31. Reverend Stopford Augustus⁶ Brooke (Reverend Richard St. Clair⁵, Doctor William⁴, Reverend William³, Alexander², William¹) was born in Glendoen, Letterkenny, Donegal 14/11/1832. Stopford died 18/03/1916 in Four Winds, Cranleigh, Surrey, at 83 years of age.

He married Emma Diana Wentworth-Beaumont 23/03/1858. Emma was born in London c1831. Emma was the daughter of Thomas Wentworth-Beaumont. Emma died 1874 at 43 years of age.

He was listed as head of household in the 1871 census in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London. He was listed as head of household in the 1881 census in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London. Stopford was visiting 1891 in Rothay Hotel, Grasmere, Westmoreland. Stopford retired 1895. Stopford was a boarder 1901 in 135 Hayley Road, Edgbaston, Warwickshire. He was cremated in Woking Crematorium, 22/03/1916. His funeral was held in Four Winds, Cranleigh, Surrey, 22/03/1916. Stopford was memorialized 22/03/1916 in Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead. From The Times, March 20, 1916

We regret to announce that the Rev. Stopford Brooke, the noted preacher and literary and art critic, died on Saturday at his residence at Ewhurst, Surrey.

Stopford Augustus Brooke was a member of a well-known Irish family, General Brooke being his brother and Lord Courtown his cousin. He was the eldest son of Richard Sinclair Brooke and of his wife, Anna Stopford; was born at Letterkenny, county Donegal, in 1832; went to school at Kidderminster and Kingstown; and graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained the Downe prize and the Vice-Chancellor's prize for English verse. He was soon afterwards ordained, becoming curate of St. Matthew, Marylebone, in 1857. From this time his life was passed in London. He married a sister of Mr. Wentworth Beaumont (afterwards Lord Allendale), and, after he became in 1860 curate to Mr. Maclagan (subsequently Archbishop of York) at St. Mary Abbot's Kensington, he quickly became known for the eloqence of his sermons, and for his interest in matters literary and artistic. In 1866 he became minister of St. James's Chapel, York-street, St. James's-square, where he remained till the chapel was demolished in 1875; and before long his Sunday services were crowded by distinguished congregations, who listened eagerly to the sermons of a man who had already become one of the leaders of the Liberal movement in the Church of England. Before this, in 1865, Mr. Brooke had published what still remains, in the opinion of many, his most important book, the "Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson". To a certain number of friends and persons interested in religious movement "Robertson of Brighton" was even then an inspiring name, and a beloved memory; but it remained for Mr. Stopford Brooke to make him known all over England and America.

A Follower of Ruskin

If Mr. Brooke in his own doctrines followed any leader, it was not Maurice, nor Kingsley, nor Jowett, but Frederick Robinson; though he was perhaps influenced even more, if we regard the whole body of his opinions, by Mr. Ruskin. Captivated by the beauty of that great writer's style, and taught by him to find perfection in Florentino and Venetian art, Mr. Brooke may be said to have enrolled himself almost without reservation, at least for a time, among the band of Mr. Ruskin's followers. His own natural exuberance of fancy and of diction, which he shared with so many other Irishmen, led him to feel a close affinity with the most eloquent, the most pictorial, of English writers, while in later years, when he had ceased to agree with some of Mr. Ruskin's aesthetic dogmas, his passionate interest in social questions made him adopt, with the Socialists, a good many of the Coniston prophet's social theories.

The death of his wife, about 1872, was a terrible blow to Mr. Brooke, but it did not break up the home in Manchester-square or interrupt the course of his clerical work. He flung himself more and more upon the consoling influences of friendship; and few men had warmer friends that J. R. Green, F. T. Palgrave, and some others were to him in those days. He was appointed Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen in 1872, and after losing St. James's Chapel he became lessee and minister of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury. Several volumes of sermons appeared from time to time, growing gradually less and less dogmatic in tone, so that no great surprise was caused when, in 1880, Mr. Brooke announced that he had seceded from the Established Church of England. From this time he acted with the Unitarians, though his relation to that body was hardly one of complete adoption. He used, for example, his own liturgy, freely adapted from the Church of England Prayer-book; and in all matters of ritual he continued to conform pretty closely to the Anglican pratice.

Of course a certain number of his congregation left him, but their places were filled by others, and during all the years of his occupancy of Bedford Chapel he continued to preach to large audiences twice on every Sunday in the year, except during the two months of his autumn holiday, which he generally spent in his beloved Italy. Often the evening sermons were avowedly lectures on literary subjects, especially on the lives and works of English poets. Of these Mr. Brooke had a great knowledge, which grew deeper and more comprehensive to the end; and his judgments, if sometimes a little exuberantly expressed, were always sympathetic and often profoundly true. His well-known little "Primer of English Literature" was thought by Matthew Arnold worthy of a most respectful and laudatory review; and his various purblished discourses on the poets are not mere moral essays - they are often brilliant pieces of criticism.

The Study of Poetry

How seriously he worked at his own subjects is shown by that monumental fragment of a "History of Early English Literature" which was all he lived to accomplish. The two large volumes - dealing with poetry to the Accession of Alfred - only brought the history down to what most of us would call the infancy of the language, so deeply had the writer tried to sound and probe the origins of a literature which he always maintained to be the greatest in the world. His singualr gift for interpreting poetic movements was equally conspicuous during the closing years of his life, when he specially divoted himself to the study of 19th century poetry. The study of Tennyson which he published in 1894 was followed in 1902 by a book on "The Poetry of Robert Browning", perhaps the most illuminating criticism of the poet which has a appeared. "Studies in Poetry" (1907) dealt with Blake, Scott, Keats, and Shelley; while Clough, Arnold, Rossetti, and Morris were studied in "Four Poets" (1908). Apart from these, and one or two other published works, and from his successful advocacy to the purchase of Dove Cottage as a memorial to Wordsworth, Mr. Brooke had been for the last 10 or 12 years less prominently before the world. His health was not good, and frequently caused great anxiety to his friends. But some years ago a lectureship in literature was founded for him, and he was able to deliver several courses of lectures as well as to preach frequently, especially at Hampstead.

He retained considerable personal influence; he wrote eloquently and talked well and he divided his interest pretty equally between liberal religion, the social question, pure literature, and art. Of the last he was at once a passionate appreciator and a good judge, though he was out of sympathy with most of its modern developments. He admired Tintoret, Turner, and the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Costa; for he looked above all other elements in art to its power of giving imaginative pleasure. He was thus as little likely to care for the harsh realsim of Manet and his imitators as he was, in the social field, to care for the ruthless commercialism which his friends Ruskin and William Morris denounced so fiercely.

Mr. Brooke leaves a son, Stopford, who became a Unitarian minister, with a thriving church in Boston, U.S.A.; returning to England he sate as Liberal M.P. for Bow and Bromley from 1906 to 1910, and afterwards unsuccessfully contested the Bassetlaw division. Of his daughers, one is married to Mr. Jacks, Principal of Manchester College, at Oxford, one to her cousin, Mr. Leslie Brooke, the artist, and one to Mr. T.W. Rolleston, author and journalist.

para_br eak

Educated at Kidderminster grammar school and Trinity College, Dublin. Ordained in London on 7 June 1857. Appointed Chaplain to the British Embassy in Berlin in 1826.

W. L Brooke is listed as staying at the hotel with Stopford Brooke, b c 1835 in Ireland and was a barrister. Possible brother?

Reverend Stopford Augustus Brooke and Emma Diana Wentworth-Beaumont had the following children:

55 i. Graham Vernon⁷ Brooke. Graham died 1869. Died of typhoid fever.

56 ii. Stopford Wentworth William Brooke was born in Kensington, London 1859. Stopford died 23/04/1938 at 78 years of age. He married Helen T. Ellis 1903. Helen died 1928.

He was listed as a resident in the census report in The Rectory, Wyton, Hundingdonshire, 1871. He was listed on a passenger list in SS Gallia, from Queenstown to Boston, 10/09/1886. He was listed on a passenger list in SS Commonwealth, from Liverpool to Boston, 18/07/1901. Unitarian minister at Clifton from 1883 - 1886 and then was minister at the First Church (Unitarian) in Boston. Liberal MP for Bow and Bromley (1906 - 1910).

57 iii. Honor Brooke was born in London c1862. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1871. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1881. Honor was visiting 1891 in Rothay Hotel, Grasmere, Westmoreland.

58 iv. Maud Brooke was born in London c1863. She married T.W. Rolleston. (See T.W. Rolleston for the continuation of this line.)

She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1871. Maud was visiting 1891 in Rothay Hotel, Grasmere, Westmoreland.

59 v. Evelyn Brooke was born in London c1867. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1871. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1881.

60 vi. Olive Brooke was born in London c1869. She married Reverend Laurence Jacks. (See Reverend Laurence Jacks for the continuation of this line.)

She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1871. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1881.

61 vii. Sybil Diana Brooke was born in Marylebone, London c1871. Sybil died 26/02/1957 in London, at 85 years of age. She married Leonard Leslie Brooke 28/06/1894. Leonard was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire 24/09/1862. Leonard was the son of Leonard Dobbin Brooke and Rhoda Prentice. Leonard died 1/05/1940 in 28 Hollycroft Avenue, Hampstead, at 77 years of age. He was listed as head of household in the 1871 census in 56 Park Road South, Birkenhead, Cheshire. He was listed as a resident in the census report in 56 Park Road South, Birkenhead, Cheshire, 1881. He was listed as head of household in the 1901 census in Main Street, Harwell, Berkshire. He resided in Cumor, Oxford, Oxfordshire 1921. He resided in 28 Hollycroft Avenue, Hampstead 1933. (See Leonard Leslie Brooke for the continuation of this line.)

She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1881. She was listed as a resident in the census report in Main Street, Harwell, Berkshire, 1901.

62 viii. Verona Brooke was born in London c1872. She was listed as a resident in the census report in 1 Manchester Square, Marylebone, London, 1881. Verona was a boarder 1901 in 135 Hayley Road, Edgbaston, Warwickshire.

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