Brandling’s great-grandfather, a Northumberland man, made his fortune as a merchant adventurer at Newcastle at the end of the fifteenth century. His eldest son, Sir Robert Brandling, represented the borough five times in Parliament; his business and lands in Jesmond and North Gosforth, Northumberland were inherited by his nephew William, who also acquired the manor of Felling, co. Durham, a mining area which yielded huge profits as the Tyneside coal trade boomed over the next generation.
Several of Brandling’s Newcastle cousins shared his first name, but it was probably the future MP who became a freeman of Newcastle in 1600 and paid £10 to join the Hostmen in the following year. Though not a member of the cartels which took control of coal shipments from 1603, he clearly profited hugely from the trade, claiming to be worth £2,000 a year towards the end of his life. He invested heavily in land, paying £1,001 for the site of Newminster Priory, Northumberland in 1609, and later acquiring a larger property at Alnwick Abbey, Northumberland; he also bought up leases of Crown mines with the assistance of Sir William Smith of London, although the two men eventually fell out over the spoils of a particularly lucrative deal.
In August 1620 Brandling protested to the king about the activities of Sir Peter Riddell*, then mayor of Newcastle, and his brother Sir Thomas*. The grievances he cited included the levying of primage, a duty collected by the Newcastle Trinity House, and the corporation’s ban on the construction of coal wharves along the Tyne by private landowners, who were forbidden to ship coal by the Hostmen’s monopoly. Brandling also observed that the Riddells made a fortune from leasing Crown mines at rents which were only a fraction of their true worth, and suggested that this also applied to the mines comprised in the Grand Lease. These claims were true - many mine owners (including Brandling himself) benefited from such leases - but calling attention to this fact constituted extreme provocation; the corporation’s initial reaction to these complaints was to accuse Brandling of failure to repair his wharf at Felling.
Brandling widened his assault on the inner circle of the Hostmen’s Company following his return as Member for Morpeth at the general election of December 1620. Presumably the sponsor of a bill to overturn the Hostmen’s monopoly of the shipment of coal, which was rejected by the Commons at its first reading on 27 Feb. 1621, he returned to the attack on the afternoon of 26 Mar., the day before the Easter recess, moving ‘that the [Hostmen’s] patent for Newcastle coals may be brought in’. He criticized the duty of 12d. per chaldron the Hostmen had conceded to the Crown in return for their monopoly, but solicitor general Sir Robert Heath warned that the Crown would not tolerate an attack upon its revenues, while Christopher Brooke of York, noting that the Newcastle MPs had already left town, moved to postpone the investigation until the session resumed. In the face of such powerful opposition, it is hardly surprising that nothing more was heard of this complaint.
The fuss Brandling caused in the Commons in 1621 apparently persuaded the Hostmen to cut a deal. He retired from business and by April 1622 his eldest son had joined one of the Hostmen’s cartels for the shipment of coal. A year later Sir Francis took control of the family estates.