Logically Alexander came from Abingdon – which during the thirteenth century gained a reputation for masonry. Alexander became a court sculptor associated with a group of masons that worked at Westminster. He’s even identified in Eleanor of Castile’s accounts (well the executors of her estates) as an image maker. Inevitably little is known about Alexander other than his role at court as an image maker and that it is likely that he received his training during the building of Abingdon Abbey.
It was Alexander who was given the task of carving the stone chest upon which Eleanor’s effigy rests in Westminster Abbey, at Lincoln Cathedral, and the wax models for the metal images of Eleanor at Blackfriars where her heart was buried – lost at the Reformation.
He also created the images of Eleanor that appear on the Eleanor Crosses (the V and A holds the medieval images of Eleanor from the cross at Waltham). We know that Alexander charged 5 marks each for the seven deportations of Eleanor on the cross at Charing.
A statue of the Virgin and Child, held by the Metropolitan Museum in New York is attributed to Alexander because of its style – he was good at folds and draperies – and of course, its worth mentioning that the images he created of Eleanor took their form from the saints and statues of the Virgin Mary that he carved – religious iconography was part and parcel of medieval life. During my reading I also discovered that his work marks the move from the Gothic to the Decorated style.
He was still at work in 1316 (in a document that associates him with Michael of Canterbury) and while it is difficult to be certain it is thought that he sculpted the figures on the tombs of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster at Westminster Abbey and Bishop de Luda at Ely. It’s also thought that a shrine (to St Edburg) at Stanton Harcourt that was originally in Bicester Abbey (we’re back to the Dissolution of the Abbeys) and an effigy at Aldworth near Abingdon (Joan, Lady De la Beche) were also created by Alexander but it is difficult to be certain. Evidentially it is only the sculptures associated with Eleanor that historians can be certain about.
Hourihane, Colum. The Grove Encyclopaedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. (2012)
Margaret Holland, duchess of Clarence was born in the later part of the fourteenth century, the daughter of Thomas Holland. He was the fifth earl of Kent and his half-uncle was Edward II through his mother Joan the Fair Maid of Kent, meaning that Margaret Holland was the great granddaughter of Edward I if I’ve counted back right. This is important because Margaret Holland whose family had a bit of a torrid time when Richard II was deposed had married John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, the eldest illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford meaning that she was the other more famous Margaret Beaufort’s granny.