♂John Brome

John Brome (died about 5 November 1468) was an English lawyer of Warwick and lord of the manor of Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire in the reign of Henry VI. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Isabel Brome. Through Isabel he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family and career

The Bromes are said to have been tanners for several generations in a suburb of Warwick south of the bridge, until John’s grandfather Robert became a lawyer and steward of the courts of the Earl of Warwick, and his father, also John Brome, sat in the Parliament of 1406–07 for the town of Warwick. His mother, Joane, was the daughter and heir of Thomas Rody of Baddesley, and through her he held land at Baddesley Clinton before he gained the lordship of the manor itself.

He married Beatrix Shirley, a daughter of Sir Ralph Shirley. They had at least eight children: three sons, Thomas, Nicholas and John, and five daughters, Isabel, Jane, Elizabeth, Agnes and Jocosa. In June 1467 a deed settled lands in Lapworth, Kingswood and Henley on John and Beatrix for their lives, with remainder to their children.

For much of Henry VI’s reign John is said to have been under-treasurer in the Exchequer, and he sat on the commission of the peace for Warwickshire in the 1450s and on a commission of array^W in 1459–60. After Edward IV came to the throne in 1461 he held no further public office.

Death

According to the antiquary William Dugdale^W, John Brome had taken the manor of Woodlow as security for a loan to John Herthill, steward to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick^W. Herthill wanted to repay the money and redeem the land, and Brome meant to keep it. Herthill sent for him while he was hearing Mass in the church of the White Friars^W in London, the quarrel grew hot, and Herthill ran him through in the church porch. Brome lived long enough to make his will, in which he forgave his son Thomas, who had smiled as he watched his father struck down. He was buried in the White Friars church, and his epitaph gives the date of his burial as 5 November 1468.

His trustees nonetheless conveyed Woodlow and his property in Warwick to Thomas as the eldest son in November 1469, with remainder to Nicholas. About three years after the killing, Nicholas lay in wait for Herthill near Warwick and killed him. Arbitrators settled the appeal of Herthill’s widow by ordering Nicholas to pay for a priest to sing Mass for a year at St Mary’s in Warwick for the souls of both John Brome and John Herthill, and for two years more at Baddesley Clinton.

Thomas died without children before 1486, and when an inquisition post mortem^W was held on John’s estate in September 1486, the jury named Nicholas as his son and heir. It found that William Catesby^W had dispossessed John of his lands in Lapworth and had since been found guilty of treason, and that the lands were then in Nicholas’s hands.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Isabel Brome, her daughter Alice Denton, Alice’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for his life

The account of John Brome’s family, career and death comes from James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), pp. 74–79, which quotes William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656; 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 970–974) and draws on Henry Norris’s history of Baddesley Clinton. Dugdale tells the story of the killing in these words: John Brome “had the hard fate to be slain by John Herthill Steward to Rich. Nevill, the great Earl of Warwick”, and on his deathbed “forgave his son Thomas, who smiled when he saw him run through by Herthill in the White Friers Church-Porch”. Dugdale adds that the public records of the time often wrote the name as Brown, and a deed of 1467 calls him “John Brome alias Broun, of Baddesley”.

The date of his death

The Latin epitaph on his tomb at the White Friars, as Dugdale printed it, records his burial on the Nones (5th) of November 1468; Hawes gives the killing as “about Nov. 5, 1468”. The inquisition post mortem of 7 September 1486 is cited by Hawes from the Chancery inquisitions, 2 Henry VII. A table in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 150, 1996, p. 324) prints “d 1483” beneath John Brome’s name; that is the year of his wife’s death.

His parents and his wife

The Warwickshire heraldic visitation^W of 1619 (Harleian Society vol. 12, p. 97) makes him the son of John Brome and Joane, daughter and heir of Thomas Rody of Baddesley, and gives his wife as Beatrix, daughter of Sir Ralph Shirley of Shirley in Leicestershire; Hawes calls her father Sir Ralph Shirley of Eatington. The visitation also names his younger brother, William Brome of Holton in Oxfordshire.