The Timperley family sold their house in Colchester to Richard Weston in 1539, who willed it to his wife, Elizabeth, in 1542-43.  She then married Jerome Gilberd and their first son, William, was born in 1544.

 

William studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, gaining his MD in 1569.  In 1573 he was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians in London, holding several senior positions before becoming its president in 1600.  He was also one of Queen Elizabeth's physicians, a position he held briefly with King James after Elizabeth's death in 1603.  William died later the same year and is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity church, where his half brothers placed a memorial to him.

 

Although William practiced in London and at Court, the house in Colchester was his family home throughout his life.  He inherited it from his father in 1583 and willed it to his nephew, William Harris, when he descibed it as "my heade house in Trynitie parishe withe the Tenemente belonginge to ye, orchards and gardens".

 

William also willed to the College of Physicians "all my bookes in my Librarye, my Globes, and Instrumentes, and my cabenet of myneralles" together with the remarkable sum of six pounds towards the cost of moving them to the College Library from, presumably, his London home on St. Peter's Hill, which he had named Wingfield House after his stepmother.