COOKE, Sir Robert (1598-1643), of Highnam Court, Churcham, Glos.

Although Sir Robert Cooke’s father took possession of Highnam Court in 1605, the senior branch of the Cooke family was seated at Gidea Hall, Romford, Essex, from 1452. The apogee of the family’s fortunes came with a marriage between Sir Robert Cooke’s aunt and Lord Burghley (William Cecil†). The Cookes were very well-connected in several counties, if scattered. Sir Robert Cooke was closely related to the Lucy family of Charlecote, Warwickshire (being first cousin to Sir Thomas Lucy*), and to the Arnolds of Monmouthshire. There were important links with the aristocratic families of Lords Chandos of Sudeley; with the Somerset dynasty seated at Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, and with the Berkeleys of Berkeley Castle.22Vis. Glos. 1623, 4, 45; Vis. Glos. 1682-3, 47; Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 39; VCH Essex vii. 67. There was a history of hereditary office-holding in the family which survived the move from Essex to Gloucestershire: from 1561 the office of clerk of the liveries, in the court of wards and liveries, became ‘quasi-hereditary’ in the Cookes. Sir Robert’s father held the post, and in 1638 Sir Robert was arranging the reversion of the office for his own eldest son.23Coventry Docquets, 206; H.E. Bell, Court of Wards and Liveries (Cambridge, 1953), 30. Highnam was on the outskirts of Gloucester, and it was in the city that Sir Robert first achieved local office, on the bench of magistrates in 1624, and in the militia. That same year, he was noted as absent from the county, in London, and was presumably active to some extent in his liveries office.24Keeler, Long Parliament, 141. These metropolitan connections doubtless made it easier for him to petition Secretary Conway (Sir Edward Conway†), on behalf of his brother, for military office.25CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 261.

Cooke refused to pay Ship Money in the 1630s, and was an associate of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele in the peer’s orchestration of objections to the tax. He was evidently a godly Protestant, and competed with the Catholic Sir John Wintour for the office of verderer in the Forest of Dean. Wintour was convinced that opposition to Ship Money bound Cooke and others in the faction against him, but the government approved Wintour’s appointment as a means of the enforcing the unpopular and obsolete forest laws.26CSP Dom. 1637, p. 412. Cooke’s opposition stance widened: he was ordered to appear before the court of high commission for his activities at Tetbury.27CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 580. It was thus as a critic of the government that Cooke stood as a candidate in elections for the Short Parliament of April 1640. He was selected by the gentry at assizes for one of the county seats, in accordance with a tradition that one knight represented the in-shire around Gloucester, while the other sat for the Cotswolds. By 24 February, an agreement was in place by which the gentry, among them John Dutton*, approved Cooke and Sir Robert Tracy* as knights of the shire.28Glos. RO, D2510: Sir Robert Cooke to John Smyth, 24 Feb. 1640. The agreement broke down when Nathaniel Stephens* turned up unexpectedly as a candidate, and votes were diverted from Sir Robert Tracy to Stephens. John Dutton considered Cooke was party to a puritan-inspired plot to return Stephens instead of Tracy; and indeed, Cooke was an associate of Stephens in the years just before 1640.29Memoirs of the Family of Guise ed. G. Davies (Camden 3rd ser. xxviii), 120. Nevertheless, Cooke was confident that the agreed plan was in hand before the day of the election, and even the hostile Laudian commentator on the dispute had to admit that Cooke was probably taken by surprise:

This might be a mistake and not malice in Sir Robert Cooke; but all his actions are now looked upon by the other side with a not-excusing eye, it is apprehended not as an oversight but a practice of treachery.30SP16/448, f. 79.

In the event, Cooke was returned, and on 16 April sat on a committee to arrange a conference with the Lords on the planned joint fast.31CJ ii. 4a. He was named to the important committee of privileges, which dealt with contested elections, and on the committee which dealt with the highly controversial issue of religious innovation. In neither of these are any words of his recorded.32CJ ii. 4a, 10a.

In the elections in October that year for the Long Parliament, Cooke stood aside from the county seats, and was returned instead for Tewkesbury. He considered the county seats unpredictable, fearing that they might be subject to ‘strong solicitations’ as many candidates were possible.33Glos. RO, D2510: Cooke to Smyth, 18 Oct. 1640. He did not take his borough seat, however, for a whole year because of a dispute over the election. On 9 Nov. 1640, the privileges committee reported that two indentures had been returned from Tewkesbury. On 6 August 1641, after several fruitless discussions, the borough election was finally declared void, and a second election was held in October. Cooke was returned by the bailiffs and the inhabitants separately, and although on 12 November the case was referred again to the privileges committee, Cooke was allowed to take his seat, and was possibly the ‘Cooke’ active in debate on 22 October on the meddling of the clergy in secular affairs.34D’Ewes (C), 358. He was first named to a committee on 2 November 1641.35CJ ii. 23a, 23b, 32b, 37a, 49b, 212b, 239b, 302a, b, 313a; D’Ewes (N), 238. This was the committee of both Houses for Irish affairs, an important appointment in the light of the news of the rebellion in Ireland.36CJ ii. 302a. Ireland was to become one of Cooke’s principal parliamentary interests, and on 9 November he moved that all commanders sent to Ireland should have taken the Protestation.37D’Ewes (C), 107. On 16 December Cooke was required to order the 2nd earl of Leicester (Robert Sidney†), lord lieutenant of Ireland, to prepare an expeditionary force. The following day, Cooke reported that he had discharged his task, but that the wavering Leicester claimed he was waiting for confirmation of his expenses before committing himself.38CJ ii. 346b, 347b. On the 29th, it was Cooke who moved that Leicester might be asked what was delaying his departure for Ireland, and he continued to chivvy away at the earl.39D’Ewes (C), 360; PJ i. 412.

Cooke evidently supported remedial action to curb royal policies in a number of other areas. During the long period before he was able to take his seat, he was named to commissions to root out popery in his home county and in Monmouthshire, where his kinsman, the Catholic Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester held sway.40Northants, RO, FH133, unfol. Once in the House, Cooke was named to Commons committees on disarming recusants, on exacted fees and commercial abuses, on rumours of armed assaults on the palace of Westminster.41CJ ii. 327b, 340a, 349b. That Catholic recusants in England were connected inseparably with Irish papist insurgents was implied in the referral of a bill to provide relief for victims of the Irish rebellion to the committee working to tighten anti-recusancy laws. Cooke was named as an additional member.42CJ ii. 350a. After the king’s attempt on the Five Members in January 1642, Cooke sat among those MPs who adjourned to the Guildhall to consider their position, was among those who conferred with the Lords on vindicating the privileges of Parliament, and was a member of the committee on the same subject at Grocers’ Hall: effectively a committee of safety.43CJ ii. 369a, 384a, 385a. He was part of a delegation to Windsor to try to extract a reply from the king to request an answer to Parliament’s petition.44PJ i. 210, 214.

There is no doubt of Cooke’s importance in the Commons in 1642. Between 5 January and 12 August, he was named to 65 committees. He served in 14 joint committees with the Lords, and was a reporter, manager or messenger in nine others with the upper House.45CJ ii. 369a-716b. A number of these committees were concerned with combating the menace of popery. Committees to prevent Irish Catholics from coming to England, to examine priests captured in Cornwall carrying letters from Spain, and to produce first an act for bringing the Irish rebels to heel, and then another to clarify that legislation, were typical of the work Cooke was involved in under this heading.46CJ ii. 447a, 453b, 468b, 493b. Following his earlier interest in the Irish rebellion, it was natural that Cooke was included among those named Commissioners for the Affairs of Ireland, as announced by John Pym on 24 February.47CJ ii. 453b. He became one of the most assiduous attenders of meetings of the commissioners: in April and May 1642, John Pym, Sir Walter Erle and he attended more often than anyone else.48PJ ii. 469; iii. 438. Cooke was asked to convey to Lord Leicester the Commons concern to eliminate from commission all military officers who had neglected their commissions in Ireland. Leicester’s dithering did not prevent the despatch of troops to Ireland, and on 21 April, Cooke was named a commissioner for raising an expeditionary force of 10,000 men.49CJ ii. 536b.

Cooke’s interest in military affairs in the rest of the kingdoms was a logical extension of his involvement in plans to suppress the Irish rising. He was involved in January 1642 in a conference with the Lords on pressing soldiers, in February in an order to pay the garrison at Portsmouth, and in moves (28 Feb., 14 Mar.) to justify to the public the Militia Ordinance of Parliament.50CJ ii. 419a, 457a, 461a, 478b. During debates on the ordinance he urged the merits of ordinance against statute on the grounds of precedent: he reported that in a parliament of Edward III an ordinance had been preferred for redress of grievances because it could be more easily altered subsequently.51PJ i. 302. On 29 March he took up to the Lords two Commons resolutions on the garrison of Hull and on the London militia, and was a reporter of a conference with them on arrangements for commissioning the summer fleet.52CJ ii. 505a, 510b. In the last week of May, as the crisis between king and Parliament deepened, he helped prepare statements on suppressing forces in Yorkshire, met with the Lords about the defence of the kingdom, and sat on committees concerned with the practicalities of despatching soldiers to Ireland.53CJ ii. 582a, 583b, 589a, 591a, 598b. Cooke’s robust position on military affairs was of a piece with his interest in reform generally. He was a member of committees against innovations in religion (17 Feb.), on the forfeiture of archiepiscopal estates (22 Feb.), for the better maintenance of the ministry (25 Mar.), and managed a conference with the Lords on 31 May on the proposed Westminster Assembly of Divines.54CJ ii. 438a, 448b, 496b, 595b.

Although he was not in favour of wholesale general charges against peers created during this Parliament, Cooke was active in pursuing those taken to be the enemies of both Houses. With John Wylde, he helped prepare charges against Sir John Gardiner, the recorder of London (22 Mar.) and against Sir Edward Dering*; and he was a member of the body that considered charges against Attorney-general Sir Edward Herbert* (23 Apr.). When on 1 April Henry Killigrew, MP for West Looe, was considered for disablement for his inflammatory remarks against parliamentary policies, Cooke was a teller with Henry Marten for those in favour of his expulsion, losing by 34 votes.55PJ i. 108; CJ ii. 507b. On 11 June he was a member of the body that was required to draw impeachments against 9 peers, and on the same day served with Wylde on a committee to bring pressure on those MPs who had not committed themselves to contribute to the embryonic parliamentary army.56CJ ii. 619a, 620a. He himself pledged two horses and £100 for the cause, and was empowered to commit the same by his absent friend, Sir Samuel Luke.57PJ iii. 467; Luke Letter Bks. 249. By this time, the pace of military activity was hot. As a commissioner for the army in Ireland, Cooke was active from early June at the latest in signing warrants for supplies and arms for the Irish expeditionary force.58SP28/1c/47, 67, 74; 1d/444. On 20 June, on a motion by William Pierrepont, Cooke had leave to go to the country, and was absent for a month between 21 June and 27 July. He must have gone to Gloucestershire, to begin military preparations there in his capacity as a deputy lieutenant. On his return to London, he had only a few weeks left on purely parliamentary business before he left the Commons for good. He helped prepare legislation on public fasting, and served on committees to re-arrange the venue of the Surrey assizes, and promote parliamentary declarations.59PJ iii. 105; CJ ii. 698a, 702b, 716b. His remaining activities were concerned with the impending war effort in Gloucestershire. He took to the Lords an order appointing Lord Saye and Sele as lord lieutenant of the county and helped produce additional instructions for the new county committees.60CJ ii. 705a, 712b. On 13 August, he and Nathaniel Stephens were required to return to their county to secure it, and two days later took the instructions for his county committee to the Lords for their approval. He was able to report their approval, with the qualification that they would not approve proceedings against Sir Baynham Throckmorton†, who was simply omitted from the county committee.61CJ ii. 719b, 720a, 721a.

On 25 and 26 August, the gentry of the city of Gloucester met to draw up 16 propositions, the first of which was a resolution to maintain a force ready to repel invaders from beyond the county borders. Each division of the county was to raise 240 horse and a foot company. The commander-in-chief under the lord lieutenant was to be the senior officer among the colonels of the divisions. Despite the defensive, even neutral tone of the first proposition, this was a declaration for Parliament. There was to be submission to the Militia Ordinance, and the gentry were to lend on the propositions of Parliament.62A Relation ... likewise sixteen propositions presented at the general meeting (1642) (E.116.15). The day after these propositions were drawn up, an agreement was reached between the deputy lieutenants, including Cooke, and a number of men who took senior commissions in the county force, an upgrading of the militia.63SP28/14/67. There may not have been widespread gentry approval of this development, but it marked the beginnings of the Gloucestershire parliamentarian force.64A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Glos. 1640-1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), 34. Cooke was active in military preparations in the county, including the removal of its powder magazine to Cirencester. On 19 October, With Nathaniel Stephens and Edward Stephens*, he called for a meeting at the Booth Hall, Gloucester, about the public safety.65Glos. RO, D2510: Cooke, Stephens and Stephens to John Smyth, 19 Oct. 1642. The county was contested by both sides, and in order to promote the parliamentary cause in the region, Cooke travelled outside Gloucestershire to Hereford, where he collaborated with Sir Robert Harley*. They wrote to Parliament on 22 November to request the appointment of the 1st earl of Stamford (Henry Grey*) as commander-in-chief of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire.66Add. 70004, f. 334. Despite Cooke’s ventures outside his own county, however, he was unable to command a force to relieve Brampton Bryan castle in Herefordshire, home of the Harleys.67Warmington, Civil War in Glos. 36.

Cooke was a leader among the gentry committee that garrisoned Cirencester for Parliament. After raids from there on Burford on 1 January 1643, Prince Rupert launched a counter-attack (7 Jan.) but was repelled by an influx of parliamentarian troops from neighbouring garrisons. On 2 February, however, Rupert successfully stormed Cirencester. The town was sacked, some leading parliamentarians were captured, and over 1,000 prisoners were led in chains to prisons in Oxford. According to royalist accounts, the townspeople cried that ‘Sir Robert Cooke, Mr Stevens [Nathaniel Stephens*] Mr George [John George*] and their preachers had undone them’.68Glos. RO, D2688, f. 87v; Continuation of certain speciall and remarkable passages no. 31 (6-9 Feb. 1643) n.p. (E.89.1); A relation of the taking of Cicester (1643), sig. A2.iv (E.90.7); Corbet, ‘An historical relation’, 22. Cooke was not among the captured, but only days after this disaster, on 5 February, the army of Lord Herbert of Raglan (Edward Somerset, later 2nd marquess of Worcester) moved up from the Forest of Dean to camp at Highnam Court, his house. Cooke was not present, but suffered losses as a result of the occupation. On 11 February, an ordinance to associate counties in western England was published, under the generalship of Sir William Waller. Cooke was an obvious choice as a senior officer, but there was delay in forming the force. On 9 March, Cooke reported to the House that Rupert was approaching Bristol: perhaps the MP was there.69Add. 31116. p. 62 By 27 March, Cooke was active in raising a regiment in the new army.70Luke Letter Bks. 49. It was first deployed to garrison Tewkesbury, which had been taken from the royalist Sir William Russell by Edward Massie*. Cooke was installed as governor, but did not stay there beyond early June, when he was posted to Parliament’s western expedition.71Glos. RO, D2688, f. 88v; Corbet, ‘An historical relation’, 37. After leaving the town, he moved with his unit first to Gloucester, and on 6 June he sent letters from the committee there to the Commons.72CJ iii. 116b. On 8 June he made his will and on the 13th, was reported to be at Bath, joining Waller with a force of 900 Welsh, perhaps the remnants of Lord Herbert’s destroyed royalist force.73PROB11/194/318; S. Peachey and A. Turton, War in the West: the Fall of the West (1994), vi. 619.

Cooke’s will was a robust defence of the values for which he had gone to war. He left sums due to him as fines on the important royalists Lord Goring (George Goring*) and Sir John Wintour, and used the document as a claim for his losses:

Whereas I have suffered much loss from the enemies to king and Parliament, my humble petition is to the honourable Parliament that out of the estates of such persons of quality, especially of the popish religion, as held my house almost 5 weeks by force against the Parliament, they will be pleased to order a recompense.74PROB11/194/318.

According to the Gloucestershire royalist, Richard Berkeley, Cooke died in June 1643, probably soon after making his will.75Glos. RO, D2700/QP1/2. The precise circumstances of his death are obscure, but another possibility is that he died somewhat later, of wounds or sickness at the battle of Roundway Down (13 July), where his regiment was destroyed. In October that year, letters were read in the House relating to his property in Gloucester, and the House referred the matter of relief for his children to the committee at Gloucester, suggesting they were familiar with the contents of the will.76CJ iii. 287b. While Cooke would have been reasonably content with the proceedings of the Commons in his case, he would have been less happy with the defection of his eldest son, William, to the king’s side, which rendered his estate liable to sequestration. The estate passed to the control of Sir Robert’s second son, Edward*, and his widow was encouraged to leave Gloucester. As late as November 1645, the state’s financial debt to Cooke was still the subject of discussion in the Commons.77CJ iv. 346a. His early death robbed the Commons of one of its most energetic activists, but his second son, like his first, made his way across to the king’s party, and Sir Robert’s combative career was conveniently overlooked. This Sir Robert Cooke is not to be confused with the son of the jurist, Sir Edward Coke†.78D’Ewes (C), 107n.