Henry Bromley (died 1615)

[1] He matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford on 17 December 1576 aged 16[2] He was one of a group of four students admitted freely at the instance of his father, the Lord Chancellor, by the parliament of the Inner Temple on 7 February 1580.

The MPs were elected by a "privy council," consisting of the mayor and 12 aldermen, but Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford had great influence in the town.

Bedford died in 1585 but Bromley was re-elected MP for Plymouth in 1586, along with Hugh Vaughan, the earl's secretary and a relative by marriage of Hawkins.

[5] Bedford's influence was largely backed by the powerful Champernowne and Hawkins trading dynasties, who probably approved of Bromley because of his father's close connection[6][7] to the faction of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.

In August 1594 he travelled to Stirling Castle as an attendant of the Earl of Sussex, representing Queen Elizabeth at the baptism of Prince Henry.

[10] The MPs were almost always chosen from the county gentry and in this period, the Protestant Russell family, who claimed kinship with the Earls of Bedford were the leading political dynasty.

Bromley and Walsh were soon recruited by Richard Stephens, another Puritan MP, to support the proposal of Peter Wentworth to bring the question of succession before the House of Commons.

Wentworth, then MP for Northampton,[12] had a long history of defending free speech in the chamber of the House of Commons and of promoting Puritanism, and had previously been imprisoned in the Tower of London.

At least by the time of his imprisonment, Bromley had been closely associated with Essex, offering to "do him service" in a letter he wrote jointly with his brother-in-law, Sir John Scott.

[8] The more collegial political arrangement of the previous two decades had been superseded by intense factional struggle,[16] between Essex and Robert Cecil, with the queen herself increasingly indecisive and remote.

[17] It was a struggle to control royal policy between the queen's favourite and her most trusted minister, in which the latter had the major political and institutional advantages,[18] including continuous direct access to Elizabeth and use of the powerful government intelligence network.

By promoting his image as a Protestant hero and patronising Puritan clergy,[20] as well as taking up the cause of James VI,[21] he hoped to appeal to wide circles of support in London and in Parliament.

His brother-in-law[1] John Lyttelton was MP for Worcestershire[11] and allied to his distant relative Edward Littleton, who managed political matters for Essex in neighbouring Staffordshire,[25] which he regarded as his "own country",[26] and had his seat at Chartley Castle.

[27] From his estates, almost ruined by his father, Lyttelton had pledged a portion to guarantee the fines of Bromley, Humphrey Perrott and Charles Danvers.

Bromley knew the location of documents disproving Cornwall's claim: they were lodged with Richard[33] Davies, the treasurer of the Inner Temple, and so could be recovered in the next term.

The diarist John Manningham reported: Bromley was certainly made a gentleman of the privy chamber and thus a confidant of the king, but there is no evidence that he actually had a concrete program of reform to put before James.

[14] He had similar problems with Duchy of Lancaster lands: a warrant was issued to grant him parcels of dismembered manors on 19 April 1604 but partially rescinded the very next day.

[14] According to Grafton, his opposition stemmed from Bromley's high-handedness in trying to get Sir William Walsh to stand down in his favour so that he could triumph through Court influence.

However, Bromley had the backing of a large section of the local gentry, including the sheriff, Sir Thomas Russell, and the Lyttelton affinity, now centred on his sister Meriel.

Robert Wroth proposed a package of reforms to the House, some apparently sponsored by Cecil, including the vexed issue of wardship.

[40] Bromley was part of a committee to consider a proposal from Sir Henry Neville, another former member of the Essex faction, to rethink the treason laws.

In June he was appointed to a similar committee to restore property to the children of John Lyttleton: it was chaired by his friend and cousin, Edward Bromley.

The Sheriff, Sir Richard Walsh, whose daughter Anne was married to Bromley's son and heir,[43] led the assault on Holbeche House on 8 November 1605.

[50] However, Bromley was a patron of learning[14] and his expenditure on his numerous cultural interests contributed to the indebtedness of his later years, exacerbating the losses he sustained through political miscalculation and the extravagance of his heir.

[53] In 1615, shortly before he died, he was forced to lease part of his Worcestershire property to trustees and to restrict his son Thomas to only a life interest in the lands.

Bromley was described as a "lover and favourer of learning, religious in the course of his life, sweet in his conversations, with all sorts bountiful in hospitality, charitable and pitiful to the poor".