Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex (1575 – 6 August 1645) was an English merchant and politician. He sat in the House of Commons between 1614 and 1622 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cranfield.
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Life
He was the second son of Thomas Cranfield, a mercer at London, and his wife Martha Randill, the daughter and heiress of Vincent Randill of Sutton-at-Hone, Kent. He was apprenticed to Richard Sheppard, a mercer in London and went into partnership with him in around 1599. He was introduced to King James I and VI of England and Scotland by Lord Northampton, and entered the Royal service in 1605.
Cranfield was appointed Receiver-General of rents and revenues from royal lands in Dorset and Somerset by letters patent in 1605. This included the manors in the jointure lands given to Anne of Denmark. Much of the work was done by Randolph Baron, Sheriff of Bath, who served as deputy collector, and by clerks employed in London. A part of the income was used to pay the keepers of Portland Castle and Sandsfoot Castle. Some of Cranfield's receivership papers survive.
In 1613, he was knighted and was appointed Surveyor-General of Customs. He was elected Member of Parliament for Hythe in 1614. In 1616 he became one of the Masters of Requests, briefly in 1618 Keeper of the Great Wardrobe and in 1619 Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries and Chief Commissioner of the Navy. As Keeper of the Wardrobe he supervised the spending of £20,000 on the funeral of Anne of Denmark and made an inventory of her jewels.