Peter Osborne

Peter Osborne, Esquire, (1521–1592) was an English officer of state who was Keeper of the Privy Purse to King Edward VI, at a time when great constitutional changes affected the management of public finance. Of reformist sympathies in religion, his career was in abeyance during the reign of Queen Mary but regained momentum as Remembrancer in the Exchequer under Elizabeth, working usually to his marital kinsman Lord Burghley. He also sat in seven parliaments between 1559 and 1589. Life Origins and young life Peter Osborne was born the second son of Richard Osborne, citizen and Grocer of London (died 1544), and his wife Elizabeth (née Coke), of Tyle or Tyled Hall, Latchingdon, Essex. The family had been seated at Purleigh, just north-west of Latchingdon, since at least the first half of the fifteenth century: Richard's grandfather, Peter Osborne of Purleigh, died in 1442; his son Richard Osborne died in 1471; Richard Osborne, of Tyld Hall, father of the Remembrancer, died in 1544. Peter's elder brother was John Osborne, Gentleman, who had 3 sons and 3 daughters including Elizabeth, who married first Richard Bettenson of London, and secondly Archer Breame, of Halstead, Essex. Peter Osborne also had two sisters. One (Anne) married first to Edward Bowland of Margaretting, Essex (who died in 1546), and secondly, in July 1547, to Edward Saxilby (or Saxby), who was first appointed Baron of the Exchequer in 1549. Saxilby had been admitted to the Inner Temple in 1537 at the instance of his brother-in-law Thomas Walshe, Baron of the Exchequer. Osborne's other sister married to the wealthy London citizen and Grocer William Lane. After her death Lane remarried to Anne Luddington, stepdaughter of Sir William Laxton (Lord Mayor in 1545), and Osborne retained a trusted position in relation to Anne's family. At Lane's death in 1552 Osborne owed him some £230 which Lane made into a legacy for the children of his second marriage, appointing Osborne an overseer to his will on condition that he pay what was owed.