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.
David Woodroffe, a prominent shipping merchant, having advanced in the Company was elected Alderman for the Bishopsgate ward in 1548,[11] and in the same year his son Nicholas was admitted to freedom.
The further alliance of these families occurred in 1553[20] through the union of Nicholas Woodroffe and Grizell, eldest daughter of Stephen Kirton and Margaret Offley.
[21] 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.
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.
Two of Grizell Woodroffe's sisters married sons of another Sir Thomas White, of South Warnborough, M.P.,[30] their father's maternal cousin,[31] reinvesting their shared Gaynesford and (claimed) Hungerford[32] lineage.
Stephen Woodroffe, Nicholas's brother, gained freedom of the Haberdashers in 1560, continued in commerce,[38] and married Bridget, daughter of Christopher Draper (Lord Mayor 1566–67).
On completing a term as treasurer to St Thomas's Hospital, 1569–71, in Chester's Presidency, Nicholas Woodroffe was elected Alderman of Bridge ward Without, and advanced immediately to be Sheriff in the mayoralty of Sir Lionel Ducket, 1572–73.
The Sheriffs were customarily sworn at Michaelmas Eve (28 September), and the Mayor elected on St Edward's Day (13 October), though he did not assume office until November.
Woodroffe's term began – or his predecessor's ended – with a cause celèbre, concerning a pamphlet by John Stubbs, The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf,[56] published in August.
[57] The Companies delayed, and on 27 September 1579 the Lord Mayor received a further most unequivocal Order of Council,[58] signed by Bromley, Leicester, Hatton, Burghley, Hunsdon, Sidney and Walsingham.
An earthquake in London on 6 April 1580 prompted some comment by Richard Tarlton, the Queen's jester;[60] and Woodroffe was the addressee of the tenth "livelie Discourse" in Churchyard's Charge.
A letter of that date declining the Freedom of the City to a candidate proposed by Sir Christopher Hatton illustrates the exercise of his office.
[68] (The household of a fictionalised Woodroffe engaged in shipping ventures through Calais and Middelburg is portrayed in the Jacobean comedy A Cure for a Cuckold, written possibly around 1620.
Some letters of 1588 and 1596–97 addressed to Sir William More among the Loseley manuscripts concern military levies and musters,[71] and show his association with George More and Francis Aungier.
[76] A pair of large stoneware presentation bowls with repoussé silver mounts and lids, and with engraved armorials and inscriptions identifying Sir Nicholas as donor, 1579, was sold in America in 1911 from the collection of Robert Hoe III.
[77] The coat of arms engraved on the foot of the bowls is not described in detail in the catalogue, but the accompanying motto "God be our Friend" is that of the Staple Merchants,[78] to whom Sir Nicholas may have presented them.