Edward Bromley
Sir Edward Bromley (1563–2 June 1626) was an English lawyer, judge, landowner and politician of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
[10] Bromley was admitted to the Inner Temple by its parliament on 27 November 1580: a special admission, without cost, in recognition of his father's status.
In 1595 the shared chamber fell into disrepair and the Inner Temple itself was forced to take action, spending £40 on repairs and subsequently billing Lowe and his relative Abney, for 20 marks each.
He was a landowner based very locally and Sir George Bromley, his father, was both acting head of the Council in the Marches, between the death of Henry Sidney and the arrival of his successor, and recorder of Bridgnorth.
[23] Lutwich shared Bromley's social and professional background: a Shropshire landowner prominent in London at Lincoln's Inn.
[25] In the last of the Elizabethan parliaments, elected in October 1601, Bromley was outranked by Thomas Horde, who had succeeded Sir George as recorder in 1589, and took the second seat.
This time he took second place to Sir Lewis Lewknor, a colourful scholar of Catholic leanings,[26] who had been appointed the king's Master of the Ceremonies.
He was also instructed to draft a bill to exclude "outlaws" – in this context referring to recusants as well as perjurers and forgers – from Parliament.
This was a response to the election of Francis Goodwin to represent Buckinghamshire, which was challenged by the sheriff and led to a wrangle between king and parliament.
[27] The proposed bill was a sop to the king: although Bromley and others were appointed to a committee, it was allowed to fade from attention and no report was ever produced.
[2]Sir Henry Bromley, Meriel's brother and a close friend of Edward, sat alongside him on the committee.
[28] Bromley was compelled to resign his parliamentary seat in February 1610, when he was made a judge, occasioning a contested by-election – a very rare event.
[15] He seems to have avoided direct involvement in a bitterly contested by-election to find his successor at Bridgnorth, although the ultimate victor was Sir Francis Lacon, a Catholic sympathiser[29] who was Bromley's cousin, once removed.
[31] As late as 23 January 1610 John Chamberlain, the noted letter writer, described Bromley "an obscure lawyer of the Inner Temple.
[34] Next day, 6 February, Bromley was appointed a Baron of the Exchequer in place of Edward Heron, who had died after serving only a little over two years.
When he went to the Exchequer on his first day of service, wearing his judge's ermine, the entire available membership of the Inner Temple and the Inns of Chancery preceded him on foot.
Edward Bromley, meanwhile, start to build up his own landholding, in 1593 marrying the coheiress to the small estate of Tysoe, near Enville, in neighbouring Staffordshire, who brought a scattering of land across the Midlands.
Francis Bromley also left a daughter, Jane, who had married William Davenport, allegedly after a secret and forbidden courtship.
It appears that the Inner Temple had already installed a stained glass window displaying Bromley's armorial bearings and this was restored some time shortly after his death, presumably as a mark of respect.
He had thought to secure Hallon and his mother's other lands by paying off Thomas Bromley's creditors with £700 but Jane and William Davenport were still pressing their claim.
He appointed as overseers of his will his three sisters, his brother-in-law Cotton and his friends, the judges John Denham and Sir Richard Hutton: both were later to defy Charles I over ship money.
Calamy, the historian who collated information about the Great Ejection, added a supplementary note to his account of Leicestershire for the 1702 edition: Bromskill, a Presbyterian minister of the Commonwealth period, was evidently related to Lady Bromley by marriage and her active support for his ministry, as well as Calamy's encomium, makes clear that she was a committed Puritan.
