Benjamin Henshawe

Benjamin Henshawe (1585–1631) was a London merchant tailor and silkman who supplied fabrics and passementerie for costume and furnishings for the royal court.

The list of items supplied for the apparel of Elizabeth and her attendants includes "ten dozen of very rich gold and silver high sugar loaf buttons, wrought with pearl and oes".

He delivered sewing silk for four ladies of the bedchamber, silver loop lace for eleven bridesmaid's gowns, and materials for the liveries of footmen and coachmen.

[16] For the funeral of Anne of Denmark in 1619, Benjamin Henshawe provided gold fringes and trimmings for the velvet cushion on the hearse, on which an effigy of the queen was placed.

[18] The historian Malcolm Smuts, noting that Henshawe supplied goods to the value of £45,000 to the king and queen between 1616 and 1618, wrote that his contribution to court culture had "been forgotten even by experts".

He became a supplier of trimmings to Henrietta Maria and supplied lace to the tailors Gilbert Morrett and George Gillin who made clothes for the two dwarfs in her household, Jeffrey Hudson and Little Sara.

After his death in 1631, his widow Anne or Anna Henshaw continued the business for a time,[24] and received payment for an order for the masque Chloridia, which included copper lace for two "maskinge suttes for Jefferye".

[26] Henshawe and another textile merchant Baptist Hicks were involved in a corruption court case brought against Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, due to a large sum of money owed to him by James VI and I.

[29][30] Henshawe and other suppliers including Oliver Browne were questioned on 26 April 1624 about goods supplied to the royal wardrobe under Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex.

[37] Geere had attracted criticism in 1623 from the newly formed incorporation of the Gold Wire Drawers of the City of London for selling quantities of inferior products.