BREREWOOD, Robert (1588-1654), of Bridge Street, St Mary-on-the-Hill, Chester, Cheshire.

Brerewood was descended from a Chester glover who had served as one of the city’s sheriffs in 1531-2.32Earwaker, St Mary-on-the-Hill, 256. His grandfather, Robert – a glover, tanner and timber merchant – had been elected mayor of Chester on three occasions during the late sixteenth century and had died in 1601 with a personal estate valued at £1,600.33Earwaker, St Mary-on-the-Hill, 256; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 102; D. Woodward, Men at Work (Cambridge, 1995), 47. Brerewood’s father, John, had died shortly after serving as city sheriff for 1598-9.34Earwaker, St Mary-on-the-Hill, 256.

Brerewood received a gentleman’s education at Oxford and the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1615. His erudition was such that his uncle, the antiquary and professor of astronomy Edward Brerewood, bequeathed him his library and his unpublished manuscript works.35‘Edward Brerewood’, Oxford DNB. Brerewood oversaw the publication of several of these manuscripts and contributed a lengthy preface to his uncle’s Enquiries Touching the Diversities of Languages and Religions (1614) in which he demonstrated not only considerable learning, but also a conviction of the need for peace and unity among all Protestants in the face of ‘Romish superstition’.36E. Brerewood, Enquiries Touching the Diversities of Languages and Religions Through the Chief Parts of the World (1614), 4-13. These sentiments would have appealed strongly to James I, and Brerewood may indeed have been angling for the king’s attention. At one point in his preface, he insisted that there was never a better hope for Protestant unity ‘than in this age, which hath afforded us the blessing of our most gracious sovereign, so religiously studious of public peace and so exquisitely enabled with many rare endowments to promote so pious and renowned an action’.37Brerewood, Languages and Religions, 3-4, 12.

Brerewood dedicated his uncle’s tract to the archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot. He certainly had need of friends at court, for at some point between 1612 and 1618 he became involved in factional moves at Chester to oust members of the powerful civic family, the Whitbys, from the office of clerk of the Pentice, or town clerk.38SP16/89/111, ff. 270-2; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 100; A. M. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of the Political, Constitutional, Social and Economic History of the City of Chester 1550-1662’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1971), 75-8. By June 1618, the Whitbys’ opponents in the corporation were strong enough to have them dismissed and to appoint Brerewood in their place – a victory made all the easier by the corporation’s receipt of a royal letter on Brerewood’s behalf in which he was described as one ‘learned in the laws’.39Harl. 2082, ff. 147r-v; Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 89; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 100. But having earned the undying enmity of the Whitby faction, which included the city’s recorder Edward Whitby†, Brerewood’s position in the civic community was vulnerable. Nor did he help his cause by refusing to pay a £30 entrance fee requested by the corporation – declaring it unlawful – and by farming out his office in order to attend to his private legal practice.40Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 110, 123, 143, 146. His enemies were able to amass considerable evidence of malpractice and negligence against him – accusing him also of ‘uncivil and disrespective carriages’ towards successive mayors and other civic office-holders – and early in 1627, Edward Whitby and the mayor manoeuvred the corporation into suspending him from office.41Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 143; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 100; Johnson, ‘City of Chester’, 81-7. They then had the case referred to the privy council, side-stepping the pro-Brerewood majority in the corporation – a group apparently led by Alderman William Gamull†.42VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 100; CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 117, 420; APC 1627-8, pp. 164-5, 178. Brerewood and his supporters agitated for his re-instatement, but the privy council appointed one of his adversaries to examine the case; and in January 1628, Brerewood resigned after admitting that he had put his private practice before attending to his duties as clerk.43CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 201; 1627-8, pp. 94, 117, 260; APC 1627, pp. 157-8, 372-3, 484-5; 1627-8, pp. 12-14, 108, 149, 164-5, 177-80; Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 146-7. When the next mayor, John Ratcliffe† – the father of Brerewood’s legal colleague and fellow Middle Templar John Ratcliffe* – attempted to have Brerewood appointed one of the city’s counsel, the motion was twice rejected by the corporation, although on the second occasion by only one vote.44Infra, ‘John Ratcliffe’; Harl. 2105, ff. 272-3; Cheshire RO, ZAF/14/16, 17; Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 156. Brerewood had to wait more than three years before finally securing appointment as one of the city’s counsel, and on this occasion he apparently made more effort to consolidate his support within the corporation, which elected him the city’s recorder in April 1639.45Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 173, 199. His salaries as recorder of Chester and as chief justice of Anglesey, Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire – an office he secured in 1637 – amounted to almost £100 a year.46SP23/197, p. 139; Coventry Docquets, 8.

With the recordership also went appointment as an alderman and a tradition of almost automatic selection as one of the city’s MPs. Accordingly, in the election at Chester to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Brerewood was returned as junior partner to Sir Thomas Smithe. He clearly enjoyed the backing of the corporation, although as the owner of numerous messuages in and about Chester he also had a strong proprietorial interest in the borough.47Supra, ‘Chester’; Cheshire IPM ed. Stewart-Brown, 75-8. Not all the office-holders had endorsed his return. Indeed, his fellow alderman Francis Gamul* (the nephew of William Gamull) had briefly put himself forward as a rival candidate, fearing that Brerewood would obtain a parliamentary order for demolishing the weir on the Dee, at Chester, which sustained the head of water needed to power Gamul’s lucrative corn mills. Brerewood had satisfied Gamul that he would not act in a manner prejudicial to his interests, but not all of Gamul’s friends had been convinced, and several, including Alderman Charles Walley*, had cast their votes for one of the Gamul family, probably William, although to no effect.48CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 564, 590. Brerewood received no committee appointments in the Short Parliament and made only one recorded contribution to debate – and that of apparently little note.49Aston’s Diary, 35. In the elections to the Long Parliament the following autumn, Brerewood apparently chose not to stand and was replaced by his erstwhile rival Francis Gamul. Brerewood later assured the corporation that securing re-election for Chester was ‘an honour I was not ambitious of, but take it as a favour from you to have been omitted, especially since you did choose so honest and deserving a gentleman in my place’.50Harl. 2135, f. 44.

One reason for Brerewood’s lack of electoral ambition in the autumn of 1640 may have been his appointment a few months earlier in what would prove to be Charles I’s last remodelling of the order of serjeants-at-law.51Baker, Serjeants at Law, 187; E. Foss, Biographica Juridica (1870), 24. Brerewood’s official patrons for the swearing-in ceremonies included the Chester alderman William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby, and the future royalist John Talbot, 10th earl of Shrewsbury.52Baker, Serjeants at Law, 440. Even more revealing of his future allegiance was his signing of the Cheshire petition to Parliament of February 1641 in support of episcopacy.53PA, Main Pprs. 27 Feb. 1641. His loyalty was rewarded at some point between mid-January and late March 1642, when he was appointed one of the queen’s serjeants-at-law.54Le Neve, Mon. Angl. ii. 30. Not long after receiving this further assurance of royal favour, Brerewood clashed with the man who would emerge as Chester’s leading parliamentarian, Alderman William Edwardes*, after the latter had publicly accused the mayor (the future royalist Thomas Cowper) of having ‘abused’ Parliament and neglected its commands.55Infra, ‘William Edwardes’; Cheshire RO, DCC/14/93, 94; A. M. Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester during the civil wars and Interregnum 1640-62’, in Crisis and Order in English Towns ed. P. Clark, P. Slack (1972), 207, 208. Brerewood went head-to-head with Edwardes again on 8 August, when he helped Cowper to foil an attempt by Edwardes and Sir William Brereton* to rally military support among the citizens.56Harl. 2125, f. 65v. In response to this incident the Commons, on 12 August, summoned Cowper and Brerewood to Westminster as delinquents.57CJ ii. 717a.

Brerewood sided with the king at the outbreak of the civil war; and when Charles visited Chester in September 1642, he was on hand to deliver a loyal address in which he denounced the ‘malignant party that hath lately appeared amongst us’.58A True and Exact Relation of the Kings Entertainment in the City of Chester (1642), 7-8 (E.119.25). Although he never bore arms for the king, he was nonetheless active in the Cheshire commission of array during 1643.59Cheshire RO, ZML/2/286. The relative paucity of senior legal figures at the king’s disposal may help to explain why Brerewood was summoned to Oxford at the end of 1643, knighted and appointed a justice of the king’s bench and (in that capacity) assistant to the Lords in the Oxford Parliament.60Harl. 2135, f. 44; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 217; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 142. In February 1644, he informed the mayor of Chester that

the greater part of the Lords and Commons, Members of the two Houses of Parliament ... are here assembled [at Oxford] and do unanimously agree in labouring the peace of the kingdom in all honourable ways; so that now the slander cast upon his Majesty that he hath proceeded by ill counsellors is clearly taken off and his Majesty’s proceedings vindicated from all such unjust aspersions.61Harl. 2135, f. 44.

Brerewood remained at Oxford until its surrender to Parliament in June 1646.62CCC 1546. In October of that year he petitioned to compound on the Oxford articles, claiming that he had suffered losses to his estate in Chester amounting to £140 a year.63SP23/197, pp. 120, 129; CCC 1546-7. Certainly many of his houses in and about the city had been destroyed during the parliamentarian siege of 1645-6.64SP23/197, p. 115. His fine was set at one tenth – calculated at £659 – and having paid £266 he requested to be discharged the rest on the grounds that he had suffered damages to his estate and legal practice amounting to £3,130.65SP23/83, pp. 248-59; SP23/197, pp. 94, 111, 113, 139. In January 1649, his fine was reduced to £387, which he had paid in full by August 1650.

Brerewood died on 8 September 1654 and was buried the following day at his home parish of St Mary-on-the-Hill, Chester.66Le Neve, Mon. Angl. ii. 30; Earwaker, St Mary-on-the-Hill, 256. In his will, he bemoaned the ‘great losses’ he had sustained ‘in the late troubles’, whereby he was unable to provide for his family as he would have wished. In order to discharge his debts he had leased out a messuage (taking an entry fine of £340) ‘which in all conscience and equity’ ought to have gone to his wife and their eldest son. Similarly, and to his ‘great grief’, he had been forced to mortgage his lands in and near Chester to the tune of £1,200. Nevertheless, he felt able to charge his estate with legacies amounting to £800 for his daughters and younger sons – a sum that included money he claimed he was owed by Parliament on the Oxford articles (apparently in relation to his offices as one of the queen’s serjeants-at-law and a justice of the king’s bench). He also bequeathed £10 to his Presbyterian cousin John Ratcliffe and £20 towards repairing one of the chapels in the church of St Mary-on-the-Hill.67PROB11/259, ff. 163v-164v. Brerewood was the first and last of his line to enter Parliament.