Thomas Aldersey

Thomas Aldersey (1521/22 – December 1598; or Aldersaye ) was an English merchant, haberdasher, member of Parliament and philanthropist. A contemporary description placed him among the "wisest and best merchants in London", Thomas Aldersey was the second of several sons of the marriage. He was educated in Bunbury, possibly at the Chantry House. He became known for his devoutness, honesty and business acumen, He is not recorded as having made any speeches, but sat on multiple Parliamentary committees mainly relating to trade. The Privy Council employed him in 1574 to investigate claims against Spain, and he also investigated various trade-related matters for the Privy Council and the Admiralty, including smuggling, piracy, inflation and the gold trade.

He was active in charitable works in both London and Cheshire. He was also active in the 1570s in collecting funds to support impoverished students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In Cheshire, he supported a project to build a conduit in Chester in 1582.

In his birthplace, Bunbury, he founded a grammar school in 1575, It was the first school that the company – now predominantly an educational charity – administered. At the same time, he established a preacher and curate in Bunbury, and gave the tithes and advowson (patronage) of the parish church to the Haberdashers' Company; this was the first ecclesiastical living to come under the company's control. Dorothy Williams Whitney has suggested that this gift was associated with the later Puritanism of the Company of Haberdashers, and Bunbury became an early centre for Cheshire nonconformism.

Aldersey died at Aldersey Hall in Spurstow, Cheshire, in December 1598, and was buried – by his request, "without any pomp" – at St Boniface's Church in Bunbury. He was a wealthy man at his death, leaving bequests totalling nearly £2,000 in his will. He left £100 to Christ's Hospital, as well as money to alleviate poverty in London, Putney in Surrey, Barking in Essex, and Bunbury and Chester in Cheshire. Around half of his property was allocated to the ongoing support of his grammar school; the remainder went to his nephew, John Aldersey of Berden, Essex (died 1616).