Alexander’s family took its name from Besford, near Pershore in Worcestershire. By the time of his death it also held the manors of Flyford Flavell, and of More and Hill near Fladbury, as well as property in Worcester.
Family
The History of Parliament gives Alexander, with a question mark, as the son of Alexander Besford and his wife Joan, and as probably the grandson of the Alexander Besford who sat for Worcestershire in the Parliaments of 1313, 1315 and 1324. He held the family’s lands by 1376, when Joan Corbet, the widow of Sir Robert Harley of Willey in Shropshire, gave up her claim to lands at Pershore and Besford in his favour.
His first wife was probably a coheiress of the Lench family of Rous Lench in Worcestershire. Their daughter, Agnes, married Thomas Throckmorton, a neighbour at Fladbury.
Before July 1386 Alexander married Beatrice, the widow of Thomas Bassingbourne of Hoddesdonbury in Hertfordshire, and through her gained an interest in the Bassingbourne manors in Hertfordshire and Essex. They had two daughters. Margaret married John Dixton of Dixton in Gloucestershire, and then Thomas de la Hay. Joan married Sir William Clopton.
Lawyer and royal official
Alexander was working as a lawyer by 1368. In 1373 he took the farm of the tax on cloth in Worcestershire, and from 1377 to 1379 he was the county’s alnager, the official who collected it. In June 1373 the Crown sent him to take custody of the two daughters and heirs of Sir John Hastang of Grafton. That August he bought the right to arrange the elder daughter’s marriage for 125 marks and sold it two days later for 250, and the King then excused him from paying for it at all.
He was a justice of the peace for Worcestershire at intervals between 1382 and 1394, sat on royal commissions in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and was a verderer, an officer of the royal forest, at Feckenham. From about 1383 to about 1400 he was steward of Westminster Abbey’s estates in the west of England, for a fee of £4 a year. The family held Flyford and other land directly from the abbey.
Parliament and the Earl of Warwick
Alexander was elected for Worcestershire in October 1382, September 1388, 1391 and 1395. He was one of the legal advisers to Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who in 1388 was one of the Lords Appellant, the nobles then in control of Richard II’s government.
As Warwick’s relations with the King worsened, Alexander was removed from his post at Feckenham in June 1393 “for causes specially moving the King and Council”, and in 1394 he was dropped as a justice of the peace. Warwick was condemned in the Parliament of 1397, but Alexander came through unharmed, and in May 1398 he obtained a royal pardon covering his support for the Lords Appellant.
Some family trees call him Sir Alexander. The History of Parliament records no knighthood; the members for a county were known as knights of the shire.
Death
In about 1396 Alexander bought the wardship of the Bassingbourne heir for 100 marks and agreed to sell it for 200, but he died, in about 1400, before the sale was completed. His executors included Thomas Throckmorton and Robert Whittington of Pauntley. Beatrice died in 1403 or 1404.
John Besford, rector of Fladbury
The History of Parliament names John Besford, the rector of Fladbury, as Alexander’s kinsman. He was probably the John Besford, clerk, who bought land at Fladbury in 1391 and in 1411 bought the manor of Throckmorton from Thomas Throckmorton and his wife Agnes, as described in Besfords in the late medieval period.