KING, Alexander (d.1618), of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, London and Finchley, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Family and Education

m. Elizabeth, da. of Simon Horspool, draper, of London, s.p.

Offices Held

Auditor of the Exchequer 1586, of the mint 1596.

Biography

This Member’s parentage remains untraced. If he was connected with Ambrose King, a head burgess of Bishop’s Castle, this would explain his return to Parliament for the borough on three occasions. His long career as a royal official began in 1585, when he was ‘sent somewhither for her Majesty’s service’. His district seems to have included Westmorland, Cumberland and Shropshire in 1593, Warwickshire and Worcestershire in 1603, and Northamptonshire in 1608. Among other tasks, he helped the muster master to draw up the accounts of the camp at Tilbury in 1588, and in 1593 he 1595 he reported to Burghley on the defences of the Scottish border. His admission to Gray’s Inn in 1592 must have been honorary. The auditorship was granted to him for life in 1606.

King died between 19 Sept. 1618, when he made his will, and 12 Jan. 1619, when it was proved. He asked that his body, which had not ‘honoured God, nor performed any good duty towards Him, but abused itself many and sundry ways’, should be buried in Finchley church. To his five sisters and their children he left a total of £1,300, while the poor of Finchley and Clerkenwell received £40, and £10 was bequeathed to repair the highways in Finchley. The rest of his estate, which included his manor of Finchley and all his ‘leases and plate’, he left to his wife, the chief comfort of his youth and staff of his old age, and she was his sole executrix. His colleague Francis Coston was overseer.

Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), x. 37; London Mar. Lic. (Harl. Soc. xxv), 161; information on the mint from Dr. C. E. Challis; APC, xiv. 15; xv. 134; xvi. 242; CSP Dom. Add. 1580-1625, pp. 247-9, 520; 1603-10, pp. 47, 327; PCC 40 Parker.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.J.C.

Notes