Sir Thomas Bromley was a 16th-century lawyer, judge and politician who established himself in the mid-Tudor period and rose to prominence during the reign of Elizabeth I He was successively Solicitor General and Lord Chancellor of England.
50 Facts About Thomas Bromley
2.
Thomas Bromley presided over the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots and died three months after her execution.
3.
George Thomas Bromley was a prominent member of the Inner Temple, serving as Autumn Reader for 1508 and Lent Reader for 1509, although he refused the honour for Lent 1515.
4.
Thomas Bromley is variously stated to have been Reader at the Inner temple in 1566 for Lent, and autumn although the Inn's records only mention his selection as attendant on the Lent Reader, Francis Gawdy.
5.
Thomas Bromley is listed as a double reader, along with his brother George, in a state paper, probably from about 1579.
6.
Thomas Bromley seems to have taken his post very seriously, and apparently found the Inn's finances in crisis.
7.
Thomas Bromley continued in office the following year, listed as appearing at the parliament as treasurer.
8.
Thomas Bromley sat as a member of the Parliament of England three times, all fairly early in his career, before he achieved major promotion as a judge.
9.
In 1558 Thomas Bromley was MP for the Shropshire borough of Bridgnorth in the last parliament of Mary's reign.
10.
Thomas Bromley probably owed his election mainly to family connections.
11.
Thomas Bromley was to serve as one of the executors of Arundel's will.
12.
Thomas Bromley served in 1566 on a committee concerned with legal issues and another on the succession to the throne.
13.
Alongside public appointments, Thomas Bromley built up a substantial practice in both the Queen's Bench, the senior common law court, and Chancery, the principal court of equity.
14.
Thomas Bromley was patronised and befriended by major political and judicial figures, like Arundel, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, the queen's cousin, Sir William Cordell, the Master of the Rolls, Francis Drake and Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and even the great Lord Burleigh himself.
15.
In 1560 Thomas Bromley counselled Catherine, dowager duchess of Suffolk and her husband Richard Bertie.
16.
In 1566 Thomas Bromley was appointed recorder of the City of London in succession to Richard Onslow, who had become Solicitor General.
17.
Thomas Bromley was greatly embarrassed by an accusation that he had helped Richard Dacres, an attainted rebel who was a distant relative.
18.
Thomas Bromley spoke after Nicholas Barham, the Queen's Serjeant, who led the prosecution, and Gilbert Gerard, the Attorney General.
19.
Thomas Bromley was apparently very zealous to secure a conviction.
20.
Thomas Bromley's only evidence of Norfolk's involvement in a plot to invade England and remove the queen was an alleged deciphered copy of a letter given to one Barker to deliver to the Duke.
21.
Thomas Bromley was forced to resort to hearsay evidence: that a foreign ambassador in Flanders had heard about the plot and one of his servants had mentioned it to an unnamed English government minister.
22.
None of the links in this chain of intelligence gathering was available to give evidence or face questioning but Thomas Bromley's allegations were accepted as having explicit royal warrant.
23.
Thomas Bromley rehearsed the history of the recent plots and her alleged part in them, but to no avail.
24.
Thomas Bromley was senior to Bromley in every way: a distinguished and highly respected lawyer of great experience.
25.
Thomas Bromley seems to have been entirely untroubled by ideological and theological concerns and was certainly happy to ally himself with the more radically Protestant grouping around Leicester.
26.
Thomas Bromley had the support of the Inner Templar Christopher Hatton, a chronically indebted courtier, who had the ear of the queen.
27.
Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador reported home that Leicester and Hatton had recommended Thomas Bromley, hoping to use him as a supporter of the proposed marriage of the queen to Francis, Duke of Anjou, who was sympathetic to the Huguenot cause.
28.
The alliance was evidently cemented with money, as Thomas Bromley had promised a pension to Leicester and Hatton.
29.
Thomas Bromley was duly appointed both Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord Chancellor, over the head of Gerard, who was compensated two years later with the post of Master of the Rolls.
30.
In 1581 Thomas Bromley played an important part in securing a judgment in Shelley's Case, which was for centuries a leading case in property law, although now superseded by legislation.
31.
The queen instructed Thomas Bromley to assemble the judges to make a definite ruling.
32.
The 1582 case of Thomas Knyvett is generally cited as an example of Bromley's independence of judgment in many cases.
33.
Thomas Bromley held his position, despite the queen's displeasure, later justifying himself in writing.
34.
Thomas Bromley was called upon to settle a number of important parliamentary matters.
35.
In 1581, Richard Broughton, one of the members for Stafford, informed Parliament that his colleague, probably Thomas Bromley Purslow, had been indicted for a felony.
36.
Thomas Bromley wrote to the Commons, claiming that he had been pressured to issue a writ for a by-election.
37.
Thomas Bromley Informed the House of Lords and it was decided to send a deputation from the two Houses to see the queen.
38.
Thomas Bromley stressed that Parliament would expect the queen to settle the succession question if she married a Catholic, which she was reluctant to do.
39.
Thomas Bromley had reached the peak of his power and influence and reaped both prestige and wealth, not all of it from judicial sources.
40.
Royal grants and purchases allowed Thomas Bromley to build up a significant property portfolio across his native Shropshire and the neighbouring counties of Worcestershire and Montgomeryshire.
41.
Thomas Bromley announced that Northumberland had committed suicide after participating in a conspiracy, although suspicions remained that he had been murdered.
42.
Thomas Bromley announced at the opening a bill to provide for the trial of Mary, using a special court of at least 24 peers and privy counsellors.
43.
Thomas Bromley then outlined the case to the House of Lords and both houses resolved to petition the queen for immediate execution.
44.
Thomas Bromley appended the Great Seal and the warrant was entrusted to William Davison.
45.
When Parliament assembled eight days later, Thomas Bromley was too ill to attend and his place was taken by Edmund Anderson.
46.
Thomas Bromley's demise is often attributed to strain of the trial and the responsibility of ordering the execution of a monarch, and to his apprehension at Elizabeth's response to the execution.
47.
Thomas Bromley was not a young man by the standards of the time: his namesake and cousin, the chief justice, died probably at a slightly earlier age.
48.
Thomas Bromley's married, by 1560 at latest, Elizabeth Fortescue, daughter of Sir Adrian Fortescue, a Hertfordshire landowner.
49.
Thomas Bromley's brother Anthony Fortescue, on the other hand, actually was a Catholic conspirator, closely involved with the Pole family.
50.
Thomas Bromley's rule in Shelley's Case is a landmark in the history of English real property law.