[2] As a very minor member of the landed gentry, Broke needed to seek sources of income outside his own locality if he were to prosper, and he did so through London and the law.

Broke's judicial career began in 1536 when he was appointed Common Serjeant of London on the recommendation of Henry VIII and the queen, Jane Seymour; how he gained such royal favour is unknown.

In January 1544, he was directed to intervene in the passage of two bills: one from the secondaries of the compter, aiming to repeal the Act against untrue verdicts; another already put to the house that intended to prevent merchants buying steel and other goods, which Broke was told to forestall.

Broke fell into conflict with the court's Puisne Justices when he appointed Thomas Gatacre, his wife's brother, as Chief Prothonotary in 1557.

As Lent Reader in 1551, his subject was Pleas of the Crown, using chapter 17 of Magna Carta as the source: this also circulated in manuscript before being published in 1641, almost one hundred years after his death.

However, the opening of parliament was delayed until 23 November and Cholmley was appointed an Exchequer Baron in the meantime, and so forced to relinquish both his post as Recorder and his parliamentary seat.

Broke's colleagues in the 1545 parliament[4] were Sir Richard Gresham,[5] a former Lord Mayor, John Sturgeon, a staunch Protestant,[6] and Paul Withypoll, a wealthy merchant with interests in the Netherlands, Spain and Crete.

His aldermanic colleague was the goldsmith Sir Martin Bowes,[4] who had just served his term as Lord Mayor, having made so large a fortune at the Royal Mint that he was able easily to afford the £10,000 to settle accounts when he and the other masters were found to have systematically debased the coinage.

A major concern of the London members in the second and subsequent sessions of the parliament was to ensure that the City did not lose control of the wealth of the chantries within its boundaries to the king.

[4] Broke, who had been appointed commissioner for chantries in London, Westminster and Middlesex in 1546, during an earlier and abortive move toward abolition, must have had first-hand knowledge of the subject.

The other burgess, Thomas Curteys, was elected an alderman in 1551 – a move which he resisted to the point of imprisonment and which forced him to resign his seat in parliament.

The third session of the parliament passed an Act to reform canon law and Broke was appointed to the commission set up for this purpose on 12 February 1552.

In March 1552 he was one of those deputed to the redraft the Treason Act 1551 to make it illegal to say that the king "is an heretic, schismatic, infidel or usurper of the crown."

He was also called in by John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford in 1552 to advise on legislation he was promoting to free himself of commitments made to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, the disgraced and executed former Lord Protector.

For the parliament of October 1553 Bowes was temporarily replaced by Sir Rowland Hill, a former Lord Mayor and a Protestant, making Broke the only Catholic MP from London.

Despite this, and the momentous events of the summer, in which Dudley attempted to place Jane Grey on the throne and was defeated by a rebellion in favour of Mary, Edward's Catholic elder sister, the London delegation attended the parliament with an entirely commercial agenda.

They toiled away at legislation to regulate London's physicians, chandlers in both wax and tallow, leather tanners and bowling alleys, as well as a measure to deregulate the sale of wine.

[1] The parliament of April 1554 had a much stronger commission to further the Marian Counter-Reformation: "for corroboration of true religion, and touching the Queen's highness most noble marriage" to Philip II of Spain.

The Speaker's main task was to steer through a bill, dear to many members, to protect those who had profited from the Dissolution of the monasteries from ecclesiastical censure.

He was able to purchase land and rights expropriated through the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII and the abolition of chantries and colleges in the reiign of Edward VI.

[13] For two centuries Madeley was to be the seat of the Brooke family, famous or notorious for their royalist plotting during the English Civil War and Commonwealth.

He even purchased the pension that the rector of Badger, Shropshire had paid to Wenlock[15] Madeley's mineral wealth was already partly apparent: there had been coal mining since the 14th century and there was already an iron ore working rented out when Broke bought the manor.

[17] Formerly the demesne estate of Lapley Priory, this had been granted by Henry V to the College of St Bartholomew, Tong, Shropshire, which was the shrine church of the Vernon family of Haddon Hall.

He visited Shropshire periodically to meet family and friends, but most of the time lived in one of his London houses, at Carter Lane or in Putney.

"[14] In 1548, it was reported that Broke and Clement Smith, MP for Maldon, smiled and laughed "when they heard the priest at St. Gregory's by Paul's at his prayers at mass pray God to send the Council grace to turn from their erroneous opinions that they were in", although the allegation was later withdrawn.

The commission to Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London is faithfully preserved in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, with a list of the names of those whose oaths were to be taken, including notably Broke himself, Cholmley and Gresham.

[18] However, in common with the Shropshire and Staffordshire gentry circle in which he moved, Broke showed no great sympathy for the power and wealth of the clergy.

Broke's attitude was generally strictly professional: he was willing to use his legal skills on behalf of employers or clients, irrespective of their religious inclinations or intentions, so it is never entirely safe to read his beliefs from his actions.