Ralph Sadlier
Ralph Sadleir was born in 1507, the son of Henry Sadleir, a minor court official originally from Warwickshire. Sadleir may have been brought up in Hackney – certainly his father owned a house there by the 1520s.
We do not know if Sadleir went to school, but his handwriting is still clear and can be read after nearly five hundred years.
When he was in his early teens, Sadleir went to work for Thomas Cromwell. As Cromwell went up in the world, so did Sadleir, becoming a trusted member of his master’s staff and spending much of his time at court.
Sadleir had made enough money to have Sutton House built when he was only in his late twenties. He had just married Helen Barre (nee Mitchell), a cousin and employee of Thomas Cromwell whose husband had vanished years before.
The Sadleirs had nine children, of whom seven were lucky enough to live to adulthood – at this time more than a quarter of all children died before they were five years old. Thomas Cromwell was godfather to their oldest son.
Sadleir quickly grew richer and more powerful. He was able to buy thousands of acres of land, much of it complete with houses and tenants, when the monasteries were closed down in the late 1530s, and his surviving accounts book lists property in five different counties.
The land that had belonged to the monastery at Bromley by Bow was one of Sadleir’s earliest purchases. Like many other landlords, he put the rents up, and many tenants lost their homes. There were riots in some places because of this, and some landlords became very unpopular.
Ralph Sadleir narrowly escaped execution after the downfall of his master Cromwell, and went on to a distinguished career during the reign of Elizabeth I after going into retirement during the reign of Mary I because of his religious sympathies. His favourite among his many properties was Standon in Hertfordshire, where he kept his beloved hawks and where he was eventually buried.