Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lakingheth, John de
LAKINGHETH, JOHN de (d. 1381), chronicler, was a native of Norfolk, and a monk of Bury St. Edmunds in the time of Edward III and Richard II, and was ‘custos baroniæ,’ an office which, no doubt, brought him into close connection with the tenants of the monastery. He thus became very unpopular, and in the peasant rising of 1381 the insurgents clamoured that he should be surrendered to them. In order to save the monastery this was done, and he was beheaded. Lakingheth compiled ‘Kalendare Maneriorum Terrarum … ad Monasterium S. Edmundi Buriensis spectantium,’ which is preserved in Harl. MS. 743, no doubt his own autograph. The contents of this calendar are described in the ‘Monasticon Anglicanum,’ iii. 121–2, and some documents from it are printed on pp. 135–6, 138–9. The second article in the volume is a ‘Short History of the Abbots down to the Death of John de Brynkele in 1379;’ to this has been added a list of the abbots down to the dissolution. This history is printed in the ‘Monasticon,’ iii. 155–6.
One Sir John de Lakingheth was captain of Conq in Brittany in May 1373, when the town was captured by Oliver de Clisson (Froissart, viii. 140, ed. Luce); afterwards in 1376 he was one of the captains of Brest (Fœdera, iii. 1062). A third John de Lakingheth was rector of Bircham Tofts, Norfolk, in 1375 (Blomefield, Norfolk, x. 287).
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 462; Walsingham's Historia Anglicana, ii. 3 (Rolls Ser.); other authorities as quoted.]