Rev. William Brooke
The Rev. William Brooke, D.D., was born in 1720, the son of Alexander Brooke of Dromavana in County Cavan and Catherine Young of Drumgoon. He was a Scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, a place won by examination. He took the degree of Doctor of Divinity.
For fifty years he was Rector of the Union of Granard in County Longford. A union was a group of parishes joined under one rector. He was of Dromavana, his father's house in Cavan, and of Firmount in County Longford.
His grandfather William Brooke had bought Dromavana in 1685. His father's elder brother, William Brooke of Rantavan, was the father of Henry Brooke, the author of The Fool of Quality and Gustavus Vasa. That made the novelist his first cousin.
He married his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Mathew Young of Lahard in County Cavan and his wife, "Miss Nesbit." They had two sons and a daughter. Richard became a clergyman, held Dromavana, and was Rector of Ballyconnell. He died without children in 1818. William, born in 1769, became a physician in Dublin. Honor married Eyles Irwin, the East India Company servant and travel writer, in 1778.
The Edgeworth family of Edgeworthstown, in the same county, counted the Brookes among their neighbours. Maria Edgeworth described him in her memoir of her father as "an old, well-informed clergyman" with "a considerable share of his relation's original genius, enthusiasm, and simplicity of character." She remembered his love of Homer above all. Her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, shared it.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth also vouched for the younger William. He wrote to Erasmus Darwin that "Mr. William Brooke" had gone to Edinburgh, and asked Darwin to help him.
When the Rev. William Brooke died is not recorded.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Rev. William Brooke (b. 1720)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/rev-william-brooke-1720-c39cca.