Figure 7. Family tree of Lord and Lady Brooke.
Robert and Katherine Greville, Lord and Lady Brooke are omitted here.
Elizabeth Archbold, a servant to Lady Brooke; left an annuity of £5 p.a. in Brooke's will of 1640.
Simeon Ashe (d.1662), chaplain to Lord Brooke following his suspension from his Staffordshire parish for failing to read the Book of Sports. A Presbyterian, he was a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines and a chaplain in the Eastern Association under the earl of Manchester. ODNB; Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 92–93.
Godfrey Bosvile (1596–1658), of Gunthwaite, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was half-brother to Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke, and the MP for the borough of Warwick in the Long Parliament. He commanded a regiment of foot based in the town of Warwick from 1643 to the Self-denying ordinance. Bosvile was nominated as commissioner to try Charles I but did not act. He was nonetheless an active member of the Rump Parliament during the Commonwealth. Hughes.
Margery / Margaret Bosvile, née Greville (b. c.1595), daughter of Sir Edward Greville of Milcote, Warwickshire, married Godfrey Bosvile, in 1616. Referred to as Mary Bosvile in the accounts.
William Bosvile (1620–1662), the son of Godfrey and Margery Bosvile. He was a subscriber to the Irish Adventurers and as a member of the Inns of Court, was one of those who volunteered in 1642 to serve in the earl of Essex's lifeguard. Wounded at the battle of Cheriton in March 1644, he was promoted to major soon after and married Mary, a step-daughter of Isaac Pennington. Bosvile was a principal mourner at the funeral of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke in December 1658: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bosville-55 (accessed 10 February 2023).
John Bradley, a tenant of the Grevilles at Hackney, Bradley was prominent in the Virginia tobacco trade and a militant city parliamentarian from the early 1640s. An officer in the London Trained Bands, he was by 1644 second in command to Colonel John Venn in the Windsor Castle garrison: CAOD; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 338.
Brooke Bridges (1630–1702), aged barely eighteen, Brooke aided his brother William and his father John in checking Halford's and Hawksworth's accounts in 1647–1648. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in April 1647, later moving to Oxford. After graduating (BA and MA), Brooke was appointed as a Fellow of New College by the parliamentary visitors. He was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1662, and served as commissioner for forfeited lands in Ireland. He died childless in 1702, living in an apartment in Holland House, Kensington with his aged aunt, Katherine Ingram. A wealthy man, with extensive property in Ireland and stock in the Bank of England, he left generous bequests to more than twenty nephews and nieces, almost thirty great-nephews and great-nieces, along with money to repair the almshouses in Alcester founded by his father John and his uncle George Ingram: TNA, PROB 11/464/265.
Francis Bridges (1632–1688), eighth and youngest son of John the elder, baptized in Alcester in December 1632. Francis checked the copies of accounts in 1648, perhaps as a form of induction into service of the Grevilles. He may have acted as a companion to the 3rd Lord Brooke and his brothers before entering Gray's Inn in March 1650. He was chief receiver for Lord Brooke in London from the mid 1650s, described as the ‘comptroller’ at the funeral of the 3rd Lord Brooke in 1658. On the death of his brother Matthew, Francis returned to Alcester and took over as receiver in Warwickshire. His house in Alcester was assessed at nine hearths in the 1670 Hearth Tax. Francis died in 1688.
John Bridges (the elder), of Alcester, is perhaps the John Bridges, posthumous son of Anthony Bridges, baptized in Alcester in 1588. He married Elizabeth Wilcock in 1609 and ten of their children were baptized in Alcester between 1610 and 1632; another daughter and a son were perhaps born in London. He acted as Brooke's ‘solicitor’ and Receiver-General from the 1630s at least, and had a chamber in Brooke House, Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). He was an executor of Brooke's will. On his ’retirement’ in Hackney in 1649, his roles were taken over by his son William.
John Bridges (the younger: 1610–1663), born in Alcester, the eldest son of John Bridges senior, was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1635, as formerly of Clifford's Inn. He worked with his father as senior steward or solicitor for Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke, and like him was an executor of Brooke's will. John the younger was successively Captain, Major, and Colonel in Warwickshire's regiment of foot, 1642–1648, and Governor of Warwick Castle from 1643 to 1648. He was repeatedly accused of embezzling the king's goods seized before the battle of Edgehill, and although he was acquitted of corruption in 1651, the accusations were renewed at the Restoration. He certainly did well out of the war, gaining property in Ireland, and an estate in Kidderminster, in Worcestershire, where he became close to Richard Baxter, who considered him ‘a prudent, pious gentleman’. Bridges was a JP in both Warwickshire and Worcestershire in the 1640s and 1650s, and MP for Worcestershire in 1654. In Parliament he supported Baxter's campaign to defend the learned ministry. Bridges was a revenue commissioner and military commander in Ireland from the mid 1650s and represented an Irish seat in the 1656 Protectorate Parliament. He was amongst the military commanders who secured Dublin Castle in support of Monck's intervention in England. He died in 1663, having established his eldest son as a landed gentleman. Hughes thesis; HoP.
Matthew Bridges (1620–1677), of Alcester, fifth son of John senior, was baptized in Alcester in April 1620. He was an ensign in the earl of Essex's parliamentarian army in 1642, and became a captain of foot at Warwick Castle from August 1643. He acted as receiver for the Brooke estates in Warwickshire, in succession to Henry Hunt, from 1648 until his death in 1677. He was a Warwickshire JP during the 1650s and carried a banner at the funeral of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke. His Alcester house was assessed at five hearths in 1670.
William Bridges (1616–1663), third son of John Bridges, senior, of Alcester. William was baptized in Alcester, in February 1616. Although mainly London-based, a witness of Brooke's will, and involved with the Honourable Artillery Company with Brooke in the 1630s, he served briefly as a captain of horse in William Purefoy's regiment, but gave up his command in August 1643 to return to London. In the aftermath of Brooke's death, he was apparently needed to support Lady Brooke in London. He is often described in the accounts as ‘Major’, so is probably the Major William Bridges who served in the Worcestershire regiment of foot in 1645/6. William was admitted to Gray's Inn in August 1647, as the son of John Bridges of London, esquire, and succeeded his father as London receiver and auditor in 1649. With his brother Francis he carried a banner at the funeral of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke. William died in 1663. His will described him as ‘of Hackney, gent.’, and he had houses and land in London, Essex, and Gloucestershire. His wife was pregnant on his death and earlier bequests to his mother, brothers, and nephews were rescinded in favour of this unborn child. TNA, PROB 11/311/371; Adamson; Hughes; CAOD.
John Bryan (d.1676) of Barford, minister, and from 1644 Presbyterian minister in Coventry, ejected in 1662. Bryan acted as treasurer for the money raised upon the Propositions at Warwick in 1642–1643, and for a time as treasurer and chaplain to the Warwick Castle garrison: Hughes thesis; ODNB; Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 104–105.
Peter Burgoyne of Coventry and Wroxall, gentleman, and his wife ‘Mrs Burgaine’ were staunch Puritans, patrons of godly ministers. They were close to Thomas Dugard and other Brooke contacts, and Peter (d. c.1654) was active in the civil war administration of Warwickshire.
‘Mr Coleman’ either Charles Coleman (d.1664) or his son Edward (1622–1669), ‘distinguished musicians and composers’, listed as teachers of music in John Playford, A Musicall Banquet (1651). Taught singing and the guitar to Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, and his brother Robert: Page, The Guitar in Stuart England, 41–42.
Spencer Compton, earl of Northampton (1601–1643), tried to raise Warwickshire's trained bands for the king in the summer of 1642 and to secure the county arms magazine that Brooke had moved from Coventry to Warwick Castle. He was appointed royalist colonel-general of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire in early 1643 but was killed at the battle of Hopton Heath on 19 March 1643: ODNB.
James Cooke (c.1613–1683), surgeon at Warwick Castle and author of Mellificium Chirurgiae, Or, The Marrow of Surgery (London: 1648). In the third edition (1676), he detailed his treatment of the sick and wounded in the garrison. He was also pastor of a Congregationalist meeting in Warwick and in her later life, personal physician to Katherine, Lady Brooke.
Richard Cross was left an annuity of £25 p.a. for life in Brooke's will, and poll-tax was paid for him in 1641, suggesting that he was ‘living in’. He also had a chamber in Brooke House Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). He was perhaps the master of the horse, paid £20 p.a., usually in connection with travel and horses.
Henry Darley (c.1596–1671) of Buttercrambe, in Yorkshire, a close friend of Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke. He sat on the executive committee of the Sayebrooke project and colluded with Brooke to invite the Scottish invasion in the summer of 1640. ODNB; HoP.
Anne, Lady Digby (d.1697), née Russell, was sister to Katherine, Lady Brooke. She married George, Lord Digby, in 1636. It was through his marriage to Anne Russell that Lord Digby, as the boy's uncle, claimed the wardship of Fulke Greville, fifth son of Lord and Lady Brooke, in 1643: ODNB.
John Dillingham, a newsletter writer and tailor, was owed significant sums of money by the 2nd Lord Brooke at his death, for liveries and other clothes as well as for news. Dillingham was paid for letters, orders, and organizing payments for Brooke's midland association army. Dillingham was close to Oliver St John and later to Oliver Cromwell. His 1640s newsbooks including The Parliament Scout, were associated with the ‘middle group’, and later with the Independents: ODNB; Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers; TNA, SP 28/139/3.
Dr Isaac Dorislaus (1595–1649), first incumbent of a history lectureship established by Fulke Greville, 1st Lord Brooke, at Cambridge in 1627. Dorislaus helped draft the charge of treason in the trial of Charles I, and was stabbed to death by royalist assassins while on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands on 2 May 1649. Later that year, Lady Brooke settled a payment of £170 upon his son: ODNB; TNA, SP 25/62, fo. 339; SP 25/64, fo. 447; SP 25/94, fo. 443; WCRO, CR1886 BL2713 (BB551).
Hannah Dugard (d.1655), née Hanks, first wife of Thomas Dugard, did occasional work for the household. She was buried at Barford on 4 December 1655, described by her husband as ‘the most accomplished wife’. WCRO, Barford parish register.
Thomas Dugard (1608–1683), paid a retainer of £10 p.a. for clerical duties and occasional preaching. Dugard was a godly minister who was appointed Master of Warwick School by the 2nd Lord Brooke, and later succeeded John Bryan as minister of Barford, Warwickshire. ODNB; Hughes, ‘Thomas Dugard and his circle in the 1630s’, 771–793.
Francis Edes / Eades, Lincolnshire tenant and lawyer from a prominent Warwick family. Organized dinner for Knowle tenants during the Long Parliament election. Mr Francis Edes had a house of thirteen hearths in High Street Ward, Warwick, in 1670, and Mr John Edes had a house of ten hearths in Castle Street. A Mr Edes, ‘solicitor’ marched in the funeral procession for Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, while a kinsman, ‘Mr Eades the Apothecary’, provided medicine for the castle.
Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–1671) of Denton and Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, parliamentarian commander-in-chief of the New Model Army from 1645 to 1650. He rented a house in Queen Street, London, from Lady Brooke in 1648–1649: ODNB.
William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele (1582–1662), friend and ally of Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke, was closely associated with him in New England colonization and in opposition to Charles I's personal rule. Saye and Brooke were the only two peers to refuse the oath of loyalty demanded by Charles I on the eve of the First Bishops’ War; they were imprisoned at York and their studies were raided after the failure of the Short Parliament. A staunch Independent during the civil war but retired to Lundy in 1648 and took no part in the regicide or Protectorate: ODNB.
Elizabeth Fiennes, Viscountess Saye and Sele, was the daughter of John Temple of Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, and Stowe, Buckinghamshire, and sister of John Temple of Frankton, an ally of Brooke in 1642.
Thomas Fish, a senior estate official in Warwick, described in testimony to Parliament's accounts committee as ‘Mr Fish, of the park’ responsible for Wedgnock Park. He is described as ‘gent.’ and bailiff of Wedgnock Park in accounts of the 1650s. He was one of the bailiffs listed in the funeral procession for Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, in December 1658. Obviously close to Robert Greville, who left him £40 and an annuity of £10 for his wife. TNA, SP 28/253B; WCRO, CR1886, TN 23.
John and Anne Fisher, senior servants in London, paid £12 p.a. and £4 p.a. respectively.
Gualter Frost (1598–1652), of Chevington, Suffolk, and London, was a manciple of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a secret courier between the English opposition leaders and the Scots Covenanters in 1639–1640. He later became an intelligence officer for the Committee of Safety (1642–1643), co-secretary to the Committee of Both Kingdoms, and secretary to the Council of State (1649–1653). Adamson describes him as a member of Brooke's household but he seems to have been employed only on an ad hoc basis: ODNB.
Algernon Greville (1642–1662), fourth son of Robert and Katherine: Warwick Castle, Vol. 2, pp. 862–863.
Edward Greville (1641–1655), third son of Robert and Katherine: Warwick Castle, Vol. 2, pp. 862–863.
Francis Greville, 3rd Lord Brooke (1637–1658), eldest son of Robert and Katherine who succeeded as 3rd Lord Brooke on his father's death on 2 March 1643: Warwick Castle, Vol. 2, pp. 862–863.
Fulke Greville, 5th Lord Brooke (1643–1710), fifth son of Robert and Katherine, who succeeded his elder brother Robert as 5th Lord Brooke in 1677: Warwick Castle, Vol. 2, pp. 862–863.
Robert Greville, 4th Lord Brooke (1638–1677), second son of Robert and Katherine, who succeeded to the title on his elder brother's death in 1658: Warwick Castle, Vol. 2, pp. 862–863.
William Greville (d.1653), younger brother of Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke, resided at Beauchamp's Court Lodge, Warwickshire.
John Halford was a household official, steward, and rent-receiver to Lord Brooke. Paid £20 p.a. and board of £1 4s per month in 1640–1641. He went to New England on Brooke's behalf during 1634–1635 and travelled between Warwick and London with the family. He had a chamber in Brooke House, Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). He was a captain in the Warwick Castle garrison by December 1642. He became a sequestration commissioner and county committeeman during the 1650s. Halford witnessed Brooke's will in which he was left £50. He was also a captain, and then a major in Colonel Godfrey Bosvile's regiment of foot based in Warwick town, 1643–1645: WCRO, CR1886 (BB541) 2833; Hughes thesis, pp. 208, 327, 509, 511; CAOD.
William Halford, brother of Major John Halford above and paid £6 p.a.
Samuel Hartlib (c.1600–1662), educational reformer and intellectual living in London during the Civil War and in receipt of an allowance from Lord Brooke: ODNB.
Dorothy, Lady Haselrig, née Greville, was the sister of Robert, 2nd Lord Brooke. In 1634, she became the second wife of Sir Arthur Haselrig, MP, and spent much of 1641 with him in Brooke House, Holborn. ODNB; Adamson, 243.
Sir Arthur Haselrig (1601–1661), brother-in-law to Robert Greville, 2nd Lord Brooke; MP for Leicestershire in the Long Parliament, and fellow parliamentarian commander at the forefront of opposition to Charles I: ODNB.
Joseph Hawksworth (d.1669). Hawkesworth was probably a Yorkshireman, introduced to Lord Brooke by his half-brother Godfrey Bosvile. He is described as secretary to the 2nd Lord Brooke in civil war pamphlets, but accounts show him mainly as a household steward, receiving Warwickshire rents, overseeing the Warwick mills, and the chief official for the household at Warwick Castle. He was described as ‘(a right Cornelius) his Lordships trustie Servant, and the States valiant Souldier’ by Brooke's biographer. Hawkesworth served in the Warwickshire regiment of horse commanded by William Purefoy, and was at the siege of Lichfield when Brooke was killed. He saw service in Oxfordshire, as well as Warwickshire and at the battle of Rowton Heath in Cheshire. He succeeded John Bridges the younger as Governor of Warwick Castle in 1649, and was a Colonel of Foot and Major of Horse in the county militia throughout the 1650s, as well as serving as a Warwickshire JP and MP for Warwickshire in the 1656 and 1659 Protectorate Parliaments. From 1651 to the Restoration he lived in the gatehouse at Kenilworth Castle, confiscated from the crown to pay soldiers’ arrears. He carried the standard at the funeral of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, in 1658, and finally surrendered Warwick Castle to Robert, 4th Lord Brooke, in April 1660. Hughes thesis; CAOD.
James Hay, 2nd earl of Carlisle (d.1660), married Katherine Greville's sister, Margaret Russell, in 1632.
Thomas Hinde, witness to 2nd Lord Brooke's will; in the accounts, he served as the caterer or house steward at Warwick. He also kept the accounts of Warwick garrison from May 1643 to January 1645: TNA, E101/612/64.
Henry Hunt of Lindsey in the parish of Inkberrow in Worcestershire, served as the chief receiver for the Grevilles’ estates in Warwickshire and adjacent counties. He was one of three executors of the 2nd Lord Brooke's will, in which he was left £100 and entrusted with the education of Brooke's younger sons Robert and Edward. His own will, made in November 1647 and proved in December 1649 was witnessed by George Medley. Hunt's three sons were under age and his wife Katherine was his executrix. He owned land in Inkberrow, Feckenham and Alcester. Perhaps the son of Henry Hunt of Alcester who died in 1630, a prisoner in the King's Bench for debt: WCRO, CR1886 (BB541) 2833; TNA, PROB 11/210/478; PROB 11/157/197.
George Ingram, gent., of Alcester, London-based estate official, was married to Mrs Katherine Ingram, who had responsibilities for the Greville children. Brooke Bridges described them as his aunt and uncle, and George Ingram in his will of 1682 left £10 each to his nephew Francis, and his nieces Elizabeth, Dorothy, and Mary, children of his ‘late deare Brother [John] Bridges’. He left money to the poor of Alcester ‘where I was born’ and to those of St Andrews, Holborn, ‘where I have long inhabited’. He had been trained at Clifford's Inn. George described himself in his will as ‘stricken in age’ whereas Katherine, the sister or half-sister of John Bridges, senior, was, improbably but clearly alive when Brooke Bridges made his will in 1700. As the co-executor with Katherine of George Ingram's will, Brooke Bridges had taken responsibility for her estate, and aunt and nephew were living together.
William Jessop (1603–1675), of London, was a man of business for Robert Rich, earl of Warwick. He was secretary to the Providence Island Company and to the Sayebrooke Plantation Trustees, and responsible for the financial arrangements following the failure of the company. He was later executor to the will of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. ODNB.
Charles Johnson, a tenant in Alcester and bailiff, marched in the funeral procession of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, in December 1658.
Francis Leigh, Baron Dunsmore, later earl of Chichester (d.1653), of King's Newnham, a friend of Fulke Greville, 1st Lord Brooke, and sympathetic to the parliamentary opposition in 1640, but ultimately sided with the King. ODNB.
Sir Thomas Lucy (d.1640), Brooke's neighbour at Charlecote Park. He was a moderate Puritan, a patron of godly ministers, and was very briefly MP for Warwick borough in the Long Parliament. He died on 8 December 1640, after falling from his horse. ODNB.
George Medley. It is likely that two George Medleys, father and son, worked as gardeners for the Greville family, although there is no distinction between younger and elder in the accounts. George Medley, gardener of Warwick, made his will in December 1647 leaving his arms and gardening tools to his married son and namesake. Medley senior died after a long illness so it may be the younger George who features frequently in the accounts, as gardener in Warwick but also travelling to Holborn in 1640–1641, where there was a gardener's chamber. The younger Medley served as drummer in Halford's company in Warwick Castle garrison in 1642–1645 before, presumably, taking up gardening duties again from May 1645. He was involved with the survey of the castle in 1651. Worcestershire Archives, will proved 25 March 1648; TNA, SP 28/121A; SP 28/184.
William Purefoy (c.1580–1659), of Caldecote, Warwickshire, esquire, was through Lord Brooke's patronage elected MP for Warwick in the Long Parliament. After Brooke's death, he became leader of the parliamentarian county committee for Warwickshire and colonel of its regiment of horse. He signed Charles I's death warrant and was one of the leading figures in the Rump Parliament. His wife, Joan, also appears in the accounts. ODNB.
Edward Rainsford (the elder), town clerk and deputy recorder of Warwick, was author of a ‘Remonstrance’ critical of Greville influence in the town.
Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick (1587–1658), was a close political ally of the 2nd Lord Brooke and a fellow investor in colonial enterprises in New England and the Caribbean. ODNB.
John, Lord Robartes of Truro (1606–1685), was son-in-law to Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, and involved in the proceedings against the earl of Strafford in 1641. He became a parliamentarian colonel in the earl of Essex's army in 1642, and was a prominent Presbyterian and Whig politician after the Restoration. ODNB.
Richard Roe, minister of St Nicholas, Warwick, and a friend of Thomas Dugard. An annuity of £2 10s was paid to his son.
Anne Russell, countess of Bedford (1615–1684), wife of William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, and sister-in-law to Lady Brooke. Only daughter and heir of Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, and Frances Howard. ODNB.
Catherine Russell, countess of Bedford (d.1657), mother of Katherine, Lady Brooke, and daughter of Giles Bridges, 3rd Baron Chandos. She married Francis Russell in 1609. ODNB.
Diana Russell, Lady Newport (1624–1695), younger sister of Katherine, Lady Brooke. After her father's death, she married Francis Newport, later 1st earl of Bradford, ODNB.
Edward Russell (d.1665), of Corney House, Chiswick, was brother to Katherine, Lady Brooke, and the third son of the earl of Bedford. ODNB.
Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford (1587–1641), was father of Katherine Greville, Lady Brooke, and a prominent statesman in the Long Parliament. On 30 April 1641, Lady Brooke noticed some red spots on her father's skin. He died of smallpox on 9 May 1641. He was buried at Chenies in Buckinghamshire, where many MPs attended his funeral. ODNB; Adamson, 275.
Margaret Russell, countess of Carlisle (d.1676), sister of Katherine, Lady Brooke, married 2nd earl of Carlisle.
William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford (1616–1700), elder brother of Katherine, Lady Brooke, and Recorder of Warwick. He was appointed General of Horse in the parliamentarian army under the earl of Essex in 1642, but briefly defected to the royalists in August 1643. He was received back by the earl of Essex at St Albans in December 1643. Bedford was committed to Black Rod's custody before release to house arrest in his sister's household at Brooke House, Holborn, incurring her considerable expense. ODNB; Hopper, Turncoats and Renegadoes, 25–39, 103–104, 115, 146, 210, 226.
George Sadeskey / Sedascue (c.1615–1688), a Bohemian noble whose family lost their estates for having supported Frederick V at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. Described as of St Andrew's Holborn, on 2 March 1642 he married Mary, daughter of Godfrey Bosvile, at Marylebone Church in London. The couple were retained as gentry servants in the Brooke household, with George undertaking responsibility for their hounds. He had a chamber at Brooke House, Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). Commissioned major in Sir Michael Livesey's regiment of horse in Sir William Waller's army, Sadeskey later served as major to Henry Ireton's regiment of horse in the New Model Army from April 1645, rising to the rank of Adjutant-General of Horse by 1648. He had a prominent role in the funeral of Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, in December 1658. In January 1660 he was major in the regiment of horse under Colonel Unton Crooke: CAOD; WCRO, CR1886/BL2712; Malcolm Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, Vol. 1: Regimental Lists April 1645 to May 1649 (Solihull, 2015), 34, 54, 64, 74, 84, 96; CJ, VII, 807.
John Sadler (1615–1674), tutor to Francis, 3rd Lord Brooke, from 1643 with a salary of £50 p.a. besides board and lodging, but associated earlier with the second lord. He is described as Brooke's chaplain in Thomason's copy of a publication of 1640, but is better defined as a secretary. Sadler was a fellow of Emmanuel College from 1639, and also trained as a lawyer at Lincoln's Inn. He had a chamber in Brooke House, Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). In September 1640 he wrote to Samuel Hartlib on Brooke's behalf sending ‘one of the best copies’ of extracts from Brooke's papers, and passing on good wishes from ‘Mr [Ralph] Cudworth’. Like Brooke himself, Cudworth, and Peter Sterry, Sadler was associated with ‘Cambridge Platonism’, and was perhaps sending Hartlib drafts of Brooke's Nature of Truth. He is probably the JS who wrote A True Relation of the Lord Brooke's Settling of the Militia in Warwickshire (1642). In 1643 he served as Commissary General for Horse and Foot in Brooke's short-lived Association Army. From 1645 he was one of the ‘special secretaries’ to Parliament, responsible with Henry Parker for editing the King's letters seized at Naseby and drafting other declarations and vindications. During the Commonwealth, he acted with Thomas May as ‘house writer’ for the Rump Parliament, and gained important positions as Town Clerk of London (1649–1660), and Master of Magdalene College (1650–1660), as well as serving in the Barebones Parliament and as a member of the Hale Commission on reform of the law. This significant member of the Hartlib Circle, projector, millenarian, and author is rather dismissively summed up in the ODNB, as a ‘sometimes eccentric polymath’: TNA, SP 28/139/3 [Accounts of Rowland Wilson]; Hartlib Papers 46/9/27A, and passim; Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers.
Oliver St John (c.1598–1673), the family lawyer and ‘man of business’ for Brooke's father-in-law, the earl of Bedford, during the 1630s, and, like Brooke, associated with the Providence Island Company. He was MP for Totnes in the Long Parliament and prominent in the challenge to Ship Money. King's Solicitor from 1641, he was instrumental in the attainder of the earl of Strafford and one of the most important members of the Long Parliament, throughout the 1640s. He was a social contact and occasional advisor for Brooke and Lady Brooke throughout this period, often in the accounts as ‘Mr Solicitor’. ODNB.
John St Nicholas, gentleman of Stretton-under-Fosse, Warwickshire. A tenant of Lord Brooke for land in Cester Over, in Monks Kirby parish. A Puritan and parliamentarian, in Dugard's circle in the 1630s, St Nicholas served as a JP in the 1650s and was MP for Warwickshire in the Nominated Assembly of 1653. HoP; Hughes thesis, 454, 481, 484.
Robert Smyth was a senior household official in London, ‘the caterer’, paid £8 p.a. He had a chamber in Brooke House, Holborn (see Appendix 2 above). The same man seems to have acted as bailiff of Clutton, in Somerset.
Peter Sterry (1613–1672), Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and chaplain to Lord Brooke from 1639. In 1643 he was nominated to the Westminster Assembly of Divines and was a prominent and radical Independent minister in the 1640s and 1650s. A leading ‘Cambridge Neoplatonist’, he is often seen as influencing Brooke's The Nature of Truth. Brooke, ODNB.
Sir Peter Temple (1592–1653), of Stowe, Buckinghamshire, and Burton Dassett in Warwickshire. MP for the town of Buckingham in the Long Parliament, and served on the parliamentarian county committee for Buckinghamshire in 1643. ODNB.
Thomas and Mary Terrill were tenants of Lord Brooke in Warwick. Thomas was paid £15 p.a. in 1641 with £4 p.a. for his wife. They were employed for domestic work such as baking and brewing.
John Thurloe (1616–1668), an assistant to Oliver St John in 1643, bringing messages from St John to Lord and Lady Brooke, but also a social contact in his own right. By the 1650s he had become a prominent figure as Secretary of State and intelligencer during the Protectorate. ODNB.
Sir Henry Vane (the younger: 1613–1662), MP for Hull in the Long Parliament, a member of the Committee of Safety and Treasurer of the Navy. By 1643 he was an important supporter of the ‘war party’ at Westminster, dedicated to the military defeat of Charles I. ODNB.
Sir Greville Verney (d.1642), of Compton Verney, Warwickshire, was a cousin of Fulke Greville, 1st Lord Brooke. He was MP for Warwick in 1621 and High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1636. Hughes thesis.
Mary Walcott had a house in Alcester and sometimes attended upon Lady Brooke. Lord Brooke's will bequeathed £20 each to the children of ‘my sister Walcott’ (see Appendix 1 above).
Ralph Walcott (d.1642), nephew of Lord Brooke, had been involved in the Providence Island Company in 1632, but was mortally wounded by the royalists at Brentford on 12 November 1642, dying in Brooke House, Holborn a week later. He was buried in St Andrew's Holborn on 21 November 1642. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, Vol. 1: 1574–1660 (London, 1860), 146–151.
John Wescott and his daughter Kate were senior household servants. John Wescott was paid £20 p.a., plus board wages in 1640–1641 (perhaps as house steward). He held land in the Greville parish of Penkridge, Staffordshire, which he bequeathed to his two daughters Mary and Katherine by a will dated April 1639. He left Mary the annuity of £10 for her life, and promised by ‘my Lord Robert Brooke’ as confirmed in Brooke's will. Wescott was dead before July 1646 when arrangements for the administration of his estate were transferred from the daughters to his wife Anne. ‘Kate’ Wescott was an intimate attendant on Lady Brooke (with a maid of her own) and is presumably the younger daughter. The John Wescott assessed on a house of five hearths in Market Place Ward, Warwick, in 1670 may be the nephew to whom this John left £10 and enjoined his wife and daughters to see him carefully brought up and established in a suitable trade. TNA, PROB 11/197/51; PROB 11/201/2.
Charles Worthington was a tenant, probable bailiff, and ‘servant’, so described in 1633 when Brooke appointed him collector and receiver of tolls and customs in Alcester market for 21 years – a position also held by his father under a grant from Sir Fulke Greville in 1605. He was paid £10 p.a. WCRO, CR1886/Box 417A/182.
