Bromley was a close friend of Rowland Hill, who was an uncle of George Bromley. Hill's career ran parallel to Bromley's but with even greater success, pairing a regional power base in Shropshire with a spectacular career as a mercer in London: by 1541, the year before he was knighted, he was paying at least 5000 marks a year in tax and in 1549 became the first Protestant Mayor of London. Between 1539 and 1547, Hill invested a substantial part of his commercial wealth in great quantities of landed property in Shropshire and the neighbouring counties that had been made available by the dissolution of the monasteries or the abolition of chantries and colleges. Bromley speculated in some of Hill's deals and, like other prominent lawyers, built up considerable estates in his native county, including land at Wroxeter, which became his seat. Among properties he purchased in the area were Eyton on Severn and Aston, both manors formerly belonging to Shrewsbury Abbey. On its sale to Bromley by the Crown in 1540, Aston was attached as a member of Eyton and was passed on along with it to his heirs. Similarly, near Stanton Long, he bought Oxenbold, partly in the parish of Monkhopton, and a former manor of Wenlock Priory, from John Jennings, and in 1545 added to it the neighbouring estate of Patton.