Thomas Wylde (clothier)

By late medieval times the population of Worcester had grown to around 10,000[3] as the manufacture of cloth started to become a large local industry.

It is believed he made the greatest part of his fortune when the wool trade with the Low Countries was blocked by war.

[4] An overmantel with arched panels and Wylde heraldry (dated c. 1594) has been relocated to the north-west room of the garden wing.

[5] Bought by Wylde in 1544 from Henry VIII's propagandist Richard Morrison, the complex of buildings comprising the hospital of St Wulfstan is said to have been founded in 1085,[6] though it may have been up to two centuries later.

It is situated just outside Worcester's Sidbury Gate on the London road and had been disused after its suppression in 1540 following the dissolution of the monasteries.

[5] At the time of the final battle of the Civil War the house then in the occupation of great-great-grandson Thomas Wylde (1622–1669) was made the headquarters of Charles II's Royalist army.

He married twice: Thomas Wylde died on 11 August 1559[2] soon after Queen Elizabeth acceded to the throne on 17 November 1558.

[10] His will has been lost but such portion of it which does survive within the Worcester city records includes in addition to arrangements for his widow and children and his brothers and sisters and his two fathers-in-law; "Thomas Wylde, clothier, 1558, includes "Our blessed Lady" among the Divine Beings to whom he bequeaths his soul; desires "that there be at my burial as many prestes and clarckes to praye for my soule as may be convenyant, and a sermond made by some discrete lerned man, having for his paynes 6s.

He gave Little Pitchcroft and 4½ acres of meadow in Great Pitchcroft to the corporation on condition that within two years after his decease they shoidd erect and establish a free school in the city "to bringe uppe youthe in their A B, mattens, evensonge, and other lernynge, "which shall make them mete and reddie to ye Kinges gramer scole," but if not done within two years then the said lands to revert to his heirs,"if his wife married again, "then the children's portions to be put into the Chamber of the city, unless her husbande shall finde sufficient suretie for the same."

Following the sale of The Commandery in 1785 the principal line continued from Shropshire where the matrilineal name Browne was added in 1788 by letters patent to form Wylde-Browne.