William Popley
English mercer and landowner
William Popley (c. 1490 – c. 1575), was an English mercer and land owner, whose association with Thomas Cromwell, enabled him to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the dissolution of the monasteries to secure extensive landed estates.
Origins
Popley was the son of a Bristol merchant, John Popley, mayor of the Staple in Bristol in the early years of Henry VIII, and was admitted to The Staple himself in 1511. In 1525 he had a share in a Bristol ship but he seems to have been a lawyer by training as he can be found acting in legal cases involving Bristol citizens, and he worked with Thomas More during his Lord Chancellorship. This combination of commercial connections and legal expertise made him suitable for minor diplomatic errands, such as acting as a courier to William Knight, the ambassador to the Netherlands. Early in his career he was investing in land; a will dated 1527 records that he had purchased the manor of Hinton Blewett (Som.) and he also had interests at Felton near Bristol. Three proceedings for debt contracted in the late 1520s suggest that cash flow was a problem at this stage in his career. He secured patrons among the local aristocracy including the Stafford family, holders of Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire, the Nevill family, lords of the manor of Bedminster and Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, who had property in Bristol. His marriage to Katherine, daughter of Giles Basset of Uley will also have increased his range of contacts.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Popley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.