was so, it would explain his solitary return to Parliament ahead of men much better qualified for election by wealth and local connexion. Further, that return may have had a particular local context: he was elected on 22 Feb. 1453 in company with his neighbour, John Chiselden*, then involved in an acrimonious dispute with one of the leading gentry of the county, Everard Digby*. Since, in Hilary term 1454, during the parliamentary recess, Digby sued the two MPs jointly for debt, it may be that Leek was an ally of Chiselden.4 C219/16/2; CP40/772, rot. 219.

Beyond this there is very little to say of Leek’s career. He appears to have lived at Uppingham, for he is so described when a plaintiff in an action of conspiracy in 1453 and in Digby’s action of debt of 1454.5 CP40/769, rot. 19d; 772, rot. 219. He is also described as ‘of Uppingham’ when pardoned on 26 Apr. 1459 for outlawry incurred in another debt action sued against him by Digby: CPR, 1452-61, p. 454. His appointment as escheator in 1450 shows that he was a more important man than implied by the few references to him. Of those references, the conspiracy action is the most interesting: he claimed that two members of the Lancashire family of Clayton and Roger Booth of Prestcot had conspired to have him indicted for the felonious theft of livestock and that, as a result, he had been imprisoned in Lancaster castle before acquittal before the justices of assize.6 CP40/769, rot. 19d. There is, unfortunately, no evidence to give this episode a context. Nor is there any evidence of his marriage or descendants.