The Brooks Family in Bedfordshire

John Thomas Brooks’ father George was the first of the family to have any connection with Flitwick. George Brooks was born in 1741 – I do not know where. The first notice of him that I can find is his appointment in 1765 as Apparitor-General to Bishop Trevor of Durham. Under this Bishop, and his successor Bishop Egerton, he acquired a plurality of offices being by 1785 Secretary, Register, Apparitor-General, Cursitor, Auditor, one of the Stewards, Bailiff of Auckland, and Librarian. By 1771 he also had a London house in the Parish of St. George’s Hanover Square and in 1776 he was living in Green Street Mayfair in that Parish. In 1787 he founded with a man called Dixon a bank at 26 Chancery Lane, known originally as Dixon, Brooks & Co. With various changes of name the bank continued until 1859 when it was taken over by the Union Bank of London, which itself became part of what is now National Westminster Bank plc.

George Brooks had married in 1773 Anne Kirton, daughter of Thomas Kirton, a merchant of Newcastle, but she died in 1784, leaving a daughter Ann Sophia (b. 1774) and a son John (b. 1776).

It is not clear how George Brooks first came to Bedfordshire, though as early as 1765 his elder brother John was witness to a Will of Cuthbert Sheldon of Priestley in Flitwick and by 1779 George Brooks himself became Trustee of the Marriage Settlement of Cuthbert Sheldon’s daughter Elizabeth when she married James Durham.

In 1789 George Brooks married Ann Hesse (b. 1757) widow of James Hesse and daughter of Jeffrey Fisher. From her godfather Humphrey Dell she had in 1765 inherited Flitwick Manor. She had two daughters from her marriage with Hesse, but no surviving sons. From her marriage with George Brooks, she had only one surviving son, John Thomas Brooks, the subject of this book, born in 1794.

Despite acquiring Flitwick Manor, George Brooks, whether for business reasons or otherwise, continued to live in the London area, in Mortlake by 1802 and by 1816 at Twickenham where he resided in the splendid Montpellier House which still survives.