LEKENSFELD, Alan (d.1398), of Oxford.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Jan. 1390

Family and Education

m. bef. 1380, Katherine; (2) c.1394, Alice.1

Offices Held

Tax collector, Oxford Dec. 1380.

Chamberlain, Oxford Mich. 1382-3; bailiff 1385-6.2

Biography

Lekenesfeld was pardoned in May 1380 for not appearing to render account to one James Lyons, for whom he had acted as receiver. In the same year he paid the substantial sum of 5s. towards the poll tax levied in Oxford. When bailiff in 1386 he served ex officio on a royal commission to raise men or money for resistance to an expected French invasion, the sum eventually raised being £40. In 1397 (during Oxford’s dispute with London about tolls) he was ordered by the mayor, Richard Garston*, to deliver a royal writ to the civic authorities of London, but ‘idem Alanus nihil inde fecit’.3

Lekensfeld, a mercer by trade, acquired considerable property in Oxford: he owned two ‘halls’ for scholars, Bryd Hall and Well Hall, both in Broad Street, as well as shops and tenements in the parishes of St. Ebbes, St. Michael, Southgate and St. Martin, some of which he rented out. He died in 1398, having left instructions in his will made in September that year, that the two halls were to be sold to provide ecclesiastical ornaments and vestments for an unnamed church.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

  • 1. Oxf. Hist. Soc. xviii. 24; lxiv. no. 287.
  • 2. Ibid. xxxvii. 18; lxxxi. no. 173.
  • 3. CPR, 1377-81, p. 432; 1385-9, pp. 216, 227; Oxf. Hist. Soc. lxxi. no. 180.
  • 4. Oxf. Hist. Soc. lxiv. nos. 285, 287, 339; ser. 2, xiv. 104; xx. 184-5; Bodl. Twyne ms 23, f. 630.