William Garrard

Sir William Garrard (1518–1571), also Garrett, Gerrarde, etc., was a Tudor magnate of London, a merchant citizen in the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who became alderman, Sheriff (1552–1553) and Lord Mayor of London (1555–1556) and was returned as an MP for the City of London. He was a senior founding officer of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands (The Muscovy Company) in 1554/55, having been involved in its enterprises since the beginnings in King Edward VI's time, and for the last decade of his life was one of its permanent governors. He worked hard and invested largely to expand English overseas trade not only to Russia and the Levant but also to the Barbary Coast and to West Africa and Guinea. In his late years Garrard and his Company or Society of Adventurers promoted mercantile trading expeditions to Guinea. Under the command entrusted to John Hawkins the expedition of 1567–1568 became the infamous (and disastrous) third slaving voyage to the West Indies. Garrard is also remembered for his labours on behalf of the London hospitals and for his efforts in practical help for poor and sick inhabitants of London. John Stow called him "a grave, sober, wise and discreete cittizen, equal with the best, and inferior to none of our time." Early life William Garrard was descended from an old gentry family of Sittingbourne, Kent, which had formerly gone by the name of Attegare. Sir Simon Attegare, born 1365, was the father of Stephen, who altered the name to Garrard. Their mansion appears to have been the manor of Fulston in Sittingbourne, as suggested by their various tombs or burials in the part of the parish church relating to that place. William was born in London, the son of John Garrard, citizen and Grocer, a prominent London businessman. He grew up in the parish of St Magnus-the-Martyr near London Bridge; he was admitted to the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, and was married to Isabel Nethermill by 1539, when he was named an overseer in the will of his father-in-law Julian Nethermill of Coventry, who made small bequests to each of Garrard's children. In 1542 he purchased the manor of Dorney (in the far south of Buckinghamshire just west of Windsor) from the son of Richard Hill, who had held the manor from 1530 to 1540. Dorney Court remained his principal country seat throughout his life and became the inheritance of his eldest son.