Bishop James Brooks

The arms and seal of James Brooks (1512-1558), third Bishop of Gloucester (1554-1558) The Society’s Badge by Lez Hough - Journal 2, Gloucestershire (and North Avon) Catholic History Society, February 1987 At an early meeting of the society’s standing committee it was decided that a badge should be devised for the society which would incorporate the arms of James Brooks, the Marian Bishop of Gloucester, as its principal element. I undertook to produce a design, and this the committee has now accepted. Being an armorist rather than a historian, it is with some diffidence that I offer the following thumb-nail sketch of Bishop Brooks; details can be read in, for example, the Dictionary of National Biography, and it may well be that one of my colleagues will wish to write more fully about him in due course. James Brooks – so spelt in the D.N.B., and which looks less angular than Broks, the version which heraldry books seem to prefer – was born in 1512 in Hampshire, studied at Oxford from 1528, and pursued an academic career there, becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1552. He lived through the turbulence of the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI without apparently attracting much attention, but his appointment as chaplain to Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester probably indicates where his religious sympathies lay throughout these years. Shortly after Mary I’s accession he was elected Bishop of Gloucester, received his consecration in Saint Saviour’s Church, now Southwark’s Anglican Cathedral, and was invested with the temporalities of his new see in May 1554. In 1555 he was authorised by the Pope to conduct the legal processes against Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, Bishop Nicholas Ridley of London and Bishop Hugh Latimer, formerly of Worcester, which led inexorably to the execution of all three. Bishop Brooks has been described as “an eloquent preacher and a zealous maintainer of the Roman Catholic religion”, and, from the other side of the divide, as “a beast of most impure life and yet more impure conscience”; the former might well be true, the latter is no more than he might have expected from his many enemies. Mary died and Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. Brooks himself died in 1560 (according to the D.N.B.), and was buried in his cathedral’s north ambulatory, near Abbot Parker’s cenotaph, under a plain slab. According to other sources, however, Brooks died in 1558, John Bouchier (otherwise Bowrsher, Bowisher), who had been the last Abbot of Saint Mary de Pratis, Leicester, was nominated to the see, but this appointment lapsed and the see was vacant until the appointment of Richard Cheyney in 1562. Already knowing from my own sources what Bishop Brook’s shield was, I went to Gloucester Cathedral to see if there was further useful information to be had there. The Bishop’s tomb was indeed devoid of inscription and armorials; no examples of his arms were known from his seal or other episcopal impediments, and having later checked the British Museum’s catalogue of seals in its Department of Manuscripts with no positive result, I concluded that I 1 already had all the information I was likely to have without much time-consuming research being conducted further afield. One of my sources, Papworth’s Ordinary of British Armorials, 1874 * contains the following entry: Argent, on a fess, sable between three badgers proper two cinquefoils pierced argent, on each leaf an ermine spot sable – James Broks, Bishop of Gloucester 1554-8, granted 1554. Parker’s Glossary of Terms used in Heraldry has: Or on fess sable between three brocks passant proper two Cinquefoils pierced argent, on each foil an ermine spot – James Broks, Bishop of Gloucester, 1554-8 and Bedford’s Blazon of Episcopacy: Or on a fess sable between three badgers (Brocks) passant two cinquefoils pierced argent, on each leaf an ermine spot. Although all are slightly defective, I would suppose that they gave a common source, but at some remove. Whether that source was the original document patenting the grant of the arms appears to be very doubtful – I do not know if it still exists – but if we allow some preference for the golden field (Or….) simply because badgers in their natural colours (proper) on silver would not stand out well, then we may reconstruct and interpret the blazon thus: Or on a fess sable between three badgers pessant proper two cinquefoils pierced ermine, that is: On a gold field, between three badgers, passant in their natural colours, a black horizontal band, and thereon two pierced cinquefoils of ermine. 2 That is the version I have used for the badge. The shield there is ‘couchy’, that is depicted as if hung by its securing strap or guige. Over the shield is a mitre, like the shield and its charges in a modern idiom which still retains some traditional flavour. The badgers being passant, have their right forepaws raised – possibly not a very badgerlike posture, but nonetheless demanded by the blazon, or description. An old name of the badger is ‘brok’, and hence their deployment in Bishop Brooks’ (or Broks’) shield. The significance of the ermine cinquefoils – conventionalised floral devices, is not known to me. From the fact that brooks received a grant of arms on his appointment as Bishop it can be assumed that his father was not an armiger himself; nevertheless, his education and promotion would seem to indicate some family wealth and social standing. No arms ascribed to people called Brooks, Broks and variations thereof bear significant similarities to the arms of the Bishop; several reasons of various degrees of probability, could account for this, but without some corroborative information it would not be profitable to examine them here. *The author John W. Papworth was like his more famous father, John Buonarotti Papworth, an architect; his fame among armorists, anyway, rests on this Ordinary. Bishop James Brooks by Lez Hough - Journal 3 of the Gloucestershire (and North Avon) Catholic history Society (Summer 1987) The item on the society’s badge which was featured in the second Journal has aroused a number of comments and queries, led to further research on Bishop Brooks’ arms being initiated, and pointed the way to some useful lines of investigation regarding his family and background. Truly an encouraging response to a short article. This is an opportunity to recall why Bishop Brooks’ arms were chosen as the main decorative feature of the badge in the first place. 3 As a ‘Marian’ bishop – one of the bishops installed as part of the policy to replace the Protestant bishops appointed by the Reformers with men of proven Catholic loyalty, Bishop Brooks may be seen as holding a pivotal point between the ancient and modern forms of the Church, for he was successor to the bishops of the old English hierarchy, a member of a line of bishops of the new diocese of Gloucester established by the Crown in 1541 (and the only one in communion with Rome), and a forerunner of the episcopal Vicars Apostolic of the Western District and of the modern Bishops of Clifton in the new English hierarchy. For a society concerned with the history of the Catholic Church in Gloucestershire and North Avon, James Brooks’ undoubted Catholicity, and his tenure of the Bishopric of Gloucester, seemed to be uniquely relevant to a modern understanding of the Church combined with an appreciation of its past. Always stalking Bishop Brooks’ reputation has been his central part in the action against Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Hooper and Ridley. Here are many lessons to be learnt from considering what motivated all of them as well as in studying the historical details of how the events were played out. There is, of course, much more to Bishop Brooks’ character: he was a great scholar, but his reputation as a bishop and pastor, is that of a kindly man whose administration was “mild and gentle to a fault”. The Seal of James Brooks by Lez Hough - Journal 5, Gloucestershire (and North Avon) Catholic History Society, Spring 1988 While I was in London, recently, I visited the British Museum’s Department of Manuscripts, where I was able to examine their plaster cast of the seal of Bishop James Brooks of Gloucester. [i] I believe I have located the matrix of the seal, but until further investigations are carried out, I do not know whether I will be able to obtain an illustration of either the matrix of its impression. The design of the seal is an interesting example of its time – mid-sixteenth century, and hence from a period of change in artistic style from medieval to renaissance classical as interpreted under the Tudors. Its illustrative details, particularly the figure of God the Father in the representation of the Holy Trinity which forms the main part of the seal’s design, appear to my eyes more Gothic than classical. The architectural detail of the frame which contains the representation of the Holy Trinity, however, are those of virtually any late Tudor building and they are particularly reminiscent of Elizabethan woodwork. As architectural design it appears neither stylish nor well executed. This is all subjective judgement of course. The following is a detailed description of the seal, which it is hoped will be supplemented by a photograph or line-drawing or both, in due course. It is taken directly from the notes I made with the cast before me, with a few amplifying remarks added where appropriate. The cast of the seal is versica-shaped and approximately 78 millimetres long.

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