Robert Brooke

Sir Robert Brooke (c. 1572 – 10 July 1646) was an English landowner, magistrate, commissioner, administrator and MP who sat in the House of Commons between 1624 and 1629. He made his country seat at Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, Suffolk. Origins Robert Brooke was the son of Robert Brooke, citizen and Grocer of Bucklersbury in London, Sheriff of London (1590–91) and Alderman (1590–99), and his wife, Ursula, daughter of Robert Offley, who married 5 May 1572 at St Benet's, London. The Brooke family were seated of old at Holditch manor in Thorncombe, Devon (now Dorset), where Sir Thomas Brooke, MP (died 1418) and his wife, Joan ( Hanham; died 1437), have a monumental brass memorial. Their son, Sir Thomas Brooke (c. 1391–1439), married Joan Braybrooke (1404-1442), at Cooling Castle, Kent in 1410, and on the death of her mother (Joan, Lady Cobham), in 1434, the title passed to Joan Brooke as 5th Baroness Cobham in her own right. Their son Edward Brooke, 6th Baron Cobham succeeded, but his younger brother, Reginald Brooke, inherited and settled at Aspall in Suffolk. Robert Brooke the alderman was a grandson of Reginald Brooke of Aspall, and in his will names all his brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters of Reginald's son Edward Brooke of Aspall, who heads the descent shown in the 1612 Visitation of Suffolk. Education and first marriage Robert Brooke, son of the alderman, was admitted at the newly founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a crucible of the Nonconformist movement, on 13 March 1588. He was admitted at Gray's Inn on 9 February 1592/93. He first married in October 1597 to Joan, daughter of Sir Humphrey Weld, Sheriff of London in 1599–1600, a leading City Grocer. Apparently in anticipation of this union, in August 1597 Alderman Brooke purchased the estate of Cockfield Hall and associated manors of Yoxford, Blythburgh, Walberswick, Westwood, Westleton, etc., from Arthur Hopton (died 1607), son of Sir Owen Hopton (died 1595). Sir Arthur stated that he sold them to cover his father's debts.