Family and Education

b. ?1701, 2nd but o. surv. s. of William Bromley by his 2nd w. educ. Westminster 1714; Ch. Ch. Oxf. 27 Feb. 1717, aged 15; Grand Tour (Italy and France) 1721-4. m. 2 July 1724, Lucy, da. and h. of Clement Throckmorton of Haseley, Warws., 2s. 1da. suc. fa. 1732.

Offices Held

Member of the board of Radcliffe Trustees, Mar. 1732.

Biography

In 1721, while on the grand tour, William Bromley seems to have paid his respects to the Pretender, whose secretary afterwards wrote of him:

Though I once resolved to say no more to you about the ill grounded notion some people have that the King’s secrets are being betrayed, yet remarking what you say on that head relating to Mr. Bromley, I cannot but tell you that it is 18 years since he was here, I was very well acquainted with him, he was a mighty honest gentleman, but not of a turn of keeping a secret, not even his own, so I am apt to believe, if what you mention be true, that discovery had proceeded from some ill placed confidence he had made and not from anybody near H.M. who I am persuaded were incapable of what is laid to their charge.1

Returning to England, Bromley entered Parliament unopposed for a Cornish borough pending the general election, at which he was returned unopposed at Warwick. While his father was also in the House his only recorded parliamentary activity was to vote against the Government, but after the elder Bromley’s death he took his place among the Tory leaders. On 28 Feb. 1733 he and another Tory, Thomas Bramston, introduced a bill for commuting the obligation on each parish to give six days unpaid labour a year for the maintenance of roads passing through it, into a rate of sixpence in the pound. On 9 Mar. he was one of only two voices raised against a proposal to take the rates for the repairs of churches out of the hands of ministers and churchwardens, and make them subject to the approval of two justices in the same way as the poor rate. On 8 May he and ‘the heads of the Tories’ are described as separating themselves from the opposition Whigs by speaking ‘obstinately’ against the Princess Royal’s marriage portion. He reached his parliamentary peak in the next session, when he was chosen by the Opposition to move the repeal of the Septennial Act in a full dress debate on 13 Mar. 1734.2

Re-elected for Warwick in 1734, but unseated on petition, Bromley was returned at the beginning of 1737 for Oxford University, his father’s old seat, by an overwhelming majority. Five weeks later he died suddenly ‘of a pleuretic fever’ on 12 Mar. 1737. According to Egmont

He drunk hard at his late election for Oxford and also at the Coventry election, being a great party man for the Tories, and to that his death is attributed, though his friends say the vexation his wife gave him was some cause at least of his drinking. He married a few years ago a young wife, the daughter of a physician, who brought him £30,000, and preferred him to several more advantageous proposals, and yet in a short time made him a cuckold.3

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Shirley Matthews

Notes

• 1. Edgar to Col. Jas. Urquhart. 10 Feb. 1740, Stuart mss 220/132.
• 2. HMC Egmont Diary, i. 338, 341, 371.
• 3. Ibid. ii. 366-7.