The Brooke Family
From the time that Lord Chief Justice Brooke purchased the manor of Madeley, the names of members of the Brooke family constantly figure in the ecclesiastical and civil records of the parish of Madeley. Until the year 1706 they continued to occupy the Elizabethan mansion known as the Old Court House, now unhappily fallen into decay, the habitable portions being converted into cottages, and the chapel in which they once worshipped being, on the occasion of our last visit, occupied by poultry, whose cackling takes the place of the chant and psalm, which once rose to heaven from voices long ago silenced by the grim king Death. In this, the most important house of the parish, surrounded by a pleasant park, with moat, pleasure grounds, and fish ponds, dwelt Ann Brooke with John her husband, performing her duties as a wife and mother, as well as those social duties pertaining to her station, with honour to herself and profit to her family and neighbours. She died on the attainment of the allotted three score years and ten, having been ten years a widow.
Etheldreda was the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Ann Brooke, being the wife of Sir Basil Brooke, of whose knighthood we have no account. She was a woman richly endowed with mental and moral qualities, and had received an education far in advance of that acquired by most women of her day, having been conversant with four languages in addition to her mother tongue, as well as skilled in music.
The dust of these ladies was laid with that of their husbands in the Old Parish Church of Madeley, their tombs being adorned with their effigies. On the erection of the present edifice, they were placed in the niches they now occupy outside the church. We give below the Latin inscriptions and the English translations, for which latter we are indebted to the kindness and courtesy of the Rev. C. Brooke, of Haughton, himself a descendant of a branch of this honoured family.