Sir Anthony Cooke, KB, MP

Family and Education b. c.1505, 1st s. of John Cooke of Gidea Hall by Alice, da. and coh. of William Saunders of Banbury, Oxon. educ. I. Temple 1523. m. Anne, da. of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Gains Park, wid. of Sir John Hawes of London, 4s. inc. Richard Cooke I and William Cooke I 5da. suc. fa. 1517. KB 1547.

Offices Held

Gent. of privy chamber by 1546-53; j.p. Essex by 1537-54, from 1559, Warws. from c.1564; sheriff, Essex and Herts. 1544-5; steward, manor of Havering, Essex from 1559; commr. to enforce Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity 1559, 1562, to take oaths of ecclesiastical persons 1559, to visit dioceses of Norwich and Ely 1559, to visit Camb. Univ. 1559, to visit Eton Coll. 1561; custos rot. Essex from 1572.

Biography Of a family established at Gidea Hall by a London draper about 1460, Cooke inherited considerable estates in Essex, and subsequently came into Warwickshire lands of at least equal value derived from his grandfather’s marriage to Elizabeth Belknap. In addition Cooke and the Belknaps were successful speculators in monastic lands. At the end of Henry VIII’s reign Cooke obtained his only court office, which he retained until the end of the reign of Edward VI, whom he taught ‘good letters and manners’, whether or not he received a formal appointment as the young king’s ‘tutor’. The reign of Queen Mary Cooke spent in voluntary—and easy—exile, supported by funds remitted to him by his son-in-law William Cecil, with whom he corresponded regularly, and it was at this time that he earned a reputation among leaders of the reformed religion as ‘a man of intellectual substance and deep religious commitment’. To one of these, Bullinger, he wrote, on learning of the accession of Elizabeth:

If the Queen, mindful of the great mercy she has received, will but place her confidence in God; if she will daily say unto the Lord, ‘Thou art my fortress, my rock, and my refuge’, there will neither be wanting to herself the spirit of a Judith or a Deborah, nor wisdom to her counsellors, nor strength to her army. Cooke was elected knight of the shire for Essex while still abroad, and he took an active part in Elizabeth’s first Parliament. On 9 and 15 Feb. 1559 the supremacy bill was committed to him, but he was evidently disappointed at the slow progress of the reform of the church, writing to Peter Martyr on 12 Feb.:

We are now busy in Parliament about expelling the tyranny of the pope, and restoring the royal authority, and re-establishing true religion. But we are moving far too slowly: nor are there wanting at this time Sanballats and Tobiases to hinder and obstruct the building of our walls ... The zeal of the Queen is very great, the activity of the nobility and people is also great, but still the work is hitherto too much at a stand. But John Jewel, writing to Martyr (28 Apr.) said that Cook ‘defends some scheme of his own, I know not what, most obstinately, and is mightily angry with us all’. His other activity in this Parliament concerned bills on regrators and forestallers (20 Feb.), and menservants (7 Apr.). No speech or committee work is recorded for him in the defective journals of the 1563 Parliament.

Whether because of his religious intransigence or his ‘melancholy temperament’ (as Jewel put it to Martyr, 5 Nov. 1559), Cooke received no major office under Elizabeth. He was one of those recommended by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton for the chancellorship or keepership of the great seal, but, as usual the Queen ignored Throckmorton’s advice. Jewel thought him ‘a worthy and pious man, but I think hardly qualified for that office’. Cooke did, however, carry out a number of tasks for the government (mostly concerned with establishing the religious settlement) in the early days of the new régime. Probably he did not want high office. His health was poor and his epitaph, referring to the earlier period, included the lines:

And he therefore to courtly life was called Who more desired in study to be stalled. His seventeenth-century biographer wrote:

Sir Anthony took more pleasure to breed up statesmen than to be one. Contemplation was his soul, privacy his life, and discourse his element. Business was his purgatory, and publicness his torment. He was, of course, on the Essex commission of the peace, and, from 1572, custos rotulorum, but his record of attendance was poor, and his duties as steward of Havering were performed by a deputy. The last decade of Cooke’s life was spent in consolidating his estates and in improving Gidea Hall. His total income has been estimated at £2,500 and he was one of the half dozen wealthiest Essex gentry. He added a wing and a gallery to Gidea Hall, the refurbishment of which was completed in time for the Queen’s visit in the summer of 1568.

Interestingly enough, by the end of his life Cooke’s religious standpoint is quite obscure. Though in an extreme puritan environment while at Strasbourg, and obviously disappointed at the moderation of the Elizabethan church settlement, Cooke took no part in the subsequent puritan agitation. Instead, he loosened his ties with his foreign colleagues, appointed a slack minister to the church of which he held the advowson, and made not a single charitable bequest in the will (PCC 10 Daughtry) he drew up on 22 May 1576, some three weeks before his death. Even the preamble to the will is conventional, where, from one of his kind, an explicit statement of religious views might be expected. He divided a cash sum of £1,400 among family, friends and servants. Cooke died at Gidea Hall 11 June 1576, and was buried in St. Edward’s church, Romford, on the 21st, beneath an elaborate monument, on which he is described as ‘Sir Anthony Cooke, knight, named tutor to King Edward VI because of his exceptional learning, prudence and piety’. His five learned daughters on whose education he lavished so much care were Mildred, who married Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley; Anne, who married Sir Nicholas Bacon† and was the mother of Anthony and Francis; Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Hoby, ambassador to France, and was the mother of Edward Hoby and Thomas Posthumous Hoby; Catherine, who married the diplomat Henry Killigrew; and Margaret, who married Sir Ralph Rowlett†.

This biography is based upon M. K. McIntosh ‘Sir Anthony Cooke’, Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. cix. 233-50, the author of which had access to an earlier version of this biography.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: P. W. Hasler

Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall in Essex and his wife, Anne FitzWilliam was the tutor of King Edward VI .

Sir Anthony COOKE of Gidea Hall, Knight

Born: 1504, Gidea Hall, Romford, Essex, England

Died: 11 Jun 1576, Gidea Hall, Romford, Essex, England

Buried: 21 Jun 1576, Gidea Hall, Romford, Essex, England

Father: John COOKE (Sir)

Mother: Alice SAUNDERS

Married: Anne FITZWILLIAM BEF 1523, Gidea Hall, Romford, Essex, England

Children:

1. Mildred COOKE (B. Burghley)

2. Anne COOKE

3. Elizabeth COOKE (B. Russell)

4. Anthony COOKE (b. 1535)

5. William COOKE (MP)

6. Richard COOKE of Gidea Hall

7. Edward COOKE

8. Catherine COOKE

9. Margaret COOKE

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The details in this biography come from the History of Parliament, a biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.

Born by 1505/6, first son of John Cooke of Gidea Hall by Alice, dau. and heiress of William Saunders of Banbury, Oxon. Educ. I. Temple, adm. 4 Feb 1523. Married, by 1523, Anne, dau. of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton and Gains Park, Essex and Milton, Northants. Suc. family 1517. Justice within the liberty of Havering regularly from 1531. One of the Essex gentlemen put on alert at the time of the Northern Rebellion in 1536. Cooke emerges during the last decade of Henry VIII's reign. First appointment at court as one of the newly-formed corps of ‘spears’ or royal bodyguard 1539. KB 20 Feb 1547. J.p. Essex 1537-54, q. 1558/59-d., Warws. 1564-d.; sheriff, Essex and Herts. 1544-5; gent. privy chamber by 1546-53; commr. heresies, Essex 1549, 1550; poss. tutor to Edward VI in 1550; served on the commission to reform the ecclesiastical law 1552; custos rot. Essex 1572-d.

A rebuke to one of his sons in the presence of either Protector Somerset or of Thomas Seymour, is supposed to have prompted the observation, ‘Some men govern families with more skill than others do kingdoms’, and to have led to Cooke's appointment as tutor to Edward VI. In Mar 1550 Bishop Hooper linked him with Sir John Cheke in the tutorship, and in the following May he was given an annuity of £100 for providing ‘training in good letters and manners’ to the King, but he is never officially styled tutor and he is nowhere mentioned in the King's journal. The most likely explanation is that Cooke was brought into the royal household after the retirement of Richard Cox, Cheke's fellow-tutor, in Feb 1550 and that he gave the King the same sort of intellectual guidance as he had given his own children, but as a companion rather than as a teacher.

The new reign had certainly begun auspiciously for Cooke: in Feb 1547 he was made a knight of the Bath and in the following Nov he took his seat in Parliament. It is possible that his election was engineered by the Council, but the influence at work could have been of a more personal kind, the sheriff being his wife's step-uncle John Sackville and his fellow-Member Sir Walter Mildmay a neighbour from Essex. His son-in-law William Cecil nominated him for Stamford and on 31 Jan 1553 the townsmen chose Cooke and their clerk of the peace Robert Lacy, but by the time the sheriff made the return more than two weeks later Cooke had been replaced by his son Richard. His withdrawal is more likely to have been prompted by paternal solicitude than by political misgivings, for on the King's death in the following summer he gave his support to Jane Grey and thus incurred a spell in the Tower after the failure to alter the succession.

With Mary's restoration of Catholicism Cooke went into exile. On 14 Apr 1554 he and Cheke arrived at Strasbourg; Cheke went on to Italy, but Cooke remained at Strasbourg, hearing Peter Martyr lecture and perhaps helping in the parliamentary petition, entitled ‘The confession of the banished ministers’, from the English émigrés living there. In the following autumn he followed Cheke and spent the winter with Thomas Hoby at Padua, but by Jun 1555 he was back at Strasbourg, where in that month he was granted a licence to reside. He stayed there for the next three years writing pamphlets for circulation in England. On Mary's death he returned home. Cooke sat with his sons Richard and William in the first two Elizabethan Parliaments.

Anne, the second daughter of Sir Anthony, married Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth and father of Anthony and Francis.

Sources:

M. K. McIntosh, ‘Sir Anthony Cooke; Tudor humanist, educator and religious reformer’,

Procs. Am. Phil. Soc. cxix. 235-6 to Bios Page to Family Page

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The Church of St Edward the Confessor contains fine alabaster monuments removed from the old church including that of Sir Anthony Cooke (d.1576) in the north aisle. He lived at Gidea Hall and is chiefly famous for his learning in Greek, Latin, poetry and mathematics. He was a politician, religious reformer, and tutor to Edward VI, and Lady Jane Grey as well as his own daughters who were reputed to be the most learned young ladies of their age: Mildred, wife of William Cecil, Lord Burghley their first son being the first Lord Salisbury, Katherine, wife of Sir Henry Killigrew, Anne who married Nicholas Bacon, their son being Francis Bacon, and Elizabeth who married John, Lord Russell, ancestor of the Dukes of Bedford. The Cookes became the leading local gentry and Sir Anthony was host to Queen Elizabeth I at his home at Gidea Hall. In 1637 or 1638 Queen Marie de Medici, mother-in-law of Charles I, and Queen of France, stayed overnight at Gidea Hall on her way to London from Harwich. The alabaster monuments in the south porch of the church to Sir George Hervy, Lieutenant of the Tower and his family 1605, and to Anne (Hervy) wife of George Carew, 1605, have recently been severely vandalised and the church is seeking ways of protecting them.

William Cecil maried secondly Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall, Essex. Sir Anthony was tutor to the heir of Henry VIII, afterwards Edward VI.

Anne, the second daughter of Sir Anthony, married Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was to become Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth and father by accepted history, of Francis Bacon. Cecil's second marriage was celebrated on 21st March, 1545.

Interesting info is online about Gidea Hall and Sir Anthony.

http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/AnthonyCooke.htm

The details in this biography come from the History of Parliament, a biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.

Born by 1505/6, first son of John Cooke of Gidea Hall by Alice, dau. and heiress of William Saunders of Banbury, Oxon. Educ. I. Temple, adm. 4 Feb 1523. Married, by 1523, Anne, dau. of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton and Gains Park, Essex and Milton, Northants. Suc. family 1517. Justice within the liberty of Havering regularly from 1531. One of the Essex gentlemen put on alert at the time of the Northern Rebellion in 1536. Cooke emerges during the last decade of Henry VIII's reign. First appointment at court as one of the newly-formed corps of ‘spears’ or royal bodyguard 1539. KB 20 Feb 1547. J.p. Essex 1537-54, q. 1558/59-d., Warws. 1564-d.; sheriff, Essex and Herts. 1544-5; gent. privy chamber by 1546-53; commr. heresies, Essex 1549, 1550; poss. tutor to Edward VI in 1550; served on the commission to reform the ecclesiastical law 1552; custos rot. Essex 1572-d.

A rebuke to one of his sons in the presence of either Protector Somerset or of Thomas Seymour, is supposed to have prompted the observation, ‘Some men govern families with more skill than others do kingdoms’, and to have led to Cooke's appointment as tutor to Edward VI. In Mar 1550 Bishop Hooper linked him with Sir John Cheke in the tutorship, and in the following May he was given an annuity of £100 for providing ‘training in good letters and manners’ to the King, but he is never officially styled tutor and he is nowhere mentioned in the King's journal. The most likely explanation is that Cooke was brought into the royal household after the retirement of Richard Cox, Cheke's fellow-tutor, in Feb 1550 and that he gave the King the same sort of intellectual guidance as he had given his own children, but as a companion rather than as a teacher.

The new reign had certainly begun auspiciously for Cooke: in Feb 1547 he was made a knight of the Bath and in the following Nov he took his seat in Parliament. It is possible that his election was engineered by the Council, but the influence at work could have been of a more personal kind, the sheriff being his wife's step-uncle John Sackville and his fellow-Member Sir Walter Mildmay a neighbour from Essex. His son-in-law William Cecil nominated him for Stamford and on 31 Jan 1553 the townsmen chose Cooke and their clerk of the peace Robert Lacy, but by the time the sheriff made the return more than two weeks later Cooke had been replaced by his son Richard. His withdrawal is more likely to have been prompted by paternal solicitude than by political misgivings, for on the King's death in the following summer he gave his support to Jane Grey and thus incurred a spell in the Tower after the failure to alter the succession.

With Mary's restoration of Catholicism Cooke went into exile. On 14 Apr 1554 he and Cheke arrived at Strasbourg; Cheke went on to Italy, but Cooke remained at Strasbourg, hearing Peter Martyr lecture and perhaps helping in the parliamentary petition, entitled ‘The confession of the banished ministers’, from the English émigrés living there. In the following autumn he followed Cheke and spent the winter with Thomas Hoby at Padua, but by Jun 1555 he was back at Strasbourg, where in that month he was granted a licence to reside. He stayed there for the next three years writing pamphlets for circulation in England. On Mary's death he returned home. Cooke sat with his sons Richard and William in the first two Elizabethan Parliaments.

Anne, the second daughter of Sir Anthony, married Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth and father of Anthony and Francis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Cooke

http://books.google.com/books?id=p_yzpuWi4sgC&lpg=PA91&ots=RRtI2O_5...

Sir Anthony Cooke (1505/6–1576), educator and humanist, was the only son of John Coke or Cooke (1485–1516) of Gidea Hall, Essex, within the liberty of Havering-atte-Bower near Romford, and Alice Saunders (d. 1510), daughter of William Saunders of Banbury, Oxfordshire. He was the great-grandson of Sir Thomas Cook, a wealthy draper, who was lord mayor of London in 1462–3.

According to Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 12 by Sir Leslie Stephen, Sir Sidney Lee.

Cooke, Sir Anthony (1504-1576), tutor to Edward VI and politician, born in 1504, was the son of John Cooke of Gidea Hall, Essex, by Alice Saunders, and great-grandson of Sir Thomas Cooke [q.v], lord mayor of London in 1462. He was privately educated, and rapidly acquired, according to his panegyrist Llyod, vast learning in Latin, Greek, poetry, history, and mathematics. He lived a retired and studious life in youth; married Anne, daughter of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton, Northamptonshire, and Gains Park, Essex, and was by her the father of a large family. To the edcation of his children he directed all his energies. His daughters Mildred, subsequently wife of Lord Burghley...became, under his instruction, the most learned women in England. His success as a teacher in his own family, with whom the son of Lord Seymour was for a time educated, led to his appointment as tutor to Prince Edward (afterward Edward V i). At his pupil's coronation Cooke was made knight of the Bath. On 8 Nov 1547 he was returned to parliament for Shoreham, and in the same year was one of the visitors commissioned by the crown to inspect the dioceses of London, Westminster, Norwich, and Ely; the injunctions drawn up by him and his companions are printed in Foxe's 'Acts and Monuments.' Two years later he served on two ecclesiastical commissions, of markedly protestantt tendencies. In November and December 1551 he attended the discussion held between Roman catholics and protestants at the houses of Sir William Cecil and Sir Richard Moryson, and his public services were rewarded (27 Oct 1552) with a grant of land. On 27 July 1553 he was committed to the Tower on suspicion of complicity in Lady Jane Grey's movement, but in May 1554 arrived in Strasburg and attended Peter Martyr's lectures there. He stayed at Strasburg, where he became intimate with the scholar Sturm, for the following four years, and regularly corresponded with his son-in-law Cecil (Hatfield Calendar, i. 140-146). On Elizabeth's accession he returned home; was elected M.P. for Essex (23 Jan 1558-9, and 11 Jan 1562-3), and carried the Act of Uniformity to the House of Lords. In the discussion of the bill Cooke differed from all his friends. He 'defends,' wrote Bishop Jewel to Peter Martyr, ' a scheme of his own, and is very angry with all of us' (Zurich Letters, Parker Soc. 32). Cooke was nominated a commissioner for visiting Cambridge University (20 June 1559), the dioceses of Norwich and Ely (21 Aug 1559), and Eton College (Sept 1561), and for receiving the oaths of ecclesiastics (20 Oct 1559). In 1565 he was steward of the liberty of Haveringatte-Bower, and three years later received Queen Elizabeth at Gidea Hall, the rebuilding of which, begun by his great-grandfather, he had then just completed. The house was pulled down early in the last century. In July 1572 he was associated with the lord mayor in the government of London in the temporary absence of Elizabeth, and was commissioner or oyer and terminer for Essex (20 Oct 1573) and an ecclesiastical commissioner (23 April 1576). Cooke died 11 June 1576, and was buried in the church of Romford, Essex, where many other members of his family were buried. An elaborate monument, inscribed with Latin and English verse, was erected there to his memory. By his wife he had four sons....The eldest daughter, Mildred, became the second wife of William Cecil, lord Burghley....

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/AF/individual_record.asp?rec...

2. Mount Mascall is situated in that part of the parish of North Cray next to, Bexley. This seat, which stands on an eminence, having a double avenue of trees in front of it, down to the road, is built on part of the lands "anciently belonging to a mansion which stood two fields southward from it, which, though now almost unknown, was once of some note, being called Jacket's- court, from the owners, who resided in it; and Philipott saw an old roll of Kentish arms, wherein Jacket, of Jacket's-court, is recorded; but the arms were so obliterated by time that he could not distinguish what they were. From this family it went by sale to Switzer, a name of long standing in this neighborhood, as gentlemen; one of whom, in the reign of queen Elizabeth, conveyed it to Edmund Cooke, esq. of Lefnes-abbey in this county, the eldest son of Henry Cooke of that place, second son of John Cooke of Broadwater, in Sussex, who bore for their arms, Gules, three crescents and a canton, argent. By Elizabeth, daughter and heir of John Nichols, comptroller of London-bridge, he left two surviving sons, Lambert and George.[4]