William Lambarde, lawyer, antiquary and topographical historian was not a Draper, though his father John Lambarde had been Master three times. Lambarde wrote several books: his treatise Eirenarcha was a standard textbook on the duties of a JP, his Perambulation of Kent (1576) was the first county history and his Pandecta Rotulorum earned him an interview with Queen Elizabeth I.

At the age of thirty-seven, a widower and without children, Lambarde founded Queen Elizabeth’s College almshouses at Greenwich in 1576, of which he entrusted the governorship to the Drapers’ Company, with the Master of the Rolls as President. Seven years later he married again and the couple had four children. Worried that he had given away his inheritance to the detriment of his children, Lambarde arranged with the Drapers’ Company that his descendants could lease the entrusted lands at small rents.

Recently, Mrs. D.S.F. Campbell of Jura, the last direct descendant of William Lambarde, bequeathed to the Company a collection of family portraits and papers and many of Lambarde’s books.