ALLINGTON, William I

In the earlier biography,3 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 27-29. it was not made clear that Allington owed his office of receiver of Brest to his patron John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. The receivership was a short-term appointment that had expired by 10 Dec. 1397, when Holand made a formal release to Allington, his ‘beloved esquire’, of any action for debt or account arising from his time in that office.4 E210/6476.

Early in Henry IV’s reign, Allington had dealings with the London draper Walter Gawtron*, since in February 1400 he bought a quantity of woollen cloths of various colours from Gawtron and Thomas Barsham for £17, payable at the following Easter. He afterwards fell out with the two men over this transaction, because they sued him in the court of common pleas for the purchase money, in a case that came to pleadings in 1403. In response to their suit, he acknowledged he owed them eight marks only and offered to pay them that sum immediately. They accepted his offer but then failed to reappear at Westminster later in the same year to pursue their claim for the remainder, and the court discharged him sine die.5 CP40/569, rot. 105.

In the spring of 1415, during his first term as sheriff, Allington was the subject of a complaint from the bishop of Ely. The bishop alleged that Allington had attempted to make his tenants contribute to the wages of the knights of the shire for Cambridgeshire, presumably the county’s representatives in the Parliament of November 1414, in violation of the liberties of the see of Ely. In response, Allington acknowledged taking distraints for non-payment within the Isle of Ely, but from freemen, traditionally obliged to contribute to the wages of the knights of the shire, not the bishop’s bondsmen.6 SC1/63/297.

An inscription at Horseheath records that Allington’s wife died in February 1446, not 1445, so he survived her by only a matter of months.7 Cambs. Mon. Inscriptions ed. Palmer, 85. A previously unknown transcript of his last will, apparently of the late seventeenth or eighteenth century, has survived. In the will, dated 20 Sept. 1446, he assigned his manors of Horseheath Hall, West Wickham and Streetly, along with all his other lands in Horseheath, Wickham, Balsham, Bartlow and Shudy Camps, to his eldest son and heir, William. Should the latter die without legitimate issue, these estates were to pass to the testator’s younger son, Robert, with a like remainder to another Robert Allington, the bastard son of the testator’s late brother, Thomas Allington. These directions appear to indicate that the previous biography was mistaken in assuming that the MP had just one legitimate son, and that it confused his second son (not referred to as a bastard) with an undoubtedly illegitimate nephew. Allington also assigned 200 marks to his grand-daughter Margery, the daughter of the younger William Allington and still an unmarried minor.8 Baker mss, Mm. 1. 42, p. 159.