You know, sometimes. Sometimes, you decide to pick up what you think is going to be a boring little research project after work on a Friday afternoon when your wife is out running errands. And sometimes, you get WAY MORE than you bargained for in that little research project. My lords and ladies, let me introduce you to Robert Cooke.
This all started when I was preparing for the most recent East Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship. I was looking at old text sources, and found Mr. Cooke’s name coming up frequently in texts I was referencing, so I made a comment in my paper about how there is probably fruit on the vine for a deeper linguistic study into his writing. While we look at his writing now as a model for artistically assembled period texts, at the time they were absolutely lambasted as difficult to read. It would seem that his contemporaries would agree with my assessment, but that isn’t what I am writing about today. Oh no. Instead, what I am writing about today is that apparently, Mr. Cooke comes with… baggage1.
So who was Robert Cooke? Well, his biography isn’t very secretive, there have been several books published about him, and he wrote four books about period armorial practice2. He was a tremendously influential officer of the armory at the College of Arms in London. He held the Clarenceaux3 seat for 25 years. In that position, he was responsible for the organization of funerals for all the knights resident within his boundary and was the architect of the magnificent state funeral of Philip Sidney in 1586.
And, oh, what a tenure in the Office of the King of Arms it was. For one, on order from Henry VIII, he lead a crazy number of visitations throughout the south of England. And when I say crazy, I mean 28 including many counties more than once. They were virtually annual, which considering the amount of work that was done on them was an absurd pace for the time.
Those visitations and the work they generated are an incredibly important source of material for modern historians because they amounted largely to a census of the gentry, and the practice itself would continue well into the 1680s. Now, for most of the heralds conducting these visitations, this was largely a process by which the arms and claim were recorded as documented, and those claiming title were verified as lawfully doing so. Paperwork, interviews, and the power to revoke and arrest those illegally claiming titles.
Cooke, however, had other ideas. He had ambition and something other people wanted, a recipe that leads to corruption from time to time. He had been building support to be commissioned as Garter King of Arms, a title he held provisionally for two years in the 1580s and lost two years later4. What better way to build support of the gentry than to grant arms to newly established lords? And grant he did! By his death around 1593, Cooke had attested to over 500 distinct armories. Later Clarenceaux heralds and deputies would criticize his tendency to grant arms to “base and unworthy persons for his private gain(e) on(e)ly”. Naturally, because of his rigorous travel schedule and the grueling pace of visitations that were being kept by the Kings of Arms, this wasn’t even fully understood until 1614.
I am not totally sure why, but the thought of the newly commissioned Clarenceaux seeing ANOTHER grant by Robert Cooke come across the desk at an inn in Devonshire sort of tickles me.
1 I want SCAdians to remember Mr. Cooke’s name next time there is chatter about too many awards going out in court.
2 One of which, An English Baronage, was subtitled “in which are a world of errors, ergo caveat lector” posthumously.
3 The Clarenceaux is the most senior of the two provincial Kings of Arms, handling the south of England.
4 The line between nepotism and controversy here gets a little blurry, but he was accused of “encroaching on the traditional privileges” of the Garter, while the son of the previous Garter was instead commissioned as such.