The Cookes ‘came into England with the Conqueror’ and had for centuries been highly respected in Worcestershire, where they possessed ‘considerable estates’.
A relative of Sir Francis Knowles MP, Cookes had for many years been a friend of Sir Thomas Winnington, the Whig MP for Droitwich, who would nominate him at the general elections of 1832 and 1835.
Listed as being of ‘Whig principles’, Cookes proved to be a strong reformer, voting in favour of the removal of malt tax and the immediate abolition of slavery.
Although he had argued on the hustings that the Whig administration’s ‘pruning knife’ should be used more freely to alleviate distress, he did not divide on Hume’s retrenchment motions in 1833, and was absent for Harvey’s motion for a select committee to scrutinise the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834.
Cookes came forward on ‘Liberal principles’ for East Worcestershire again in 1835, promising to be ‘scrupulously careful to promote the local interests’ of the constituency. He pointed to the benefits derived by ‘the middling classes of the community’ from reductions in taxation effected by the Whig government, and expressed support for the future reduction of county and highway rates. He continued to seek church reform, arguing for the abolition of pluralities and the better payment of ‘the working clergy’ by drawing ‘from the revenues of those idle drones in the Church, who though they did no duty, received so much’.
After duly supporting the Whig government over the speakership and the address, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, he once again demonstrated his support for the agricultural interest by voting for Chandos’s motion to repeal the malt tax, 10 Mar. In April he supported Lord John Russell’s motions on the Irish Church, and subsequently divided against Conservative amendments to the municipal corporations bill.
Cookes was apparently unable to vote in support of the address, 4 Feb. 1836, owing to ‘a violent inflammatory attack’ and remained ill for the greater part of that session.
Cookes was a supporter of the ballot and voted for Grote’s motion, 7 Mar. 1837. He also continued to back church reform, dividing in favour of the first and second readings of the government’s church rates abolition bill, 15 Mar., 23 May. However, faced by another challenge from his wealthy Conservative rival, he retired at the 1837 general election. Citing ill health and the considerable expense that his parliamentary duties had imposed on him, he complained to his constituents about the ‘incessant contests’ by which ‘the rich and powerful’ were endeavouring to have ‘the real political sentiment of the country smothered’.
Following his withdrawal from public life Cookes subsequently encountered financial difficulties. In June 1836 he had become a director of the newly-established Borough of St. Marylebone Bank. The bank was dissolved five years later and in February 1843 he became a defendant in a suit brought by shareholders for fraud, misrepresentation and the mismanagement of the company.
Cookes’s wife died at the beginning of 1891 and later that year, possibly in order to disinherit his brothers, he married the 19 year-old daughter of a local butcher, who had been sent to nurse him during a serious illness. Cookes’s solicitor intially refused to draw up the marriage settlement arguing that, at 88 years of age (and with two of his sisters known to be ‘lunatic’), his client was ‘mentally incapable’, but this claim was subsequently dismissed by a sympathetic judge.