Paly of Six * * * and * * * with Canton Ermine.
On this tower also is an heraldic rose, and on the left * *, a Cross
Pommee, * *.
The first entry of an interment in the register at Claverley, the vicar
tells us, is that of a Brooke, and the second entry in the register at
Madeley is also the interment of a member of the same family.
Subsequent and more detailed examinations of the arms in various parts of
the Court House and adjacent buildings throw a doubt upon the statement
in a previous page, as to the proprietorship or occupation at one time of
the Ferrers family. These arms differ, it will be seen, as may be
expected, from marriages and inter-marriages, but we are not sufficiently
acquainted with the arms of other old families of the time to say with
what or whose arms they were incorporated, and it would be overloading
our pages with genealogical lore to go into details. A family, some of
the members of which had two wives and eighteen children, would naturally
soon spread itself about the country.
The Rev. C. Brooke, of Brackley, Northants, as these pages are going
through the press, writes to say:—
“From the similiarity in the arms it would seem that there was a
connection between Robert Brooke of Madeley Court, and Brooke of
Blacklands, whose arms are given by Dr. Plot, in his ‘History of
Staffordshire,’ as ‘Chequy, arg. and sable;’ but it does not appear
to be so by the pedigree in the Visitation taken 1623, or by the
pedigree of Brooke of Blacklands, compiled by Mr. Eyton, for the Rev.
J. Brooke, from original deeds at Haughton, which he did as well as
the scanty records would allow.”
A contributor to “Salopian Shreds and Patches” (Feb. 9, 1876) says one of
the bells of Church Stretton church has the following inscription:—
“Donatum pro avi Edwardo Brooke de Stretton Generoso. 1711.”