The Cobhams had been famous from the earliest recorded times. In Philipott’s “Survey of Kent,” 1659--it is said that “Cobham afforded a seat and a surname to that noble and splendid family; and certainly,” adds the quaint old writer, “this place was the cradle or seminary of persons who, in elder ages, were invested in places of as signall and principall a trust or eminence, as they could move in, in the narrow orbe of a particular county.” Henry de Cobham was one of the Recognitores magnæ assisæ--who were “in some proportion equivalent to the judges itinerant”--in the first year of King John. No less than four Kentish gentlemen of the name embarked with the first Edward in his “victorious and triumphant expedition into Scotland,” and were knighted for services rendered to that Prince in his “successful and auspicious siege of Carlaverock.” With John de Cobham, distinguished in the reign of Edward the Third, the male line determined; Joan, his daughter, is said to have had five husbands, by only one of whom,[49] Sir Reginald Braybrooke, she left issue, Joan, who being married to Sir Thomas Broke, of the county of Somerset, Esq., “knitt Cobham, and a large income beside, to her husband’s patrimony.”[50] Their eldest son, Sir Edward Broke, was summoned to Parliament, as Baron Cobham, in the 23 Henry VI. In 1559, Sir William Broke entertained Queen Elizabeth at Cobham Hall, in the first year of her reign, “with a noble welcome as she took her progress through the county of Kent.” His son and successor, Henry Lord Cobham, was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports; but “being too deeply concerned in the design of Sir Walter Raleigh,” he was deprived of his estates, “though not his life.”[51] His younger brother, George, was executed; but Lord Cobham “lived many years after in great misery and poverty,” dying in January, 1619; and sharing the humble grave of some lowly peasant, apart from the magnificent tombs which cover the remains of his great and gallant ancestors. He is said, by Weldon, to have been reduced to such extreme necessity, that “he had starved, but for a trencher-scraper, sometime his servant at Court, who relieved him with scraps.” His estates, at the time of their confiscation, are estimated to have been worth 7,000_l._ per annum; and he possessed 30,000_l._ in goods and chattels. His nephew was “restored in blood; “but not to the title or property. These were transferred--“the manor and seat of Cobham Hall, and the rest of Lord Cobham’s lands”--by James the First to one of his kinsmen, Ludovick Stuart, Duke of Lennox; whose male line became extinct in 1672. The Lady Katherine, sister of the last Duke of Richmond and Lennox, married into the princely family of the O’Briens of Thomond; but the Duke “dying greatly in debt,” the estates were sold. Cobham Hall was purchased by the second husband of the Lady Katherine, Sir Joseph Williamson, who resided there for some time.[52] In 1701 he died,