He appears to have been apprenticed to Sir Christopher Draper of the Ironmongers' Company, who was lord mayor in 1566, and whose daughter and coheiress, Agnes, he married.

He was a freeman of the Skinners' Company, was elected alderman of Broad Street ward 4 February 1573–4, and became one of the sheriffs of London in 1575, when his colleague was Edward Osborne.

In 1585 he became lord mayor, and his installation was greeted by one of the earliest city pageants now extant, the words being composed by George Peele.

His heir, Sir Wolstan Dixie of Appleby Magna, was knighted, made High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1614, and elected M.P.

[1] Dixie left large charitable bequests to institutions in London: He had subscribed towards the building of the new Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1584), and in his will he left £600 to purchase land to endow two fellowships and two scholarships for the scholars of his new grammar school at Market Bosworth, now the Dixie Grammar School.