COOKE, Thomas (d. by 1682), of Hunt’s Hall, Pebmarsh, Essex.

Thomas Cooke’s ancestors had been tenant farmers at Pebmarsh, a village in north Essex close to the Suffolk border, since at least the early sixteenth century.26Vis. Essex, i. 383; Morant, Essex, ii. 263. When his grandfather, also called Thomas Cooke, died in 1621 he described himself only as a yeoman and left some smallholdings at Gestingthorpe, Little Maplestead and Lamarsh, all of which were close to Pebmarsh. He bequeathed the first two to his grandson, the future MP.27PROB11/138/472; Waters, Geneal. Gleanings, i. 673-4. His daughter Elizabeth, the MP’s aunt, married the controversial preacher Hugh Peters. Both the MP’s younger brothers, Joseph and George, emigrated to New England and the latter went on to become governor of Wexford in Ireland during the Cromwellian conquest.28S.E. Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass. 1935), 372-3; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 579-81. Thomas’s first wife, Elizabeth Duke, was a cousin once removed of John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony.29Winthrop Pprs. ii. 85-6. Thomas presumably inherited some other lands or leases at Pebmarsh on the death of his father, but by the late 1630s he had very slender claim to be of gentry status. Thus his emergence as a leading member of the county community during the 1640s is puzzling.

That he strongly and actively supported Parliament from the outset of the civil war is clear enough. From early 1643 he was included on all the major parliamentary commissions in Essex, including those for the assessments and for sequestration.30A. and O. Moreover, he was soon attending meetings of the Eastern Association Committee in Cambridge.31Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 223; HMC 7th Rep. 550-1, 555-6, 561-2, 565; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 352. On 1 August 1643 he and the other members of that committee wrote to Sir Thomas Barrington* and the other Essex deputy lieutenants asking them to send troops to Cambridge to counter the threat from William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle.32HMC 7th Rep. 557, 558; Suff. ed. Everitt, 79-80. Two days later they wrote to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, requesting that the prisoners being held at Cambridge be moved elsewhere.33Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 353. In discussing this letter Sir Simonds D’Ewes* described Cooke as governor of Cambridge, an appointment which is possible but otherwise unrecorded.34Harl. 165, f. 136v. (Henry Mildmay* would certainly be appointed to that position by the spring of 1644.)

There is no doubt that Cooke held a military position. When the Eastern Association committee ordered various improvements to the security of Cambridge in April 1643, they had directed those instructions to ‘Colonel Cooke’.35Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 344; Varley, Cambridge during the Civil War, 114. His close friend, the vicar of Earls Colne, Ralph Josselin, later referred to him by that title and at the Restoration George Bush, a feltmaker from South Halstead, complained that he had been imprisoned by Cooke, a ‘pretended colonel of a foot regiment’.36Josselin, Diary, 48, 52; HMC 7th Rep. 129. One of the three militia regiments raised by the Essex deputy lieutenants in 1643 which served in the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, included a Captain Cooke.37L. Spring, The Regiments of the Eastern Association (Bristol, 1998), i. 33; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. That he was then promoted to colonel is not impossible, not least because exactly such a vacancy occurred on Barrington’s death, although that was not until September 1644. Whatever the truth of this, Cooke was again attending the Eastern Association meetings in Cambridge during the winter months of 1644-5.38SP28/21, ff. 53-9, 62, 65-9, 72, 77, 80-1, 83-90, 96, 99-103; SP28/23, ff. 189, 268, 489; SP28/26, ff. 107, 116; Luke Letter Bks. 398, 400, 601, 603. In late January 1645, when the New Model was under discussion, that committee sent Cooke and Robert Castell* to Westminster to lobby on their behalf, although Henry Mildmay told the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) that he would have preferred an alternative to Cooke because ‘I conceive he may do better service at Cambridge than London’.39Suff. ed. Everitt, 83; Holmes, Eastern Assoc. 121.

There is also some evidence, beyond his involvement in the commission for sequestration of delinquents, that Cooke could be counted among the godly. In January 1648 Josselin attended a meeting of local clergymen held at Cooke’s house at which the baptism of infants was debated.40Josselin, Diary, 110. This suggests the existence of a classis at Pebmarsh, perhaps modelled on the famous meetings which had taken place at Dedham just over ten miles away. Following the death of his first wife in childbirth in early 1646, Cooke married a distant relative of Oliver St John*.41Morant, Essex, ii. 263.

With the creation of the New Model army, the Essex regiments reverted to serving as the county’s trained bands. Cooke seems to have continued as one of their colonels. His greatest challenge came in the summer of 1648 with the uprising in the south east and the siege of Colchester. In early June the Kentish rebels crossed into Essex and captured the county committee at Chelmsford. Cooke escaped only because heavy rain had delayed his attendance.42Josselin, Diary, 127. Prompt action by him and Sir Thomas Honywood* then secured the county magazine at Braintree, a move which earned them the thanks of the Commons and the Derby House Committee.43CJ v. 587b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 105, 108. The pair were ordered to co-operate with Edward Whalley* to contain the rebels.44CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 108, 110, 111, 112. When the rebels took refuge at Colchester, Cooke’s militia regiment was among those which helped besiege the town and he was among the officers who accepted the town’s surrender on 27 August.45Diary of the Siege of Colchester; LJ x. 478a. The following year the council of state entrusted Cooke and Honywood with the task of dismantling Colchester’s remaining defences.46CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 181.

Cooke retained all his local offices in the aftermath of the regicide and the council of state confirmed his militia commission in early 1650.47CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 499; 1650, pp. 449, 504, 508, 509, 513, 517; SP28/227: acquittance, 10 Apr. 1651 As in 1648, he worked in close partnership with Honywood. In October 1650 they were asked to investigate the provision of poor relief in Bocking, a town which had been badly hit by the decline in the local clothing industry. The following month they also presented the council with proposals for the construction of a fort on the Isle of Mersea to protect the approaches to Colchester, Maldon and Chelmsford from the sea.48CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 399, 449, 461.t Charles Stuart’s invasion of England in August 1651 resulted in the Essex militia regiments being called out to join the army. By 26 August Cooke’s regiment had got as far as Dunstable and it is probable that they had reached Worcester by 3 September for the decisive battle in the campaign.49CSP Dom. 1651, p. 372. Along with all the other Essex militia commanders, on their return journey he was rewarded with an honorary doctorate in civil law by Oxford University.50Ath. Ox. iv. pt. ii. 168; Al. Ox.

Meanwhile, the regicide had created a much greater opportunity for him. He was one of 13 trustees appointed under the terms of the Act for the sale of royal lands, passed by the Rump in July 1649, to carry out the disposal of the estates formerly owned by Charles I, his wife and the prince of Wales. Since his name appeared first in the list, it was probably assumed that he would act as chairman. Eight months later a similar body, comprising the same 13 trustees plus a further 12 names, was created to sell off the fee-farm rents hitherto claimed by the crown.51A. and O. These two privatizations of crown assets were to prove crucial to the solvency of the republic over the next few years, with the royal lands raising almost £2 million by the end of 1653 and the fee-farm rents raising £1.4 million over the same period.52M. Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy under the Cromwellian Protectorate (1934, repr. 1972), 41. The sale of crown estates overseen by Cooke amounted to the largest single transfer of land in England since the dissolution of the monasteries. How far Cooke personally profited from these schemes cannot be established. His one known land acquisition in this period was a private transaction in 1652 by which he obtained an small estate at Pebmarsh, Hunt’s Hall, from the Sewell family.53Morant, Essex, ii. 263.

It was probably on the basis of his influence at Westminster that Cooke was elected to serve as one of the 12 Essex MPs in the 1654 Parliament. On 15 August, before he set out for London, Josselin held a prayer meeting at Cooke’s house for him and Dionysius Wakeringe* at which he cautioned Cooke ‘that he might not be a vessel of dishonour’.54Josselin, Diary, 329. In practice, Cooke left no trace on the proceedings of this Parliament. More important were his appointments as a commissioner for scandalous ministers in Essex and a trustee for the sale of forests which were made by the council of state in the week preceding the new Parliament.55A. and O. The trust for the sale of forests was simply the ten senior members of the earlier royal land and fee-farm rents trusts, again headed by Cooke. This time he benefited directly from the sales, as he reserved for himself the wood at Wickham St Pauls (a parish adjacent to Pebmarsh), which had belonged to the dean and chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral. He was said to have stripped it of all its timber during the few years in which it was in his possession.56Morant, Essex, ii. 276.

Cooke’s various appointments kept him busy for the remainder of the decade. As a justice of the peace he took part in 1655 in the prosecution of the Colchester Quaker, James Parnell. Other local Quakers later claimed that Cooke’s estates were ‘wasted and came to little’ as divine retribution for this.57J. Parnell, The Fruits of the Fast (1655), sigs. B2v-[B3v], C2v (E.854.14); The Lambs Defence against Lyes (1656), 17 (E.881.1); The First Publishers of Truth, ed. N. Penney (1907), 97. Cooke was also one of the Essex militia commissioners thanked by Oliver Cromwell in 1655 for their vigilance during Penruddock’s rising.58CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 78, 92. Later that year Hezekiah Haynes*, whose sister Elizabeth was married to Cooke’s brother Joseph, became the local deputy major-general. Cooke’s association with the prevailing regime may explain why he was not elected to the 1656 Parliament.

Cooke’s participation in local government came to an abrupt end with the Restoration. By late 1661 his former colleagues on the commission of the peace were summoning him to account for the public money he had handled before 1660.59Essex QSOB ed Allen, 201. The commissioners for defaulting accountants probably also proceeded against him for the same purpose.60E113/8: list of Essex defaulters, n.d. For the next 20 years he seems to have reverted to his former obscurity. The deaths of one son in 1659 and another in about 1678 left him without a male heir.61Josselin, Diary, 442; PROB11/359/564. When he prepared his will in early 1680, he specified that most of his estates should be divided between his brother Joseph and his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Anthony Parsons. By the time the will was proved in November 1682, not only Cooke but also his daughter was dead. He had asked to be buried between his two wives in the churchyard at Pebmarsh. Perhaps the most revealing of his bequests was the £11 he left to be distributed among any ‘poor ministers as are turned out of their living because they conform not’.62PROB11/371/418. He had evidently remained true to the religious beliefs which had probably driven him throughout his public career in the 1640s and 1650s. No other member of the family sat in Parliament.