BROOKE, Henry (1611-64), of Norton Hall, Runcorn, Cheshire

Brooke belonged to a cadet branch of a minor Cheshire gentry family, the Brookes of Leighton.31Vis. Cheshire, 45; Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. pt. 2, p. 680. His great-great-grandfather had purchased the dissolved monastery of Norton (with its appurtenances in Cheshire and Lancashire), on the south bank of the Mersey, from the crown in 1545 and had made it the family’s principal residence.32Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. pt. 2, 680; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 401. Between 1580 and 1634, however, the Brookes sold off a large part of their Cheshire estate, although there are signs that Brooke himself reversed or at least halted this trend.33SP16/20/41, f. 126v; Cheshire RO, DBN/B/2/7; Wanklyn, ‘Landed Society’, 458. Nevertheless, the family’s declining fortunes may help to explain why he seems to have attended neither university nor the inns of court (although his will contains references to his law books) and to have made very little impression upon county affairs before the 1640s.34Cheshire RO, WS 1665, will of Sir Henry Brooke bt.

Brooke was among the signatories to the indenture returning Sir William Brereton and Sir Thomas Aston for Cheshire to the Short Parliament in 1640.35C219/42/1/50. He signed the county’s petition to the Lords of February 1641 in favour of episcopacy – although not the second such petition in December – and was among the organisers of its ‘neutralist’ Remonstrance of July-August 1642, urging joint action by king and Parliament to prevent the ‘dissolution of the fabric of this blessed government’.36PA, Main Pprs. 27 Feb. 1641; 20 Dec. 1641; Harl. 2107, ff. 6r-v; Morrill, Cheshire, 58-9; R. Cust, P. Lake, Gentry Culture, and the Politics of Religion: Cheshire on the Eve of the Civil War (Manchester, 2020), 338-41; R.N. Dore, ‘1642: the coming of civil war to Cheshire’, Trans. Lancs. and Cheshire Antiquarian Soc. lxxxvii. 51. There is no evidence for the assertion that Brooke was living with his in-laws in Nottinghamshire during ‘the early stages of the fighting in Cheshire’ and that he made no meaningful contribution to the parliamentarian cause until after the battle of Nantwich in January 1644.37Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 330. On the contrary, he was active during the winter of 1642-3 on the Cheshire ‘council of war’ for raising money on the propositions to maintain the parliamentarian army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. Early in 1643, with Brereton’s assistance, he garrisoned Norton Hall and defended both it and the crossing of the Mersey against the nearby royalist garrison of Halton Castle.38Cheshire RO, DCH/X/15/14; ZP/Cowper/2, f. 33; Civil War in Cheshire, 240-1, 242-3; Cheshire Civil War Tracts, 24-5; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 232-3. Appointed to the Cheshire county committee in February 1643, he seems to have combined his activities as a committeeman – which were extensive – with the role of a sequestrator of delinquents’ estates for north Cheshire.39SP28/224, f. 328 and passim; SP28/225; HMC Portland, i. 96; Morrill, Cheshire, 186.

Brooke’s motives in siding with Parliament were not based primarily, it seems, on zeal in the cause of further reformation in religion. The claim that the Brookes of Norton were among the handful of Cheshire gentry families ‘who can be clearly shown to have been puritans in the 1630s’ cannot be substantiated.40Morrill, Cheshire, 52; Wanklyn, ‘Landed Society’, 501. As already noted, Brooke signed at least one of the Cheshire petitions supporting episcopacy; and in his will, he would request to be buried ‘after the manner of our Church of England, for in the profession of religion now established in the Church of England, I cheerfull[y] resolve by the assistance of the Holy Spirit to live and die’.41Cheshire RO, WS 1665, will of Sir Henry Brooke bt. Admittedly, he wrote these words in 1663, and his phrasing suggests that his commitment to the episcopal Anglican church had not always been so steadfast. Nevertheless, it was not the final testament that might be expected of a man who had fought alongside such godly paladins as Sir William Brereton and Colonel Robert Duckenfeild*.

Brooke had been commissioned as a colonel of horse under Brereton by early 1644, when Parliament appointed him sheriff of Cheshire (probably on Brereton’s recommendation) – an office he retained until late 1647.42CJ iii. 354b, 440a, 484b; LJ vi. 384a, 703a; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 324; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 18. It has been suggested that Brooke belonged to a ‘middle party’ in Cheshire parliamentarian politics between Brereton’s closest allies (mostly his military subordinates) and his opponents, many of them deputy lieutenants, led by Sir George Booth and his grandson (Sir) George Boothe*.43Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 14, 353; iii. 89. Brooke certainly signed several of the petitions and remonstrances to Parliament in 1645 and 1646 that were implicitly critical of Brereton’s influence over the county’s military and political affairs.44Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 220-1; PA, Main Pprs. 24 Sept. 1646, f. 113; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 351; iii. 148-51; Morrill, Cheshire, 152-3. However, his relations with Brereton seem to have remained at least cordial.45Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 121, 255-6. And it seems unlikely that Brereton would have condoned Brooke retaining the politically important office of sheriff for so long had he regarded him as an opponent.46Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 138.

Brooke apparently had little difficulty accommodating himself to the establishment of the Rump, attending meetings of the Cheshire quarter sessions during 1649 and 1650 and remaining active on the county committee into the early 1650s.47SP28/224, f. 295; Cheshire RO, QJB 1/6, ff. 203v, 210, 231. With the Rump preparing for the invasion of Scotland in the summer of 1650, the council of state commissioned him as a colonel of horse and foot in the Cheshire militia.48CSP Dom. 1650, p. 507, 509. He was also among the Cheshire officers appointed to the court martial that tried and condemned to death the royalist leader James Stanley†, 7th earl of Derby in the autumn of 1651.49Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, p. cccxxxvi. However, he attended only one of the trial sessions and was not present when the earl’s claim for indemnity under the articles of war was rejected and he was voted guilty as charged.

Brooke’s name is conspicuous by its absence from the Cheshire commission for ejecting scandalous ministers in August 1654, although he was involved that month in recommending a minister to Oliver Cromwell* for one of the county’s livings.50Mins. of the Cttee. for Plundered Ministers rel. to Lancs. and Cheshire ed. Shaw, 47. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Brooke was returned for Cheshire, apparently taking the fourth (and last) place.51Perfect List of the Members Returned (1654, 669 f.19.8). His appeal to the Cheshire voters probably rested in part upon his record of service in the county, and partly also upon his standing as the lord of an estate worth perhaps as much as £780 a year before the war – which he had augmented in 1651 by purchasing (with the proceeds of his arrears of army pay) Halton Castle from the trustees for the sale of crown lands.52E121/1/5/43; ‘Wanklyn, ‘Landed Society’, 306. Brooke received no committee appointments in this Parliament, and it seems probable that, like Boothe and John Crewe II, he failed to take his seat.53Supra, ‘George Boothe’; infra, ‘John Crewe II’.

Brooke’s lack of involvement in proceedings at Westminster in 1654-5 is consistent with his apparent failure to seek re-election thereafter. Nevertheless, like his brothers he was a loyal servant of the protectorate.54Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 402. He played his part as a Cheshire militia commissioner in the wake of Sir John Penruddock’s rising of early 1655 and signed the declaration of the county’s justices of the peace that spring against ‘that dangerous design of late transacted by the old and grand enemies to the freedom and peace of this nation’.55CHES21/4, f. 327; TSP iii. 217, 304, 338. He was also one of the more active members of the 1655 Cheshire commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth.56Cheshire RO, DLT/B38, p. 10; DSS/1/7/66/54, 55, 70; TSP v. 22. In the Cheshire elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, he supported the candidacy of his uncle Peter Brooke*; and he appeared alongside Brooke that summer as one of the ringleaders of the Presbyterian-royalist rising under Boothe.57Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 138; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 87, 170; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 423; Morrill, Cheshire, 295, 311. Precisely what drove Brooke to this desperate course is not known, but he suffered heavily for it, enduring a six-month spell in prison and – with his eldest son’s brother-in-law Richard Legh* and his own brother-in-law Thomas Marbury* – removal from the Cheshire bench.58C231/6, p. 442; Bodl. Rawl. A.259, pp. 111, 139, 140, 144; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 157, 220.

Brooke was released by Parliament on 21 February 1660 – the day the secluded Members were re-admitted to the House – and in March, he was restored to the Cheshire bench, which he seems to have graced on at least four occasions during the early 1660s.59CJ vii. 847b, 853a; Cheshire RO, QJB 3/1, ff. 3, 11, 21, 94v. Brooke almost certainly welcomed the Restoration, and signed at least one of the loyal addresses to the king from the Cheshire gentry in the spring of 1660.60S SP29/1/35, f. 68. Evidently trusted by the royalist authorities, he was appointed a Cheshire deputy lieutenant in October 1661 and created a baronet in December 1662.61Cheshire RO, DLT/B11, pp. 108, 127; CB. He was also granted the lease of the crown lands he had acquired at Halton.62Cheshire RO, DBN/C/1/11.

Brooke died in the autumn of 1664 and was buried at Runcorn on 7 October.63Runcorn All Saints par. reg. In his will, he asked to be buried

without the needless stir which accompanies prepared funerals; I mean with as much privacy and easy expense as [possibly] may be. For I that have so little advanc’d (by my improvident living) the temporal estate of [my] children would be most loathe my death should hurt them.64Cheshire RO, WS 1665, will of Sir Henry Brooke bt.

Again, this reference to his ‘improvident living’ does not point to a man overburdened with puritan doubts and scruples. He reckoned that his largest debt was the £700 he owed his youngest son Pusey. Brooke was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.