Family and Education

b. by 1519, 2nd s. of Robert Alanson of Lincoln.2

Offices Held

Sheriff, Lincoln 1540-1, alderman by 1542-d., mayor 1542-3.3

Biography

At the time of his father’s death in 1540 William Alanson was beginning his civic career. It is not certain whether he was elected to the Parliament of 1542 when it was summoned or as a replacement for the recorder, Anthony Missenden, who died in 1542, but in all probability the new recorder, George St. Poll, took Missenden’s place. During the second session Alanson was instructed by the common council to solicit the aid of the Duke of Suffolk in the matter of the fee farm; he was promised £40 if he succeeded, with a further £80 to be shared with St. Poll. Suffolk helped the city acquire sufficient advowsons and benefices to cover the fee farm of £80 to a chantry at the cathedral, and presumably the two Members received their rewards; Suffolk described Alanson to the corporation of Lincoln as a man ‘who hath right honestly and diligently applied your matters here very painfully’.4

Alanson appears to have made few or no purchases of land, although in 1546 he is mentioned as a tenant of the great speculators John Bellow and John Broxholme in lands at Boultham and Whisby, Lincolnshire. In 1549 he was asked to account for the ‘dragons, greyhounds and lions of silver and gilt’ which had disappeared from the second sword of the corporation during his mayoralty. In 1551 he joined with three other aldermen, including William Rotheram, in an attempt to promote the cloth trade in Lincoln as a solution to unemployment, but the enterprise was a failure. Alanson’s name disappears from the Lincoln records in 1554-5, but no will or other evidence of his death has been found; the William Alanson of Leake near Boston, Lincolnshire, whose will was proved in 1554 was a poor husbandman.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. M. Hofmann

Notes

• 1. Lincoln min. bk. 1541-64, ff. 16, 24.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Lincoln consist. ct. wills 1538-40, ff. 358 and v.
• 3. Associated Architectural Societies’ Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 244.
• 4. HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 38-39; J. W. F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, 52-53.
• 5. LP Hen. VIII, xxi; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 42; Hill, 67; Lincoln consist. ct. wills 1554-6, ff. 362 and v.