Baron Cobham
The title Baron Cobham has been created numerous times in the Peerage of England; often multiple creations have been extant simultaneously, especially in the fourteenth century.
The Cobhams were a family of lawyers who worked as circuit judges on the eyre and in local government in various roles such as Sheriff of Kent and Warden of the Cinque Ports.
A monumental brass, laid down in 1320, survives in St Mary Magdalene's Church, Cobham, of Joan Septvans which displays one of the earliest known specimens of a Gothic canopy.
Elected six times a Member of Parliament for Kent, served (jointly with his father) as Constable of Rochester Castle.
He was buried in Cobham Church, where survives his monumental brass,[9] inscribed in rhyming French: "You who pass round this place pray for the soul of the courteous host called John de Cobham May God grant him entire pardon He died the day after the feast of St Mattew and the Almighty took him to himself in the year of grace 1354 and cast down his mortal enemies".
[13] Joan died in 1434 and was buried in Cobham Church, where survives her monumental brass, commemorating also her second husband Sir Reynold Braybroke, and her 6 sons and 4 daughters, with 6 coats of arms (including one of Brooke).
Her son Richard Cheddar, MP, signed over his large inheritance to his mother and stepfather Sir Thomas II Brooke for their lives, due to the latter having "many times endured great travail and cost" in defending them during his minority.
In 1497 together with Lord Bergavenny he defeated the Cornish Rebellion at Blackheath, where one of its leaders James Tuchet, 7th Baron Audley, his cousin, was taken prisoner.
[21] He married twice: firstly to Eleanor Austell of Suffolk, without issue, and secondly to Margaret Nevill (died 1506) (whose monumental brass survives in Cobham Church), a daughter of Edward Neville, his former guardian.
Thomas Brooke, 8th Baron Cobham (died 1529), son and heir by his father's second wife Margaret Nevill.
He fought at the Siege of Tournai and at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513 and in 1520 was one of the Kent contingent accompanying King Henry VIII to the Field of Cloth of Gold.
George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham (1497–1558), KG, eldest surviving son by his father's first wife Dorothy Haydon.
During the Dissolution of the Monasteries he received large grants of former monastic lands,[24] including of Cobham College founded in the parish church by his ancestor.
Brooke and his son were briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of having deliberately failed to defend the castle.
[26] In his will he provided funds for the establishment of 21 almshouses within the abandoned building of Cobham College near the parish church, to house poor and worthy local elderly people.
His lands were forfeited to the crown, although in 1604 King James I granted to his wife Frances Howard a lease for her life of Cobham Hall, where she lived "in solitary state" until her death in 1628, having in the meantime taken "no notice whatever of her husband after his trial",[28] who spent the rest of his life in the Tower of London and died in poverty.
The title thus again fell into abeyancy; the senior co-heir is Simon Rhys Shaw, a writer and great-nephew of the last Baron.
[citation needed] The arms of Brooke, Baron Cobham "of Kent" are Gules, on a chevron argent a lion rampant sable crowned or.
