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- William de Braose (or William de Briouze), First Lord of Bramber (died 1093/1096) was previously lord of Briouze, Normandy. He was granted lands in England by William the Conqueror soon after he and his followers had invaded and controlled Saxon England.
Norman victor
Braose had been given extensive lands in Sussex[1] by 1073. He became feudal baron of the Rape of Bramber[2] where he built Bramber Castle. Braose was also awarded lands around Wareham and Corfe in Dorset, two manors in Surrey, Southcote in Berkshire and Downton in Wiltshire[1] and became one of the most powerful of the new feudal barons of the early Norman era.
He continued to bear arms alongside King William in campaigns in England, Normandy and Maine in France.
He was a pious man and made considerable grants to the Abbey of Saint Florent, in Saumur, and endowed the foundation of priories at Sele near Bramber and at Briouze.
He was soon occupying a new Norman castle at Bramber, guarding the strategically important harbour at Steyning, and began a vigorous boundary dispute and power struggle with the monks of Fécamp Abbey in Normandy, to whom William the Conqueror had granted Steyning, brought to a head by the Domesday Book, completed in 1086.
Land disputes
Braose built a bridge at Bramber and demanded tolls from ships travelling further along the river to the busy port at Steyning. The monks challenged this, and they also disputed Braose's right to bury people in the churchyard of his new church of Saint Nicholas at Bramber, demanding the burial fees for themselves, despite the church's having been built to serve the castle and not the town. The monks then produced forged documents to defend their position and were unhappy with the failure of their claim on Hastings, which was very similar. They claimed the same freedoms and land tenure in Hastings as King Edward had given them at Steyning. On a technicality, King William was bound to uphold all rights and freedoms held by the Abbey before King Edward's death, but the monks had already been expelled ten years before that. William wanted to hold Hastings for himself for strategic reasons, and he ignored the problem until 1085, when he confirmed the Abbey's claims to Steyning but compensated it for its claims at Hastings with land in the manor of Bury, near Pulborough in Sussex. In 1086 King William called his sons, barons, and bishops to court (the last time an English king presided personally, with his full court, to decide a matter of law) to settle the Steyning disputes, which took a full day. The result was that the Abbey won over William de Braose, forcing him to curtail his bridge tolls, to give up various encroachments onto the Abbey's lands, including a farmed rabbit warren, a park, 18 burgage tenements, a causeway, and a channel used to fill his moat. Braose also had to organise a mass exhumation of all Bramber's dead, the bodies being transferred to the Abbey's churchyard of Saint Cuthman's in Steyning.
Progeny
William de Braose was succeeded as Lord of Bramber by his son, Philip de Braose, and started an important Anglo-Norman dynasty (see House of Braose).
Death
William de Braose was present in 1093 at the consecration of a church in Briouze, his manor of origin whence originates his family name, thus he was still alive in that year. However, his son Philip was issuing charters as Lord of Bramber in 1096, indicating that William de Braose died sometime between 1093 and 1096.
House of Braose
^ a b "Domesday Map". Retrieved 10 August 2011.
^ The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, Lewis Christopher Loyd, David C. Douglas, The Harleian Society, Leeds, Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company, 1975, ISBN 0-8063-0649-1, ISBN 978-0-8063-0649-0
^ Elwes, Dudley G. Cary (1883). The Family of de Braose, 1066–1326. pp. 1, 2.
The Braose website
-- From kttps://www.wikiwand.com/en/William_de_Braose,_1st_Lord_of_Bramber
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From https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Braose-35
Biography
One of 5 castellans of the Sussex Rapes: 1072. In Domesday. Guillaume de Briouze is recorded in lists of those present at the Battle of Hastings. He became the first Lord of Bramber Rape by 1073 and built Bramber Castle. William made considerable grants to the abbey of Saint Florent, Saumur to endow the foundation of Sele Priory near Bramber and a priory at Briouze. He continued to fight alongside King William in the campaigns in Britain, Normandy and Maine.
The latest evidence for William is his presence at the consecration of his church at Briouze in 1093. In 1096 his son Philip was issuing charters. From this we can deduce that William died between 1093 and 1096.
Father: Uncertain. Mother: Gunnor (See Round, Cal. Doc. Fra. p148)
Brydges edition of Collins' Peerage claims he was first married to Agnes, dau of Waldron de Saint Clare but no evidence for this can be found. It may be an example of Bruce - Braose confusion.
According to L C Perfect, a 13th century genealogy in the Bibliothèque de Paris gives the name of his wife as Eve de Boissey, widow of Anchetil de Harcourt. There is a lot of evidence from contemporary charters which supports this view.
Per British History Online: "King Alfred(d. 899) devised BEEDING manor to his nephew Aethelm, but it was later evidently resumed, for in 1066 King Edward the Confessor had it as part of his feorm. William de Braose held it in demesne in 1086, when some outlying parts had been separated from it. Thereafter it descended with Bramberrape in the Braose, Mowbray, and Howard families until 1547, except between 1290 and 1326 when Mary, widow of William, Lord Braose, held it in dower and between 1524 and 1542 when Agnes, widow of Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, so held it. William, Lord Braose (d. 1290), was granted free warren there in 1281." (1)
"The manor of HORTON, called in the 16th century HORTON MAYBANK or HORTONHORSEY, was held in demesne by William de Braose in 1073.(1)
"The manor of TOTTINGTON, often called TOTTINGTON WOWOOD, in reference apparently to the wood later known as Hoe wood or Oldwood in the north-east part of the parish, belonged in 1066 to King Harold. William de Braose held it indemesne in 1073 and 1086."
"It is now generally agreed that the Sussex rapes as they existed later originated after the Norman Conquest, though there may have been other divisions of the county called rapes in Saxon times.Bramber rape had been granted to William de Braose by 1073 when he held in demesne a number of manors in a triangular area between Clapham in the west, Southwick in the east, and Shipley in the north.There seems no reason to think, as has been stated, that he received those lands appreciably later than the lords of the other rapes received their lands. The rape was known in the late 11th century by the name of its lord and perhaps alternatively as the castelry of Steyning, after its chief town. There are references of the late 11th century and c. 1139 to the castelry of Bramber; no reference to the rape of Bramber eo nomine has been found before 1188. The honor of Bramber was considered to be virtually coterminous with the rape, except in the early 13th century, when an honor or bailiwick of Knepp ,presumably corresponding to the northern part of the rape, was mentioned as well. Some lands outside Sussex were held of the honor, in Surrey, Wiltshire, and Dorset. It is not clear whether the rape was a true barony. It was, however, called a barony from 1218 or earlier, and in 1307 it was stated that baronial relief had regularly been paid in the past. William de Braose was succeeded between 1093 and 1096 by his son Philip, between 1134 and 1155 by his son William (d. c. 1192), whose son William lost his lands through confiscation in 1208 and died in 1211. Between 1210 and 1215 Roland Bloet had the keeping of the rape. William's second son, Giles, bishop of Hereford, received the rape in 1215 but died later that year.In the following year it was restored to Giles's younger brother Reynold. Reynold surrendered it in 1218 to his son William and in 1219 was sued for dower in Bramber by Maud de Clare, apparently his father's widow. In 1226 Reynold and William sold the rape to John de Braose, who had claimed it in 1219-20. He was son of William (d. 1210 or 1211). After John's death in 1232 dower was assigned in 1234 to his widow Margaret, then wife of Walter de Clifford. From 1235 to at least 1242 the rape was in the keeping of Richard, earl of Cornwall. John's son William, Lord Braose, who had come of age by 1245, was succeeded in 1290 by his son William (d. 1326). In 1316 the last William de Braose settled the reversion of the lordship of Bramber on John de Mowbray (d. 1322) and his wife Aline, one of William's daughters and heirs. In 1324 William granted his life-estate in Bramber to the Crown in return for a pension and in the same year Aline granted her reversionary interest to Hugh le Despenser, earl of Winchester, a grant which having been made under duress was later annulled. Aline was confirmed in her estates in 1328 and she and her second husband Richard de Peshale were confirmed in the lordship in 1331, the year of Aline's death. Aline's son and heir, John de Mowbray, Lord Mowbray was lord of the rape apparently in 1332 and certainly in 1333.
"THE PRIORY OF SELE William de Braose, soon after he had obtained his extensive fief in Sussex, appears to have built the church of St. Nicholas at Bramber as a chapel to his castle, and to have founded there a small college of secular canons, under a dean. In 1073 he endowed this college with the church of Beeding and the tithes of a large extent of his lands in Shoreham, Southwick, Washington, Findon, Thakeham and the neighborhood. William appears also to have claimed the right of burial for his church, but about 1086 the abbey of Fécamp successfully contested this claim, and Herbert the dean (of Bramber) had to restore the bodies buried at
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1049 - 1095 (46 years)
[1, 2, 3] 
