Thomas Bromley

Thomas Bromley was born around 1530. He was the second son of[1][2]

• George Bromley of Hodnet, close to Market Drayton in Shropshire, the son of William Bromley of Mitley and Beatrix Hill.
• Jane Lacon, daughter of Sir Thomas Lacon of Willey, Shropshire.

The Bromleys originated in Staffordshire, but had acquired estates in neighbouring counties.[3] They were of the middling landed gentry, like their allies and neighbours the Hills: the two families were to prosper together by seeking new sources of income, the Hills from commerce and the Bromleys through the law. George Bromley was a prominent member of the Inner Temple,[4] serving as Autumn Reader for 1508[5] and Lent Reader for 1509,[6] although he refused the honour for Lent 1515.[7] Another Thomas Bromley, George's younger cousin,[2][3] was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench by Mary I. The young Thomas Bromley also had an elder brother, another George Bromley, the heir to the family estates, who was himself to become a notable lawyer and politician.[8]

Both Thomas Bromley and his elder brother, George, were trained in law and called to the bar at the Inner Temple. By 1555, Thomas had gained some trust and prestige at his Inn of Court and was appointed as one of the auditors of the steward.[9] In that year his namesake, the chief justice, died, bequeathing the young Thomas an allowance of 40 shillings a year for ten years, on condition he continue his legal studies.[10] This he clearly did, as he received the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law from Oxford University in 1560[11] He also rose at his Inn: by February 1563 he was a member of the parliament of the Inner Temple, like his brother George.[12] In 1565 he was appointed attendant on the Reader for the first time,[13] accompanying Richard Onslow, a contemporary from Shropshire who often officiated with him.

Bromley is variously stated to have been Reader at the Inner temple in 1566 for Lent,[4][11] and autumn[3] although the Inn's records only mention his selection as attendant on the Lent Reader, Francis Gawdy.[14] ODNB states that he served in the autumn and lectured on the Statutes of Attaints.[15] He is listed as a double reader, along with his brother George, in a state paper, probably from about 1579.[16] In 1567 the parliament of the Inn had to rectify a number of anomalies relating to chambers held by Onslow, Bromley and Gawdy,[17] making clear that Bromley had been admitting trainee lawyers of his own for some years, even before he became a bencher. On 25 October 1573 Bromley was chosen to be Lent Reader for the following year but the honour was deferred until 1575 because of the pressure of parliamentary business, with Edmund Anderson standing in for him.[18]

A week later Bromley was elected Treasurer of the Inner Temple, with power to choose his own assistants. He seems to have taken his post very seriously, and apparently found the Inn's finances in crisis. On 19 November a levy was imposed on all members clear immediate debts, graded according to status, with Bromley and his fellow-benchers paying 13s. 4d. While junior barristers paid 6s. 8d. It was not enough, and in January 1574 the parliament noted that

the House at this present is greatly indebted and far behindhand, by reason whereof it is the worse served both of bread, drink, meat, and divers other things, for that the creditors are not in any reasonable and convenient time paid such sums of money as are due unto them for their wares.[19]

A butler was deputed to persecute members for their outstanding fees, on pain of physical exclusion from the premises, and a few months later, pleading inflation of food prices, the members were made chargeable for their actual consumption. Bromley continued in office the following year, listed as appearing at the parliament as treasurer.[20] Financial reform continued, with the cook made chargeable for future losses of pewter dishes – a major expense in the past. Bromley's appointment for a third term was noted in November 1575.[21]

• Colleagues and patrons
• 
  Effigy of Thomas Bromley, the chief justice, who left a small but useful annuity to support young Bromley's studies.
• 
  Portrait, claimed to be of Richard Onslow, a noted Puritan lawyer and Bromley's predecessor as recorder of London.
• 
  Sir Edmund Anderson, who stood in for Bromley during his final illness, as well as in Inner Temple matters.
• 
  The Earl of Arundel, a sponsor of Bromley's parliamentary career.
• 
  Sir Nicholas Bacon, long a friend and patron of Bromley and his predecessor as Lord Chancellor.

Bromley sat as a member of the Parliament of England three times, all fairly early in his career, before he achieved major promotion as a judge.[4]

In 1558 Bromley was MP for the Shropshire borough of Bridgnorth in the last parliament of Mary's reign. At this point he had not completed his education, although he was about 28 years old and a recognised lawyer. He probably owed his election mainly to family connections.[22] His mother's family had numerous links in the Bridgnorth area. The High Sheriff of Shropshire had a considerable say in elections,[23] and in that year was Richard Newport, son-in-law of the chief justice Thomas Bromley and another Inner Templar. The town's elector's, a council of 14 aldermen and bailiffs, had a predilection for lawyers. Their other choice was John Broke, a young Middle Templar and the son of the Shropshire jurist Robert Broke.[24] However, the election seems to have been delayed, perhaps for want of nominations, until 18 January, only two days before the opening of parliament.

In 1559 Bromley was returned to parliament by Wigan. This was dominated by the Duchy of Lancaster and the Earl of Derby.[25] Although it is not known precisely how Bromley obtained the seat, the duchy too had a preference for lawyers. It generally secured the return of a member of the Gerard family, another gentry-lawyer dynasty, and Bromley's colleague on this occasion was William Gerard.

It is much clearer how Bromley came to be MP for Guildford in the parliament which assembled in January 1563. The seat was in the gift of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel,[26] a Shropshire landowner and the high steward of the borough, who was a friend and patron of Bromley.[4] Bromley was to serve as one of the executors of Arundel's will. In 1566, when he was appointed Recorder of London, he became an MP for the City ex officio, as the aldermen always chose the recorder and one of their own number as MPs.[27] Richard Onslow had been recorder since 1563, succeeding Ralph Cholmley, who had died in office. Thus Bromley was now put forward as MP by two constituencies. However, parliament resolved the contradiction by deciding he should continue to represent Guildford. The London aldermen were forced to hold a by-election and chose Sir John White, a successful merchant in the trade with Spain.[28] Bromley served in 1566 on a committee concerned with legal issues and another on the succession to the throne.

Contemporary drawing of the trial. Queen Elizabeth was represented by an empty throne.

As Lord Chancellor, it was Bromley who presided over the court which tried Mary, Queen of Scots. It consisted of 36 of the 45 privy counsellors, judges and peers, who had been appointed to the commission and assembled on 11 November 1586 at Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary was imprisoned. She was brought before the court on 14 October but protested immunity from a foreign jurisdiction. Bromley read a passage from a letter of the queen,[56] stating baldly that "as she lived under the protection of the Queen of England, she was bound to respect the law of England. Bromley maintained personal respect towards Mary throughout the trial[45] but continued to insist that "neither her imprisonment nor her prerogative of Royal Majesty could exempt her from answering in this kingdom."[56] The prosecution was led by Francis Gawdy,[57] Bromley's old associate from the Inner Temple and now Queen's Serjeant. Mary did not openly contest her knowledge of Babington's plot to set her free and even admitted countenancing a French invasion. However, she flatly denied any involvement in the plan to assassinate Elizabeth. After two days, the trial was adjourned to 25 October at the Star Chamber, where the guilty verdicts were delivered.[58]

It was then Bromley's task to announce at the opening of Parliament

That the present parliament was summoned for no usual causes; not for making new laws, whereof her Majesty thought there were more made than executed; nor for subsidies with which, although there was some occasion for them, her Majesty would not burden her faithful subjects at this time, but the cause was rare and extraordinary; of great weight, great peril, and dangerous consequence. He next declared what plots had been contrived of late, and how miraculously the merciful providence of God, by the discovery thereof, beyond all human policy, had preserved her Majesty, the destruction of whose sacred person was most traitorously imagined, and designed to be compassed.

He then outlined the case to the House of Lords and both houses resolved to petition the queen for immediate execution.[59] The address was delivered by Bromley and Elizabeth assented, although she did not actually sign the death warrant until 1 February 1587,[60] after much hesitation. Bromley appended the Great Seal and the warrant was entrusted to William Davison. Even then it took a small secret Privy Council meeting under Burleigh to make the decision for action and Davison was held responsible by the queen.

Mary, queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay on 7 February 1587. When Parliament assembled eight days later, Bromley was too ill to attend and his place was taken by Edmund Anderson.[15] He died on 12 April at the age of 57 and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 2 May.

Bromley's demise is often attributed to strain of the trial and the responsibility of ordering the execution of a monarch,[36][29] and to his apprehension at Elizabeth's response to the execution.[60] However, this corresponds to no specific illness, but it is a recurring motif found in accounts of other 16th-century judges, like Richard Morgan.[61] Foss gave no explanation of Bromley's death[45] and more recent sources do not speculate. He was not a young man by the standards of the time: his namesake and cousin, the chief justice, died probably at a slightly earlier age.[10]

Bromley's married, by 1560 at latest,[4] Elizabeth Fortescue, daughter of Sir Adrian Fortescue, a Hertfordshire landowner.[51] Sir Adrian was executed on 9 July 1539 under an act of attainder that was mainly directed at the Pole family, including the Countess of Salisbury. However Fortescue's offence was unspecified, the clause relating to him mentioning "diverse and sundrie detestable and abhomynable treasons."[62] In the 17th century Sir Adrian was to be venerated as a Catholic martyr and he was beatified in 1895. However, the real reasons for his execution remain mysterious and it is not at all clear that he was a religious conservative: in fact, his earlier period in favour had been because of his kinship to Anne Boleyn but he seems to have been on poor terms with Thomas Cromwell. So he may have been attached to the attainder as an act of political or personal spite among Protestants.

Elizabeth Fortescue was one of the offspring of Sir Adrian's second marriage, to Anne Rede. One of her brothers was John Fortescue of Salden, who had been in Princess Elizabeth's service during the reign of her Catholic sister, Mary I, and proved a pillar of the Elizabethan regime and a persistent parliamentarian, later becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer.[63] Her brother Anthony Fortescue, on the other hand, actually was a Catholic conspirator, closely involved with the Pole family.[64] Another brother, Thomas, seems to have negotiated Elizabeth's marriage with Bromley, purchasing part of the manor of Holt from Anthony Bourne to settle on her in 1578.[52]

St John the Baptist Church, Hagley, monument to Sir Thomas Bromley's daughter Meriel, wife of Sir John Lyttelton, with a remarkable anti-Catholic inscription

Bromley and Elizabeth had four sons and four daughters.[4] Of these:

• Sir Henry Bromley, the eldest son and heir, and a politician of at least regional importance, married Elizabeth Pelham. Their son,

• Thomas Bromley, was an MP of the early 17th century.

• Elizabeth Bromley married Oliver Cromwell, uncle of the Lord Protector
• Anne Bromley married Richard Corbet, son of Reginald Corbet, a distinguished judge. Their son,

• Sir John Corbet, 1st Baronet, of Stoke upon Tern, known as "the Patriot," was a determined opponent of absolute monarchy and an important Parliamentarian and Presbyterian leader regionally during the English Civil War.

• Meriel Bromley married John Lyttelton. They were the ancestors of the Lyttelton Baronets and Barons Lyttelton.

His rule in Shelley's Case is a landmark in the history of English real property law.[29]

• Bindoff, S.T., ed. (1982). The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558. Boydell and Brewer. Retrieved 10 March 2014.

• John Lord Campbell (1868). Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, 5th edition, Volume II. John Murray, London. Accessed 26 March 2014 at Internet Archive.
• Chambers, John (1817). A General History of Malvern. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bromley, Sir Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 633.
• Cokayne, George E. (1902). Complete Baronetage, Volume II. W. Pollard, Exeter. Retrieved 10 April 2014.

• Kathy Lynn Emerson (2008–14). "A Who's Who of Tudor Women". Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth Century England. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
• Fortescue, George Knottesford (1889). "Fortescue, Adrian" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 20. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Fortescue, George Knottesford (1889). "Fortescue, Anthony" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 20. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Edward Foss (1857). The Judges of England, with Sketches of their Lives, Volume 5. Longman. Retrieved 26 March 2014.

• Joseph Foster, ed. (1891). "Braly-Bruer". Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
• George Grazebrook and John Paul Rylands (editors) (1889). The Visitation of Shropshire, taken in the year 1623: Part I by Robert Tresswell, Somerset Herald, and Augustine Vincent, Rouge Croix Pursuivant of arms; marshals and deputies to William Camden, Clarenceux king of arms. With additions from the pedigrees of Shropshire gentry taken by the heralds in the years 1569 and 1584, and other sources, Harleian Society. Accessed 26 March 2014 at Internet Archive.
• John Hamilton, John Andrew (1886). "Bromley, Thomas (1530-1587)" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 6. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Hasler, P.W., ed. (1981). The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603. Boydell and Brewer. Retrieved 26 March 2014.

• A History of the County of Worcester: volume 3. Institute of Historical Research. 1913. Retrieved 1 April 2014.

• Frederick Andrew Inderwick (editor) (1896). A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, Volume 1, Inner Temple. Accessed 26 March 2014 at Internet Archive.
• Jones, N.G. "Bromley, Sir Thomas (c.1530–1587)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3513. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Walter C. Metcalfe (1883). The visitation of the county of Worcester begun by Thomas May, Chester, and Gregory King, Rouge dragon, in Trinity vacacon, 1682, and finished by Henry Dethick, Richmond, and the said Rouge dragon, pursuivant, in Trinity vacacon, 1683, by virtue of several deputacons from Sir Henry St. George, Clarenceux kinge of armes. With additions by the late Sir Thomas Phillipps, bart. William Pollard, Exeter. Accessed 3 April 2014 at Internet Archive.
• Page, William; Willis-Bund, J.W. (1913). A History of the County of Worcester: volume 4. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 3 April 2014.

• Becky Prebble (2008). Political Refugees' Property, Columbia Law School. Accessed 27 March 2014.
• Rex, Richard. "Fortescue, Sir Adrian (c.1481–1539)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9936. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• John Paul Rylands (editor), 1882: The Visitation of Cheshire in the year 1580 made by Robert Glover, Somerset herald, for William Flower, Norroy king of arms, with numerous additions and continuations, including those from the visitation of Cheshire made in the year 1566, by the same herald. With an appendix, containing The visitation of a part of Cheshire in the year 1533, made by William Fellows, Lancaster Herald, for Thomas Benolte, Clarenceux king of arms. And a fragment of the visitation of the city of Chester in the year 1591, made by Thomas Chaloner, deputy to the Office of arms, Harleian Society. Accessed 10 March 2014 at Internet Archive.