The earliest mention appears to be as bailiff of Gloucester in 1273,[1] which puts this conclusion in some doubt, though there is a fairly continuous trail of records connecting this Alexander with the man who would become Archbishop of Dublin.
Whether this is a case of unusual longevity for the period (he would have had to have been over 80 years old at his death) or two presumably related individuals of the same name is unclear, though there can be little doubt that de Bicknor was already a mature adult when elected archbishop in 1310.
De Bicknor was also among nine men of Gloucester charged with evasion of taxes on the wine trade in 1287, which would suggest a breadth of commercial interests.
The Catholic Encyclopedia,[4] however, associates him with another town named Bicknor in Kent, but in one instance in 1297 he is explicitly called "Alexander de Bykenore of Gloucester.
De Bicknor founded the first new colonial (there were many others in Ireland earlier) Irish University at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1320, based on a charter obtained by his predecessor, Archbishop Leche.
Shortly thereafter de Bicknor went over to the side of the Queen, who had openly taken the powerful and ambitious English noble Roger Mortimer as a lover while in France.
In the late 1320s, the darkest period of de Bicknor's career began to unfold, when further accounting fraud during his administration was uncovered, or at least ceased to be tolerated.
[19] When Edward III came of age in 1330, he had Mortimer brutally executed and Isabella was forced to live out the rest of her life under what was, in essence, house arrest, so de Bicknor's fate was relatively mild compared to that of his erstwhile patrons and allies.
There is also a reference to a niece of Alexander de Bicknor named Margery on whom he settled the manor of Ruardean in 1311 at her marriage to Geoffrey of Langley.