Sir William Cornwallis of Brome

Sir William Cornwallis of Brome ( – 13 November 1611) was an English courtier and politician.

Life He was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, Comptroller of the Household to Queen Mary, and his wife Anne Jerningham. He became a courtier at around age 21, spent heavily to secure position there, and married by 1578,

He laid on a performance by his friend Ben Jonson at Highgate in 1604, for James I, known as the Penates. He employed the composer Thomas Watson and other musical and literary men.

Cornwallis died on 13 November 1611. The Cornwallis family lived at Brome Hall near Diss in Norfolk.

Frederick Cornwallis, 1st Baron Cornwallis was the third son, and eldest surviving son, of Sir William, a son of his second marriage. His own second marriage was to Elizabeth Crofts, daughter of Sir Henry Crofts, Member of Parliament for Eye.

Of the daughters:

Frances married Sir Edmund Withypole. Elizabeth married in 1596 Sir William Sandys, Member of Parliament for Winchester, who died in 1628. In 1630 she married Richard Lumley, 1st Viscount Lumley of Waterford. Cornelia married Sir Richard Fermor of Somerton. In 1617, she accidentally shot and killed a young lawyer, John Onley. Anne in 1609 married Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll.

There are sources that give Thomas Cornwallis, Member of Parliament for Suffolk in 1625, as a son of Sir William by his first wife. The History of Parliament, on the other hand, gives his father as John Cornwallis of Earl Soham. Sir William Cornwallis, the essayist, was a nephew who is sometimes described as "the younger" to differentiate him from this William Cornwallis, who is often described as "the elder".