However, Michael Lowe's background lay in the urban ruling group in Lichfield, rather than the landed gentry, and his considerable wealth came from his career as a lawyer.

[17] Lichfield's records refer to the elder Simon Biddulph always as a mercer, while the younger is described as a gentleman,[14] reflecting the social ascent of these merchant families into the rural landed class.

Prominent among what he leased were 100 acres of flooded land and fishing rights on the River Tame, suitable for sport and leisure pursuits.

In 1980 it was merged with nine other charitable funds to form Michael Lowe's and Associated Charities, which continued to emphasise provision of fuel[19] and it plays a part in combatting poverty in the area to the present.

[21] In 1594 Skeffington leased the house at Tymore to Batholomew Farmer for ten years,[22] so it cannot have bee occupied by Michael Lowe's heirs at that date.

Margaret and Edward Bromley were to remain childless, so her most important male relatives were to be her nephews, the sons of her sisters: these included Oliver Bromskill[23] and James and Thomas Abney.

On 5 July 1590, the parliament or governing body of the Inner Temple allowed Michael Lowe a chief clerk of the King's Bench,[25] lifetime's access to a study he had helped repair above the Inn's buttery.

[26] At the same time it granted permission to use the study to his nephew, Humphrey Lowe, and to Edward Bromley, a young lawyer who was called to the bar at the same meeting.

His and his wife's status was transformed in February 1610, when, in a few weeks, he was made Serjeant-at-law and a Baron of the Exchequer, inherited the family estates on the death of his nephew and was knighted.

The codicil to his will showed that he had been forced to sacrifice some of the lands he had intended as part of Lady Margaret's jointure to placate the Davenports, his great-niece and her husband,[30] who were ultimately to acquire the main estate at Hallon, next to Worfield,[31] after protracted litigation.

[36] Benjamin Brook, the nonconformist minister and historian, wrote that Margaret Bromley was "many years famous for promoting, by her influence and practice, the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom, and the genuine principles of the reformation.

He died while taking refuge at Sheriffhales in 1630,[44][45] leaving polemical writings that would not be published until 1660, attacking in particular signing with the Cross in baptism, the surplice and kneeling to receive Communion.

[46] Clarke related that the Puritan preachers residing with Margaret Bromley were able to deliver sermons on special occasions in the local parish church.

[48] In 1631 he was replaced by John Morton, whose attitude seems to have been ambiguous or possibly subject to the "Vicar of Bray" spirit apparently common in the region at the time:[50] he preached bitterly against the Parliamentarians at the opening of the English Civil War but remained in place throughout the Presbyterian experiment of the 1640s to die in office in 1649.

[54] He was a clergyman, educated at Christ's College, Cambridge[55] and ordained as priest by Bishop Morton at Eccleshall in 1620, when he subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles.

[59] Samuel Clarke implies the contrary, stating that Margaret Bromley's supportive relatives in Sheriffhales were "Parishioners of the Congregation.

[23] There is nothing to indicate that Oliver Bromskill was living in the parish of Sheriffhales in anything but a private capacity: none of the register entries gives his occupation or status, as was customary.

When the king's army headed south, Richard Baxter was displaced from Kidderminster and fled east, taking refuge at Coventry, after witnessing the aftermath of the Battle of Edgehill.

[67] It was there that he met Bromskill, one of "about thirty worthy ministers in the City, who fled thither for safety from Soldiers and Popular Fury, as I had done, though they never meddled in the wars.

As Baxter uses the simple past tense, there is ambiguity about whether he understood Bromskill to be living with Margaret Bromley at Coventry or in the period before.

Margaret Bromley moved to Loughborough to live with Bromskill and his family by the later stages of the Civil War: this was remarked by Edmund Calamy in his famous account of the ejected ministers.

[68] Bromskill was appointed or, as royalist writers like to say, "intruded" as rector of Loughborough Parish Church by the county's parliamentary committee on 26 June 1647,[23] during the period when Parliament was trying to impose a Presbyterian polity on the country.