When the
revolution of 1688 set
William III and
Mary II on the throne, Brokesby refused to take the oath to the new sovereigns. He was accordingly deprived of his living in 1690. He went up to London in July, and appears to have been received by Lady Fairborn at her house in Pall Mall 'over against the Pastures.' Meanwhile, his wife, by that time the mother of six children, did what she could to wind up affairs. Writing to her sister on 8 Aug, she says, 'We are now cutting down our corn, for we cannot sell it.' After his deprivation Brokesby lived for some years in his native village, and there his wife died and was buried on 26 February 1699. Brokesby's private property seems to have been small. His high character and his reputation as a scholar gained him many friends among the men of his own party. Chief among these was
Francis Cherry of
Shottesbrooke, Berkshire, to whose liberal kindness
Thomas Hearne and many other nonjurors were indebted. After his wife's death Brokesby appears to have resided constantly at Shottesbrooke, and early in 1706 succeeded Mr Gilbert of
St John's College, Oxford, as chaplain to the little society of nonjurors established there. He travelled about a good deal, and generally paid a yearly round of visits in the north of England, probably to the men of his own party, occasionally also going up to Oxford and London. At Shottesbrooke he enjoyed the society of
Robert Nelson, to whom he rendered valuable assistance in the compilation of his book on the
Festivals and Fasts of the Church. There, too, he formed a strong friendship with
Henry Dodwell, sometime
Camden Professor of History at
Oxford. In common with some other moderate nonjurors, Brokesby refused to take the oath simply because his conscience forbade him to do so, and not as a matter of politics. He declared that if James were dead, he would have no objection to swearing allegiance to William and Mary, because they would be in possession, while the claim of the Prince of Wales would be 'dubious'. The death of James, however, was followed by the oath of abjuration, and neither Brokesby nor his friends were prepared to declare that the kingship of William of Orange was founded on right. At the same time, while he warmly upheld the cause of the deprived bishops, ecclesiastical division was grievous to him, and he fully shared in the opinion expressed in
Henry Dodwell's work, 'The Case in View,' that on the death or resignation of these bishops their party might return to the national communion. The case contemplated by Dodwell became a fact when the death of
Bishop Lloyd on 1 January 1710 was followed by the resignation of
Bishop Ken, and accordingly Brokesby, Dodwell and Nelson returned to the communion of the established church, and attended service at Shottesbrooke Church on 28 February. A letter from S. Parker of Oxford, dated 12 November, appears to have called forth a reply dated 18 November, in which Brokesby shows that 'the new bishops' were merely suffragans, that no synodical denunciation had invested them with independent authority after the deaths of the deprived diocesans, that the 'deprived fathers' had no power to invest them with such authority, and that therefore they were not diocesan bishops. Brokesby, then, had no part in what may be described as the schism of the nonjurors. He lost his friend Dodwell in 1711, and the next year he describes himself in his will, dated 15 September 1712, as sojourning at
Hinckley. He was then in good health. The death of Francis Cherry in 1713 caused him deep grief. He died at Hinckley, and was buried at Stoke on 24 October 1714. Of his six children, his elder son Francis died in early life, and his younger son, who became a merchant, also died before him. His four daughters survived him; the second, Dorothy, married Samuel Parr, vicar of Hinckley, and was thus the grandmother of Dr
Samuel Parr, the famous Greek scholar. ==Works==