He graduated from
Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1621, and as was then common, studied law at
Gray's Inn prior to his marriage in 1623. It was here that he became friends with
John Bradshaw, a lawyer from Cheshire who served as judge during the
Trial of Charles I in January 1649. Like his maternal grandfather and father-in-law, Brereton was a zealous
Puritan, a generic term for anyone who wanted to reform, or 'purify', the
Church of England. The most prominent were
Presbyterians, who wanted to bring its doctrine and structure into line with the
Church of Scotland, and included Parliamentary leaders like
John Pym and
John Hampden. Based on his support for the
Congregationalist radical,
Samuel Eaton, and the reforms advocated by Sir
Henry Vane the Younger in 1641, Brereton appears to have sympathised with
those who rejected the concept of state-ordained religion. Appointed
Deputy lieutenant for Cheshire, he was an unusually active
Justice of the Peace, or JP, attending over 80% of sessions held between 1625 and 1641; in the same period, only one other person managed over 40%. In 1627, he was made a
baronet in return for funding 30 soldiers in Ireland for three years. In the
1628 Parliament, Brereton was elected
MP for
Cheshire;
Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629, and did not call another until 1640, instituting a period of
Personal Rule sometimes called the "Eleven Year Tyranny". , similar to those installed by Brereton In the summer of 1634, Brereton visited the
Dutch Republic and later published a detailed account of his travels. He installed the Dutch system of
duck decoys on his lands, leading to disputes with his neighbours, who claimed it interfered with their hunting and
hawking. Another journal covered his trip through
North East England, the
Scottish Lowlands, and
Ireland in 1635. He later visited
France, and possibly
Northern Italy, although these writings have not survived. Despite his opposition in principle to taxes levied without Parliament, he paid
Ship Money and took little part in the political debates that dominated the late 1630s. His main interests were religious and he strongly opposed
Archbishop Laud's reforms to the Church of England. In 1640, he was re-elected for Cheshire in both the
Short and
Long Parliaments, and appointed to a number of Parliamentary Committees on religion. In early 1641, he organised a
petition from Cheshire demanding the expulsion of
bishops from the Church of England, and also supported the removal of
church monuments. Perhaps surprisingly, when Brereton visited Glastonbury in 1635 he made a point of taking "a special view" of the Holy Thorn, a notoriously papistical plant; he "brought away many branches and leaves, and left the first letters of my name thereon upon record". ==First English Civil War==