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Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society is in Victorian Books.
Victorian Books, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 1852
William was a younger son, who came, we must suppose, to London, and there made a fortune, leaving his elder brother John to inherit the obscurity of the Suffolk manor, which soon passes into utter darkness; for it is through William alone that the family survives in history. A member of the Drapers' Guild, he was certainly a successful man, and invested the results of that success in land — almost the only possible security of those days. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1503, and his widow Margaret's will suggests that he may have been in touch with the wider world of politics and Court life, for she bequeaths to their eldest son, Gyles, not only "a bed of crimson satin embroidered with his father's helmet and his arms and mine and with the anchors and his word in the valance, with three curtaines of red sarcenet belonging," but also "his father's chain which was young King Edward the fifth's."