Eleanor Brooksby

Eleanor Brooksby was an English noblewoman who, along with her sister Anne Vaux, supported Catholics in England during the 16th century by providing safe houses including Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire and White Webbs in Enfield Chase near London for Jesuit missionaries such as Henry Garnett.

She was the daughter of William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden, and his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Beaumont of Grace Dieu, Leicester. She married Edward Brokesby, Esq., of Sholdby, Leicester.

In 1605 she and Vaux attended a pilgrimage of Catholic recusants to Holywell; the pilgrimage was later suspected by authorities of having been used as cover for planning the Gunpowder Plot.

Further reading

• Hartley, Cathy and Susan Leckey. A Historical Dictionary of British Women. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 1-85743-228-2
•  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Vaux, Anne". Dictionary of National Biography. 58. London: Smith, Elder & Co.