Balthazar Sanchez

Sanchez, Balthazar confectioner, is of unknown antecedents, except that he was born in Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz, Spain.

During the Tudor period, sugar was a rare food and highly-prized in this country. Sugar was grown in Spain and her colonies in the Caribbean. The Spanish had taken enslaved Africans to work the land there to produce sugar and other goods.

Balthazar Sanchez was a 16th century Royal comfit-maker (sweet-maker) to King Philip of Spain. In 1554 Philip came to England to marry Mary Tudor. When Philip left his wife to return to Spain, Sanchez remained in England.

Just as Captain John Hawkins had set sail with the first British slave ship to the Caribbean in 1562, so Sanchez’s popularity as a comfit-maker grew with an increasing supply of sugar brought to this country. He was a very wealthy man and bought the manor house of Stoneleys in Tottenham. When Sanchez died, the Sanchez almshouses were built for the poor in Tottenham in 1600.