COMMUNICATIONS 
TO THE 
MONTHLY MEETINGS 
OF THE 
YORKSHIRE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 
1872. 
March 5th. —R. Davies, Esq., F. S. A., read tlie following 
‘‘Memoir of a York Poet of the time of King James the First.” 
Alderman Robert Brooke, a York merchant of the Elizabethan 
period, lived and carried on business in the street called “ The 
Pavement,” in the parish of All Hallows. He served the office 
of Sheriff in 1575, was twice Lord Mayor, and was twice 
returned to Parliament as one of the representatives of the city. 
He had a numerous family, of one of whom, his eldest surviving 
son, Christopher Brooke, I propose to give a brief biographical 
sketch. 
He was born at his father’s house in the Pavement, in the 
year 1566. It would seem that he was originally intended to 
succeed to his father’s business, having been admitted a mem¬ 
ber of the company of Merchant Adventurers in the year 1587, 
when he had just attained his majority. But if that were so, 
his views must have subsequently changed, for there is no 
doubt that before the close of the century he had passed 
through one of the Universities, most probably Cambridge, of 
which his younger brother was a member, and had been entered 
as a student of the law at Lincoln’s Inn. 
Here Christopher Brooke was for some years the chamber- 
fellow of John Donne, the celebrated poet and divine, afterwards 
Dean of St. Paul’s, who had become one of the members of 
that Inn of Court as early as the year 1590, and between the 
two young students a warm attachment subsisted. 
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