Brookes, James (Brooks)
BROOKES, JAMES (BROOKS)
Roman Catholic bishop of Gloucester (1554–59); b. Hampshire, May 1512; d. Gloucester, February of 1560. Brookes, educated at Oxford, received his doctor of divinity degree in 1546 and the following year was made master of Balliol College. He served also as chaplain and almoner of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. He was appointed bishop of Gloucester, replacing the deposed John Hooper in 1554. As papal subdelegate in the trials of cranmer, ridley, and latimer, he refrained from degrading the last two, although he zealously supported their conviction and execution. He was an eloquent preacher, a number of whose sermons appear in Foxe's Acts and Monuments. With the accession of Elizabeth in 1558, Brookes was deprived of his see because he refused to take the oath of royal supremacy over the Church. He was cast into prison, where he died. Since Gloucester was created a see in 1541 by Henry VIII, Brookes was the first and last bishop of Gloucester in communion with Rome.
Bibliography: t. cooper, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900) 2:1346–47. p. hughes, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England (London 1942). l. b. smith, Tudor Prelates and Politics (Princeton 1953). A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time (London–New York 1885–1902) 1:315–316.
[m. r. o'connell]