♂Robert Brome

Robert Brome was a lawyer of Warwick in the reign of Richard II and the earliest member named in the pedigree of the Brome family, who later held the manor of Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John Brome. Through that son he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Life

The Bromes are said to have been tanners for several generations, living in the suburb of Warwick south of the bridge, in a house that kept the name of Brome’s Place. Robert was a lawyer, and according to the antiquary William Dugdale^W he served as steward of the courts of Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, for the earl’s lands in the county. He appears in the records in 1396–97, the twentieth year of Richard II’s reign, as Robert Brome of Warwick.

Robert Brome is said to have married the daughter and heiress of William Stonley. Their son, John Brome, was a burgess of Warwick and sat for the town in the Parliament of 1406–07. The records do not give the date of Robert’s death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son John Brome, John’s son John Brome (died 1468), that John’s 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

Robert heads the Brome pedigree in the first edition of Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656, p. 710), as “Rob. Brome de Warwick”, dated to the twentieth year of Richard II (1396–97); below him comes “Joh. Brome Senior”, dated to the eighth year of Henry IV (1406–07). In his account of Baddesley Clinton, Dugdale writes of Robert’s grandson John Brome, the lawyer, that the family “for several Descents were Tanners” and that Robert, “his grandfather, was a Lawyer, as also Steward of the Courts to Thomas de Beauchamp Earl of Warwick”. Dugdale does not say which of the two earls of that name Robert served. James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), p. 76, calls Robert “the first of the family named by Dugdale”, says he is first mentioned in the records in 1396–97, and gives his marriage to the daughter and heiress of William Stonley.

His son William

Hawes writes that Robert had “two sons John and William of Halton, Oxfordshire”. Dugdale’s pedigree and the Warwickshire heraldic visitation^W of 1619 (Harleian Society vol. 12, p. 97) both place William Brome of Holton one generation lower, as the second son of Robert’s son John and his wife, Johanna Rody.

Earlier generations

The visitation pedigree carries the Bromes further back and makes Robert the son of another Robert Brome and his wife Margery, a daughter of William Brooke. Hawes judged that this part of the pedigree “contains some inaccuracies”, so Robert’s parents are left unnamed.