Thomas Brooke

Thomas Brooke (1533-1578), (alias Cobham) of Wandsworth, Surrey, was an English nobleman, privateer, conspirator, and briefly a member of parliament. A son of George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham (died 1558), lord of the Manor of Cobham, Kent and of Cooling Castle, Kent, and a brother of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham (1527–1597), Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Brooke was notable mainly for his seafaring activities. As a youth, Brooke was tutored at the University of Orleans by Nicholas Alenus, who found him to be "licentious and idle", avoiding lectures and spending whole days in taverns, playing tennis, and "wandering with lost men". Nothing is known of him from 1550 until February 1554, when he and his family were accused of being connected with the rebellion of their kinsman Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Brooke was one of those sent to the Tower of London. It is reported that Sir Nicholas Poyntz asked him "What wind headed you to work such treason?", and Brooke replied "Oh, sir! I was seduced". With others, he was pardoned and released in December 1554, and soon entered the service of the Earl of Pembroke. In 1557 he was called up to London on the charge of robbing his kinsman Sir Edward Warner after breaking into his house at night. However, he was not severely punished. In January 1558, the Privy Council ordered his father to send a hundred men to Dover under one of his sons, "so as it be not Thomas". Brooke was briefly a Member of the Parliament of England for Rochester in 1559, probably thanks to the influence of his brother William, who had succeeded their father. However, he was not chosen again.