The Fall of a Tudor Gentle Family: The Cookes of Gidea Hall, Essex, 1579-1629

Abstract

I HAVE JUDGED my happe harde, my hope vayne, and my desertes lyttle, that have ledd me, and lefte me, in great dett, smale abylitey, and no helpe.2 With these dismal words, written in 1585, Anthony Cooke accurately summed up his first twenty-five years. Though the heir of a wealthy and important family and himself a former member of Queen Elizabeth's entourage, this young man was indeed in trouble. He was abroad without royal license, having fled to escape the demands of his creditors for thousands of pounds. He had already sold off most of his family's once extensive lands. He had lost the favor of his powerful relatives, most notably of his uncle William Cecil. And, as his contemporaries realized full well, he was utterly lacking in those qualities which might have enabled him to redeem his position. The story of Anthony Cooke the younger and his family is the history of the decline and eventual collapse of a Tudor gentle house. The objective, external factors which contributed to the Cookes' economic ruin also affected many other Tudor families, thereby lending to their history a more general significance. At the core of the problem, however, lay Anthony's own weaknesses -his extravagance, his poor choice of friends, his readiness to succumb to temptation, and his unwillingness (or inability) to follow the advice given him by wiser men. The fall of the Cooke family forces us to acknowledge once again the role of personality in history.