He was son of Robert Manningham of Fen Drayton, Cambridgeshire, by his wife Joan, daughter of John Fisher of Bledlow, Buckinghamshire.
He was also befriended by a distant relative, Richard Manningham, who, born at St Albans in 1539, made a fortune in London as a mercer, and in his old age retired to Bradbourne, near Maidstone.
Manningham wrote a diary, preserved among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Library, and first printed by the Camden Society in 1868, under the editorship of John Bruce.
The gossip respecting Queen Elizabeth's illness and death and the accession of James I is set down in detail, and Manningham often supplies comments on the character of the chief lawyers and preachers of the day.
He also gives an account of the performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on 2 February 1602 in the Middle Temple Hall, and the Harefield Entertainment of August of that year.