Thomas Offley
William Offley remarried to a widow Elizabeth Wright (née Rogerson), and had altogether 26 children, many by his second wife, several of whom made careers in London.
[11] Nechylls, Master of the Merchant Taylors in 1522,[12] was elected alderman of London in 1525 for the Broad Street ward but made suit to be discharged of office,[13] and was not admitted.
The many-gabled Tudor manor house, since demolished, is illustrated by Michael Burghers as it appeared in 1686 in Plot's History of Staffordshire, together with the formal gardens and a later east frontage.
[32] In 1553 he was (as one of six aldermen required of the Mayor George Barne) summoned by the Duke of Northumberland to sign the King's Letters Patent for altering the royal succession.
[33] In the first year of the reign of Queen Mary I, 1553–54, he served as Sheriff of London, together with William Hewett, Clothworker, in the mayoralty of Sir Thomas White, a foremost figure among the Merchant Taylors.
He was the Mayoral nomination of George Barne on 23 July 1553, immediately following the death of King Edward VI, the reign of Lady Jane Gray, the proclamation of Queen Mary and the arrest of the Duke of Northumberland.
[34][35] Offley's shrieval year commenced with the condemnation of Guildford Dudley, Thomas Wyatt's rebellion against the Spanish marriage, the many subsequent executions in London, and the overturning of the reformed Church establishment.
[46] Henry Machyn described the inauguration: "The 28 day of October (1556) the new mayor took his oath, and so went by water to Westminster with trumpets and the waites royal, and a gallant pinnace decked with streamers and guns and drums; the new mayor Master Offley, merchant taylor, and merchant of the Staple of Calais, and the two henchmen in crimson velvet imbrodered with gold an ell broad; and 40 poor bachelors, and they did give 40 blue gowns, cap, doublet and hose to the 40 poor men; and there was a godly pageant; and the trumpets had scarlet caps, and the waites.
[48] Among the notable events of his mayoralty was the arrival and visit of King Philip in March 1557, with a royal procession through the city from Tower Wharf, which Offley escorted.
He led the civic welcome to the first ambassador of Tsar Ivan IV, Osip Gregorjevitsch Nepeya, who, having survived the last ill-fated voyage of Richard Chancellor, was in London throughout March and April.
Among the many ceremonies and honours accorded to Nepeya he was banqueted at the Mayor's House, and Offley no doubt took an important role in his conducted inspections of the great places of the City.
[55] Offley's son Henry, who had been brought up with a command of French and Latin, acted as his factor in Bruges, selling wools, keeping accounts and receiving money for exchange into sterling.
At three important civic funerals of the 1560s Offley was among the leading mourners, for Sir Rowland Hill in November 1561,[59] for alderman David Woodroffe in March 1563 and again for Ranulph Cholmley (Recorder of London since 1553) in April 1563.
[61] From 1559 Offley (by now a very wealthy man, but given to much charity and simple in his private tastes) served as president of Christ's Hospital,[62] the house established in the former Grey Friars at Newgate for the reception and education of poor men's children.
He desired to be buried in Madeley church, or (if dying in London) in the middle aisle of the choir of St Andrew Undershaft, near to the graves of his wife and of David Woodroffe.
[75] The wall-mounted monument at his tomb, by Cornelius Cure, which survives in St Andrew Undershaft,[76] shows fully sculpted figures of Thomas and Joan kneeling at prayer in arched recesses either side of a central altar, in front of which are shown their three sons, two of whom (as the inscription records), 'it pleased god above by death to call for'.
