It favoured the claims to the throne, first of John Baliol - whose mother Devorgilla, daughter of Alan, lord of Galloway, had done much to promote its prosperity by building the stone bridge over the Nith - and then of the Red Comyn, as against those of Robert Bruce, who drew his support from Annandale.
Although not mentioned in Domesday, Boston was probably granted as part of Skirbeck to Alan, earl of Brittany.
As early as 1430 some of them - sprung of Alan, lord of Buckenhall - settled in the neighbourhood of Calne and Devizes, whence descended the immediate ancestors of "worthy Mr Tobie Alleine of Devizes," father of Joseph, who, the fourth of a large family, was born at Devizes early in 1634.1645 is marked in the title-page of a quaint old tractate, by an eye-witness, as the year of his setting forth in the Christian race.
Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1908 Next to the cathedral, the most interesting building in York is St Mary's Abbey, situated in Museum Gardens, founded for Benedictines by Alan, lord of Richmond, in 1078, its head having the rank of a mitred abbot with a seat in parliament.
Sir Francis's great-great-great-grandfather, Alan, was a cordwainer of Gracechurch Street; Alan's son Thomas, a vintner, purchased Scadbury in Chislehurst, and Thomas's great-grandson William bought Foot's Cray, where Francis may have been born.
