Family and Education

b. by 1523, s. of Richard Bromwich of Hereford. m. Eleanor, da. of Jenkin Price of Clyro, Rad., 1s. 6da.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Hereford 1546-7.2

Biography

The Bromwich family was well-established in Hereford. Thomas Bromwich’s father was mayor there in 1510-11 and his namesake and probable grandfather had held the same office in the time of Edward IV. Of Bromwich’s own career little has come to light, and that mostly of a civic nature. He is first met with when, at some time between 1538 and 1544, he was a plaintiff in Chancery over the site of the manor of Bishops Frome, Herefordshire. Although he himself married outside the city and county, he was related to leading Hereford families: he was the uncle of John Warnecombe, of whose will he was overseer, and his only son Richard married a daughter of William Berkeley.3

Bromwich sat in only one Parliament, that of April 1554. He and his fellow-Member Thomas Havard, a staunch Catholic, must have proved acceptable, for when another Parliament was summoned for the following November they were both recommended for re-election by Bishop Heath, president of the council in the marches, as being of the ‘wise, grave and Catholic sort’. The fact that neither was re-elected can hardly mean that the city of Hereford held their religion against them: it is more likely to have been Heath’s interference that was resented. For Bromwich there may have been no further opportunity. He is last mentioned in 1557, when in the preparations for the visit to Hereford of the president and the council in the marches he had to provide ‘one fine table cloth for my lord’s table’. If he made a will it has not been discovered.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Vis. Herefs. ed. Weaver, 14-15; PCC 33 Powell.
• 2. R. Johnson, Anct. Customs, Hereford, 233.
• 3. C1/948/53, 1015/104.
• 4. HMC 13th Rep. IV, 319-20, 325.