Sir Henry Billingsley was an English scholar and translator, merchant, chief Customs officer for the Port of London in the high age of late Elizabethan piracy, and moneylender, several times Master of the Haberdashers' Company, an alderman, Sheriff and Lord Mayor of London, and twice Member of Parliament for the City. His 1570 translation of Euclid's Geometry, the first from Greek into English, with a lengthy opening essay by Dr John Dee, was a classic of its time and a landmark in mathematical publishing. It appeared only two years after his translation, from the Latin, of the compendious and seminal Commentary, by the leading Reformation theologian Pietro Martire Vermigli, on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, which had been dedicated by its author to the Reformation scholar Sir Anthony Cooke. Both of these important publications were printed by John Daye. Billingsley was for long associated with St Thomas's Hospital in London and was a prominent, worthy and wealthy London citizen, reflecting the examples of his stepfathers Sir Martin Bowes and Thomas Seckford. He was listed in 1617 as a deceased member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries.
Sir Edmund Bedingfield or Bedingfeld. was the third son of Sir Edmund Bedingfield, Knight of the Bath, and his second wife Dame Margaret, daughter of Sir John Scott, of Scot's Hall in Kent. Sir Edmund the father died in 1496–97, making his will at Calais. His widow died in 1514, having made her will the previous year, in which she established the Bedingfield chapel in St John's parish church at Oxborough.
Sir John Fortescue of Salden Manor, near Mursley, Buckinghamshire, was the seventh Chancellor of the Exchequer of England, serving from 1589 until 1603.
Peter Osborne, Esquire, (1521–1592) was an English officer of state who was Keeper of the Privy Purse to King Edward VI, at a time when great constitutional changes affected the management of public finance. Of reformist sympathies in religion, his career was in abeyance during the reign of Queen Mary but regained momentum as Remembrancer in the Exchequer under Elizabeth, working usually to his marital kinsman Lord Burghley. He also sat in seven parliaments between 1559 and 1589.
Sir Geoffrey Boleyn was an English merchant and politician who served as Lord Mayor of London from 1457 to 1458. He purchased the manor of Blickling, near Aylsham, in Norfolk from Sir John Fastolf in 1452, and Hever Castle in Kent in 1462. He was the great-grandfather of Queen Anne Boleyn, the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Geoffrey built the domestic, mercantile and civic fortunes of the Boleyn family, and raised its status from the provincial gentry, as his brother Thomas Boleyn made a career of distinction in church and university, together building the family's wealth, influence and reputation.
Sir Arthur Ingram was an English investor, landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1610 and 1642. The subject of an influential biography, he has been celebrated for his "financial skill and ruthless self-interest", and characterized as "a rapacious, plausible swindler who ruined many during a long and successful criminal career". Probably of London birth but of Yorkshire background, he was a very extensive landowner in Yorkshire. He acquired and rebuilt the former Lennox residence at Temple Newsam near Leeds, which became the principal seat of his family, including the Lords Ingram, Viscount Irvine and their descendants, for over 300 years.
Thomas Tasburgh, originally of South Elmham, Suffolk, afterwards of Hawridge and latterly of Beaconsfield and Twyford, Buckinghamshire, was a member of the English landed gentry, a magistrate, member of parliament, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, and officer of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth Brooke, also known as Lady Brooke or Dame Elizabeth Brooke, was an English religious writer, part of whose writing of Christian precepts survives, and was matriarch of a landed manorial family in East Suffolk, East Anglia, during the English Civil War and Restoration periods.
Henry Atkins (1558–1635) was an English physician.
John Gwynneth, was a clergyman of Welsh nationality originating from Gwynedd, and was a composer of religious and liturgical vocal music for which he was awarded a doctorate in the University of Oxford. He held benefices in England in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and London, and in North Wales at Clynnog Fawr. Although he was a polemicist for the Catholic faith, he maintained his ministry through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queen Mary, and was brother-in-law and executor of Stephen Vaughan. He is principally remembered, from the age of Thomas Tallis, as one of the other exponents of early Tudor period polyphony.
Sir Edward Wynter or Wintour was an English mariner and landowner who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1587 and 1601. He developed the iron workings around the family estates at Lydney in the Forest of Dean, which in his son's time were of importance to the Royalist cause. His marriage to Lady Anne Somerset produced a strongly Roman Catholic allegiance among his children.
Sir Clement Cotterell (1585–1631) was an English courtier and politician, who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1624.
Sir Robert Brooke was an English landowner, magistrate, commissioner, administrator and MP who sat in the House of Commons between 1624 and 1629. He made his country seat at Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, Suffolk.
Sir Thomas Cornwallis (1518/1519–1604) was an English politician.
Sir Stephen Slaney (1524–1608) was an English merchant, four times Master of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, and Alderman, Sheriff and Lord Mayor of London. He has been called "one of the most picturesque of the Elizabethan Merchant Adventurers".
Sir Charles Cotterell, was an English courtier and translator knighted in 1644, after his appointment as master of ceremonies to the court of King Charles I in 1641, a post he held until the execution of Charles in 1649. During the early English Interregnum (1649–1652) he resided in Antwerp. From 1652 until 1654 he was steward at the Hague to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. In 1655 he entered the service of Henry, Duke of Gloucester as secretary, a post he held until the Restoration in 1660. He then served until 1686 as master of ceremonies under Charles II and from 1670 to 1686 as master of requests, while a member of the Cavalier Parliament for Cardigan from 1663 until 1678. He translated French romances and histories and The Spiritual Year, a Spanish devotional tract. He belonged to a group of poets called the Society of Friendship and was literary executive and adviser to one member: Katherine Philips. The group used pseudo-classical, pastoral names, his being Poliarchus.
The Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper was a civil servant within the Irish Chancery in the Dublin Castle administration. His duties corresponded to the offices of Clerk of the Crown and Clerk of the Hanaper in the English Chancery. Latterly, the office's most important functions were to issue writs of election to the Westminster Parliament, both for the House of Commons and for Irish representative peer in the House of Lords.
Sir Arthur Hopton KB, of Witham, Somerset, was an English politician. He was member of parliament for Dunwich in 1571, and for Suffolk in 1589. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of King James I.
Anthony Earbury was a minister in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England, who represented puritan interests while remaining within the Anglican ministry. He is notable for his involvement in the puritan group at the Hampton Court Conference and his confrontation with Archbishop Richard Bancroft soon afterwards, and in later life for his resistance to a challenge to his ministry brought on personal grounds by Sir Edward Powell, Master of Requests. Associated with various groups and patrons interested in the emigrant puritan ministry in America, he was prebendary of Wherwell in Hampshire, under the patronage of the Barons De La Warr, and vicar of Westonzoyland, Somerset for most of his career, and is thought to have been a chaplain to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
Sir Edward Echyngham, , of Barsham and Ipswich in Suffolk, was a commander on land and at sea, briefly Constable of Limerick Castle, and Collector of Customs at Ipswich. He is remembered as the author of a letter to Cardinal Wolsey describing the death of Lord Admiral Howard at Brest in 1513. From 1485 the presence of the Howard Dukes of Norfolk was felt directly along the Barsham reach of the River Waveney from their possession of Bungay Castle.
