Elizabeth Wyatt Brooke

Elizabeth Wyatt Brooke  trees.ancestry.com

Elizabeth Wyatt Brooke 1503 Notes: early in her marriage with Thomas Wyatt, marital difficulties arose. He repudiated her as an adulteress, although there is no record linking her with any specific man. For fifteen years or so, he continued to support her, but then refused to do so any longer and sent her to live with her brother, Lord Cobham. This was around 1537, the year in which Lord Cobham attempted to force Wyatt to continue his support. He refused. It wasn't until 1541, when Wyatt was arrested and his properties confiscated, that the Brooke family was able to force a reconciliation as a condition for Wyatt’s pardon. They were forced by Henry VIII to reconcile. In early 1542, more than a year before Wyatt’s death, Lady Wyatt's name crops up in Spanish dispatches as one of three ladies in whom Henry VIII was said to be interested as a possible sixth wife. The Spanish Ambassador wrote that the lady for whom the King “showed the greatest regard was a sister of Lord Cobham, whom Wyatt, some time ago, divorced for adultery. She is a pretty young creature, with wit enough to do as badly as the others if she were to try”. Some authors believe the Ambassador was mistaken in his identification. Another Elizabeth Brooke, Lord Cobham’s daughter, was definitely at court the following year. She would have been nearly sixteen in Jan 1542 and in later years was accounted one of the most beautiful women of her time. Elizabeth Brooke’s second husband, Sir Edward Warner, Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, lived through the political and religious upheavals of the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary I, Edward VI and died in the reign of Elizabeth I. He was a court official whose fortunes changed depending on the faction that held power at the time. He was imprisoned in the tower during Henry VIII’s reign. In 1549 Warner acted as Marshall of the Field during the suppression of the peasant’s revolt in Norfolk that was known as Kett’s Rebellion. In 1554 he was implicated in the rebellion of his step son, Sir Thomas Wyatt. Eventually, however, the family fortunes were restored and under Elizabeth Tudor, Warner reclaimed to his post at the Tower of London. In 1561 was an inquisitor of Catherine Grey as Lieutenant of the Tower. Elizabeth died in the Tower in Aug 1560 and was buried within its precincts.