(1719 - 73), o. surv. s. of 7th B. Brooke; suc. fa. 1727 as 8th B.; educ. Winchester; m. 1742 Hon. Elizabeth Hamilton, dau. of Ld. Archibald Hamilton; cr. E. Brooke 1746, E. of Warwick 1759; KT 1753; FSA 1768.
1739 [dep. England 1734/5] Florence (by 22 Feb.), Rome (by 18 Apr. - Jun.) [Geneva by Oct. 1739, England May 1740]
Lord Brooke had set out from England soon after leaving Winchester in 1734,1 but he did not reach Florence until 22 February 1739.2 He was in Rome by 18 April (when Samuel Crisp met him and called him 'a very pretty lad').3 By June he had found Rome somewhat disappointing; although St Peter's was admirable, the modern palaces 'are built to be peopled only with statues and pictures; whilst the families retire into a corner of an upper story, and eat almost as little as the breathless inhabitants that fill their galleries. The floors are of coarse bricks and, with the gardens of their villas, are kept so dirty', wrote Brooke, that the whole effect was like seeing a 'person dressed in a tawdry rich coat, with a dirty shirt'.4 But Lady Hertford later recounted that Lord Brooke had been 'so ill all the time he was in Italy, that he took little delight in anything he saw there, nor could he see half of what he intended'; she also mentioned that he owned some views of Venice by Canaletto, which he had bought on his travels.5 Later, when Canaletto was in England, Brooke was to commission five paintings and three drawings of Warwick Castle. Horace Walpole recorded Lord Brooke at Geneva in October 1739,6 and he was back in England by May 1740.7
1. See D. Buttery, Apollo, 135[1992]:42, 45n5. 2. SP 98/42 (Newsletter, 23 Feb. 1739). 3. Macnaghten, 3. 4. Pomfret Corr., 1:95. 5. Ibid., 2:148 - 9. 6. Wal. Corr., 13:183n14. 7. Daily Advertiser, 3 May 1740.