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.