General Notes

The details in this biography come from the History of Parl
iament <http://www.history.ac.uk/hop>, a biographical dicti
onary of Members of the House of Commons.
Born by 1505/6, first son of John Cooke of Gidea Hall by Al
ice, 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 wi
thin the liberty of Havering regularly from 1531. One of th
e Essex gentlemen put on alert at the time of the Norther
n Rebellion <../Documents/PilgrimageofGrace.htm> in 1536. C
ooke emerges during the last decade of Henry VIII <../about
HenryVIII.htm>'s reign. First appointment at court as one o
f the newly-formed corps of ‘spears’ or royal bodyguard 153
9. KB 20 Feb 1547. J.p. Essex 1537-54, q. 1558/59-d., Warws
. 1564-d.; sheriff, Essex and Herts. 1544-5; gent. privy ch
amber by 1546-53; commr. heresies, Essex 1549, 1550; poss
. tutor to Edward VI <../aboutEdward.htm> in 1550; served o
n the commission to reform the ecclesiastical law 1552; cus
tos rot. Essex 1572-d.
A rebuke to one of his sons in the presence of either Prote
ctor Somerset <EdwardSeymour(1DSomerset).htm> or of Thoma
s Seymour <ThomasSeymour(1BSudeley).htm>, is supposed to ha
ve prompted the observation, ‘Some men govern families wit
h more skill than others do kingdoms’, and to have led to C
ooke's appointment as tutor to Edward VI <../aboutEdward.ht
m>. In Mar 1550 Bishop Hooper <JohnHooper.htm> linked him w
ith Sir John Cheke <JohnCheke.htm> in the tutorship, and i
n the following May he was given an annuity of £100 for pro
viding ‘training in good letters and manners’ to the King <
../aboutEdward.htm>, but he is never officially styled tuto
r and he is nowhere mentioned in the King <../aboutEdward.h
tm>'s journal. The most likely explanation is that Cooke wa
s brought into the royal household after the retirement o
f Richard Cox <RichardCox.htm>, Cheke <JohnCheke.htm>'s fel
low-tutor, in Feb 1550 and that he gave the King <../aboutE
dward.htm> the same sort of intellectual guidance as he ha
d given his own children, but as a companion rather than a
s a teacher.
The new reign had certainly begun auspiciously for Cooke: i
n Feb 1547 he was made a knight of the Bath and in the foll
owing Nov he took his seat in Parliament. It is possible th
at his election was engineered by the Council, but the infl
uence at work could have been of a more personal kind, th
e sheriff being his wife's step-uncle John Sackville <JohnS
ackville.htm> and his fellow-Member Sir Walter Mildmay <Wal
terMildmay(Sir).htm> a neighbour from Essex. His son-in-la
w William Cecil <WilliamCecil(1BBurghley).htm> nominated hi
m for Stamford and on 31 Jan 1553 the townsmen chose Cook
e and their clerk of the peace Robert Lacy, but by the tim
e the sheriff made the return more than two weeks later Coo
ke had been replaced by his son <RichardCooke.htm>. His wit
hdrawal is more likely to have been prompted by paternal so
licitude than by political misgivings, for on the King <../
aboutEdward.htm>'s death in the following summer he gave hi
s support to Jane Grey <../aboutJaneGrey.htm> and thus incu
rred a spell in the Tower after the failure to alter the su
ccession.
With Mary <../aboutMary.htm>'s restoration of Catholicism C
ooke went into exile. On 14 Apr 1554 he and Cheke <JohnChek
e.htm> arrived at Strasbourg; Cheke <JohnCheke.htm> went o
n to Italy, but Cooke remained at Strasbourg, hearing Pete
r Martyr lecture and perhaps helping in the parliamentary p
etition, entitled ‘The confession of the banished ministers
’, from the English émigrés living there. In the followin
g autumn he followed Cheke <JohnCheke.htm> and spent the wi
nter with Thomas Hoby <ThomasHoby.htm> at Padua, but by Ju
n 1555 he was back at Strasbourg, where in that month he wa
s granted a licence to re