BROMFIELD, Henry (c.1610-83), of Chawcroft House, South Stoneham and Heywood nr. Lymington, Hants.

Bromfield’s great-grandfather was lieutenant of the Ordnance to Queen Elizabeth. The family is not known to have had any Hampshire connexion before his father married a local heiress and sat for Yarmouth in the first and second Parliaments of James I. During the Civil War both Bromfield and his father supported Parliament, though his father complained in his will that he had been ‘much disabled’ by ‘these distracted times’. Bromfield continued to hold county office throughout the Interregnum. By his marriage he acquired Heywood, two miles from Lymington, and was returned for the borough at the general election of 1660. His name was left unmarked on Lord Wharton’s list, and in the Convention he was appointed to no committees and made no speeches; but he probably voted with the Presbyterian Opposition. Although he conformed to the Church, he is unlikely to have stood again. Presumably he supported exclusion, as he was removed from the commission of the peace by 1680. He was buried at South Stoneham on 19 Feb. 1683, the last member of his family to enter Parliament.Bk. of Exams. and Deps. (Soton Rec. Soc. xxxiv), 52; Hants RO, 5M50/874; VCH Hants, iv. 618; v. 200; South Stoneham par. reg.