into the accounts had the effect of bringing more than half a million sterling back to the exchequer, and attracted the special attention of the House of Commons. The success with which he had discharged his duties led to his being in 1848 appointed secretary to the commission for auditing the public accounts, into which he introduced improvements which in a great degree remodelled the working of the department. From this period he was frequently employed on special commissions of inquiry into public departments, including that appointed in 1849 for a revision of the dockyards, and that of 1853 on the contract packet system. In recognition of his services he was in 1854 nominated a civil commander of the Bath. On the outbreak of hostilities with Russia he was appointed accountant-general of the navy, the affairs of which he administered with marked ability and success. In 1858 he was created knight commander of the Bath. On retirement from his office through ill-health he was on 31 March 1863 appointed a commissioner of Greenwich Hospital. He died on 30 Nov. 1866.
[Gent. Mag. 4th ser. i. 277-8.]
BROMLEY, Sir THOMAS (d. 1555?), judge, was of an old Staffordshire family, and a second cousin of Sir Thomas Bromley (1530–1587) [q. v.] His father was Roger, son of Roger Bromley of Mitley, Shropshire, and his mother was Jane, daughter of Mr. Thomas Jennings. He was entered at the Inner Temple, was reader there in the autumn of 1532, and again in the autumn of 1539, and was nominated in Lent term 1540, but did not serve. He was made serjeant-at-law in 1540, and king's serjeant on 2 July of the same year, and on 4 Nov. 1544 he succeeded Sir John Spelman as a judge of the common pleas. He was held in favour by Henry VIII, who made him one of the executors of his will, and bequeathed him a legacy of 300l. Hence he was one of the council of regency to Edward VI; but, although he succeeded in avoiding political entanglements for some time, at the close of the reign he became implicated in Northumberland's scheme for the succession of Lady Jane Grey. The duke summoned to court Montagu, chief justice of the common pleas, Bromley, Sir John Baker, and the attorney- and solicitor-general, and informed them of the king's desire to settle the crown on Lady Jane. They replied that it would be illegal, and prayed an adjournment, and next day expressed an opinion that all parties to such a settlement would be guilty of high treason. Northumberland's violence then became so great that both Bromley and Montagu were in bodily fear; and two days later, when a similar scene took place, and the king ordered them on their allegiance to despatch the matter, they consented to settle the deed, receiving an express commission under the great seal to do so and a general pardon. Bromley, however, adroitly avoided witnessing the deed, and consequently, when Mary sent the lord chief justice to gaol, she made Bromley chief justice of the common pleas, in the room of Sir Roger Cholmley, on 4 Oct. 1553. Burnet says of him that he was ‘a papist at heart.’ He did not hold this office long. On 17 April 1554 Sir Nicholas Throgmorton and others were indicted for a plot and treason at Baynard's Castle on 23 Nov. 1553, and for a rising and march towards London with Sir Henry Isley and two thousand men. Bromley presided at the trial, and allowed the prisoner such unusual freedom of speech as to provoke complaints from the queen's attorney, and threats of retiring from the prosecution. Yet Bromley was not throughout impartial, but even refused the prisoner leave to call a witness, though he was in court, and denied him inspection of a statute on which he relied. His summing up was so defective, ‘for want of memory or goodwill,’ that the prisoner supplied its defects, as if he had been an uninterested spectator. Yet the prisoner was acquitted; so much to Mary's annoyance that the jury were punished for their verdict. Sir William Portman succeeded Bromley as chief justice on 11 June 1555; but the exact date of his death is not known. He left an only daughter, Margaret, who married Sir Richard Newport, ancestor of the earls of Bradford. He is buried at Wroxeter.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid. 164; Testam. Vetust. 43; Holinshed, iv. 31–55; Collins's Peerage, vii. 250, ix. 409; Green's Calendar of State Papers, 17 April 1554.]
BROMLEY, Sir THOMAS (1530–1587), lord chancellor, descended from an ancient family established since the time of King John at Bromleghe, Staffordshire. A member of this family, Roger, settled at Mitley, Shropshire, and had two sons, William and Roger. Thomas Bromley was the grandson of the former, who lived at Hodnet, Shropshire, his father's name being George, and his grandmother being Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Lacon of Willey in the same county. The family had a considerable legal turn, George Bromley being a reader at the Inner Temple during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and his brother, Sir George Bromley, chief justice of Chester under Elizabeth and father to Sir Edward Bromley, who was a judge under James I. Thomas Bromley was born in 1530. He was educated at Oxford, where he took his B.C.L. degree 21 May 1560, entered the Inner Temple, and became the reader in the autumn of 1566. He was studious and regular in his conduct, and probably owed something to family influence
