Sir Nicholas Woodroffe (Woodruff, Woodrofe, etc.) (1530–1598) was a London merchant of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who, through the English Reformation, rose in the Alderman class to become a Master Haberdasher, Lord Mayor of London and Member of Parliament for London.A.M. Mimardière, 'Woodrofe, Sir Nicholas (c.1530–98), of London; later of Poyle, Surr.', in P.W. Hasler (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1558–1603 (Boydell & Brewer 1981). History of Parliament Online Through the complexities of his family's relationships, and the position and security which they afforded, he lived to establish his family among the armigerous houses of late Elizabethan Surrey.
Origins and early life Nicholas Woodroffe's father David (c.1503–1563) was born of a merchant familyT.N.A. Discovery Catalogue piece descriptions C 1/915/43-45, C 1/919/30-31. of Uffculme, Devon,J.J. Howard and G.J. Armytage, The Visitation of London in the Year 1568, Harleian Society Vol. I (1869), p. 12. W. Bruce Bannerman, The Visitations of the County of Surrey made and taken in the years 1530, 1572 and 1623, Harleian Society Vol. XLIII (1899), pp. 54–55. who are supposed to have derived from the Woodroffes of Wolley in Royston, South Yorkshire.J. Hunter, South Yorkshire: The History and Topography of the Deanery of Doncaster in Yorkshire, 2 Vols (J.B. Nichols & Son, London 1828, 1831), II, pp. 386–89. Admitted to the freedom of the Haberdashers in 1526,City of London, Haberdashers, Apprentices and Freemen, searchable in FindmyPast. he married within the Company soon afterwards, and like his father-in-law John Hill, Haberdasher, became a Merchant of the Staple at Calais.Mill Stephenson, A List of Monumental Brasses in the British Isles (Headley Brothers, London 1926), p. 308, refers to a missing brass to David Woodroffe at St Andrew Undershaft, of which an antiquarian rubbing shows the Arms of the Staple of Calais. Hill, 'whose ancestors were of the north,' had married Agnes Mowsdale, a goldsmith's daughter of London.Visitation of London 1568, p. 29. Nicholas was born to David and Elizabeth Woodroffe around 1530, the eldest of at least four sons, who were in time outnumbered by their sisters. John Hill died in 1534,Will of John Hill, Haberdasher, Merchant of the Staple of Calais (P.C.C. 1534): Executor, David Woodroffe. (Not to be confused with John Hill of St Andrew Undershaft, Merchant of the Staple of Calais (P.C.C. 1533): Executor, Nicholas Lewson.) and his son Rafe,Will of Rafe Hill, Haberdasher of London (P.C.C. 1571) uncle of Nicholas Woodroffe, was admitted a freeman of the Haberdashers in 1541.Haberdashers, Apprentices and Freemen.
The role of the great Livery companies in City governance under the Court of Aldermen faced extraordinary challenges. The reform of the Guilds or Crafts had proceeded with many new Charters of Incorporation during Henry VIII's reign. In the 1540s heavy demands were made upon them for subsidies, loans and military recruitments by the Crown. The disentangling of their endowments vested in dissolved houses, almshouses, and chantries of benefactors brought both disruption and opportunity. As the anticipation of Protestant succession to the English throne unfolded and then reversed, the Lord Mayor and aldermen steered through violent alterations to maintain civic and commercial interests.
Family alliances David Woodroffe, a prominent shipping merchant, having advanced in the Company was elected Alderman for the Bishopsgate ward in 1548,A.B. Beavan, The Aldermen of the City of London Temp. Henry III to 1912 (Corporation of the City of London, 1913), II, p. 32. Some relationships described in this work are unreliable. and in the same year his son Nicholas was admitted to freedom. From the 1530s Woodroffe's shipments in the wool trade in Calais were associated in cargoes with those of the Merchants Taylor Stephen Kirton,'245. Wool trade at Calais (29 September 1539)', J. Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 14 Part 2, August–December 1539 (London, 1895), pp. 67–102. (British History Online. Retrieved 19 June 2016) Master of that Company 1542–43 (who became Alderman for Cheap ward in 1549), and his brother-in-law Thomas Offley,E.L. Furdell, 'Offley, Sir Thomas (c. 1505–1582), mayor of London', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Master 1547–48 (Alderman for Portsoken ward 1549–50, and from 1550 for Aldgate ward),Aldermen of the City of London, II, pp. 32–33. and were a matter of consideration for competitors.T.N.A. Discovery Catalogue piece description SP 46/5/Part 1 fo 126d.
By the 1540s Elizabeth Woodroffe, sister of Nicholas, was married to Walter Leveson,Will of Walter Leveson (P.C.C. 1553/4), written 1551. son of James and nephew of Nicholas Leveson,Wills of Nicholas Leveson (P.C.C. 1539) and James Leveson (P.C.C. 1547). See Nina Green's transcripts: Nicholas; James. James's first wife was Alice, daughter of Richard Wrottesley: G. Wrottesley, 'History of the family of Wrottesley of Wrottesley', in The Genealogist (Quarterly), ed. H.W. Forsyth Harwood, New Series XIX (1903), Supplement, at pp.254–57. all Staplers of Calais of Stafford and Wolverhampton origins.Further information on the Leveson family available at The Sutherland Collection (Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Archive Service). Walter's father had remarried around 1530 to Margery, sister of Thomas Offley,G.C. Bower and H.W.F. Harwood, 'Pedigree of Offley', The Genealogist (Quarterly), New Series XIX (London and Exeter 1903), pp. 217–231, at p. 225. consolidating the Offley and Kirton family interests arising from the sphere of Sir Stephen Jenyns (died 1523).
The further alliance of these families occurred in 1553The couple are 'soon to marry' in January 1552/3, T.N.A. Discovery Catalogue piece description IOR/L/L/2/51, but completed by the signing of Kirton's will, 4 June 1553. through the union of Nicholas Woodroffe and Grizell, eldest daughter of Stephen Kirton and Margaret Offley.'The Offley Manuscript', in H.W. Forsyth Harwood (ed.), The Genealogist (Quarterly), New Series XIX (London and Exeter 1903), pp. 2–11. Kirton endowed the marriage richly with a great house which the Merchant Taylors had built at the north-west corner of Lime Street, near Leadenhall, and other tenements, adding a gift of £266.13s.4d.W.J. Thoms, A Survey of London written in the year 1598, by John Stow (Chatto & Windus, London 1876), p. 57. Here Nicholas and Grizell maintained their London residence thereafter. The match immersed Woodroffe fully in the conflicted allegiances of Mary's reign.
David Woodroffe purchased the 'fair house of old time' called the Green Gate, nearby,A Survey of London, pp. 57–58. which Nicholas afterwards inherited.Will of David Woodrof, Haberdasher of London (P.C.C. 1563). Between them stood the house of Lord Zouche. This was bought and rebuilt, with a high wooden tower, by Richard Whethill, Merchant Taylor and Stapler of Calais, who before 1552 married Jane Kirton, Grizell's sister. Having lived to see the accession of Queen Mary, Kirton died in August 1553, his Evangelical sympathies expressed in provision for thirty sermons, one to be delivered monthly from the day of his burial at St Andrew Undershaft.Will of Stephen Kyrton or Kirton, Alderman and Merchant of the Staple at Callais of London (P.C.C. 1553). His distinguished armorial Achievements were set up there in 1554.J.G. Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, Camden Society, Old Series XLII (1848), p. 42 (burial), p. 60 (atchievements set up), and his heraldry, note p. 338. His son Thomas Kirton, then 16, succeeded to Kirton's manor at Thorpe Mandeville in Northamptonshire.P. Whalley (ed.), The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire. Compiled from the Manuscript Collections of the Late Learned Antiquary John Bridges, Esq., Vol. I (T. Payne, London/D. Prince & J. Cooke, Oxford, 1791), p. 207.
The Marian period With the reversal of religious climate, Thomas Offley served honourably as Sheriff of London in the Mayoralty of Sir Thomas White, 1553–54. In the following year, David Woodroffe, of Catholic sympathy, served in the same capacity but made himself a conspicuous instrument of the Marian persecutions, dealing cruelly and scornfully at the burnings of John Rogers and John Bradford, in high contrast to the sentiments of his fellow Sheriff William Chester.John Foxe's The Acts and Monuments Online, 1563 Edition, Book 5, p. 1284 ff. To the Sheriffs fell the duty of conducting these executions. Soon after completing his term David Woodroffe was paralysed by a stroke, but remained Alderman until 1560. Offley served as Mayor in 1556–57, and was knighted together with William Chester, whose daughter was married to Offley's half-brother Richard.Visitation of London in the year 1568, p. 1. Thomas Kirton became Common Serjeant of the City of London.
Two of Grizell Woodroffe's sisters married sons of another Sir Thomas White, of South Warnborough, M.P.,'White' (of Swanborne, i.e. South Warnborough), W.H. Rylands, Pedigrees from the Visitation of Hampshire (etc.), Harleian Society LXIV (1913), pp. 81–83. their father's maternal cousin,G.J. Armytage (ed.), 'Kirton of Edmonton', in Middlesex Pedigrees as collected by Richard Mundy in Harleian MS no. 1551, Harleian Society LXV (1914), pp. 106–07. Kirton's mother Margaret was sister of White's father Robert. reinvesting their shared Gaynesford and (claimed) HungerfordD. Richardson, 'Plantagenet Ancestry of Edward Rainsford (1609–1680) of Boston, Massachusetts', New England Historical and Genealogical Register 154 (2000), pp. 219–26. lineage. Sir Thomas, strongly Catholic, was Keeper of Farnham Castle, Surrey, and Master of Requests to Queen Mary.N.M. Fuidge, 'White, Sir Thomas (1507–66), of South Warnborough, Hants.,' in P.W. Hasler (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603, History of Parliament Online By his marriage to Agnes White and that of his sister Sybill to Sir John White of Aldershot, M.P.,A.M. Mimardière, 'White, Sir John (d. 1573), of London and Aldershot, Hants.', in P.W. Hasler (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603, History of Parliament Online. Consult: 'Whyte' (of Aldershot), W.H. Rylands, Pedigrees from the Visitation of Hampshire (etc.), Harleian Society LXIV (1913), p. 12-13. Agnes's brother, he was closely identified with John White, the Marian Bishop of Lincoln (1554–56) and of Winchester (1556–59),K. Carleton, 'White, John (1509/10-1560), bishop of Winchester, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (brother of Agnes and Sir John), to which diocese Sir Thomas was Treasurer.For the complexities of the White pedigrees, see H. Curtis, Pedigrees of Whyte, or White, of Farnham, co. Surrey; Aldershot, South Warnborough, and Basingstoke, co. Hants; and Hutton, co. Essex; and a note on the Yateley cup (Private, London 1936). Nicholas Woodroffe progressed unhurriedly in the Haberdashers' Company through Mary's time, perhaps deterred by his father's example.
Elizabethan prosperity