Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Braybroc, Henry de
BRAYBROC, HENRY de (d. 1234?), judge, was undersheriff of Rutlandshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire, in 1210-1219, and of Bedfordshire 1211, and sheriff of the same three counties in the next and three succeeding years. He is included by Roger of Wendover (1211) with his father, Robert Braybroc, in the list of the evil counsellors of John in his struggle with the pope. He remained loyal until 1215, when the insurgent barons induced him to join their party. His estates, which were extensive, were immediately confiscated, and on John's making his peace with the pope, Braybroc was one of those who were excommunicated as enemies to the king (Roger de Wendover, ed. Coxe, iii. 237). In 1217 he defended the castle of Montsorel, near Dunstable, against the protector, William Marshall, until relieved by Louis; but after the battle of Lincoln he did homage, and was reinstated in his lands. In 1224 he was sent to Dunstable with two colleagues to hold assizes of novel disseisin for the counties of Bedford and Buckingham, when Falkes de Breauté [q. v.] was so incensed by being fined 100l. upon each of thirty verdicts found against him for forcible disturbance of his neighbours, that he ordered his brother William, who was in command of Bedford Castle, to seize the offending justices and confine them in the dungeon. They were warned of the impending danger, and quitted the town. His colleagues made good their escape, but Braybroc was taken, roughly handled, and imprisoned in the castle. His wife carried the news to the king, then in parliament at Northampton, who immediately marched upon the town. William de Breaute, refusing to surrender on the king's summons, was promptly excommunicated by the archbishop, and the castle was reduced by a regular siege, after a stubborn resistance lasting sixty days (16 June-15 Aug.), the commandant and the garrison, with the exception of three templars, being hanged on the spot. The king ordered the tower and outer battlements to be razed to the ground, the inner works to be dismantled and the moats filled up, and appointed Braybroc to superintend the execution of this work. The ruins of that portion of the building which was left standing were extant in Camden's time. Braybroc was justice itinerant for the same counties next year (1225), and in the year following (1226) justice itinerant for Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. In an exchequer record of the year 1227 he is described as justice of the bench. The last mention of him is in 1228, when Dugdale notices a fine as having been levied before him. That he was dead in 1234 appears from the record of a fine which his widow Christiana in that year paid to the king for the privilege of marrying whom she pleased. She was the daughter of Wischard Ledet, a rebel, part of whose estates had been confiscated by John, and granted to Master Michael Belet in 1216. The portion which remained unforfeited devolved upon his daughter on his death in 1221-2, Braybroc then paying a fine of 100l. upon the succession. It was situate in Northamptonshire, where he had estates, as also in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire. Braybroc had two sons, (1) Wischard, who took his mother's name of Ledet; (2) John, a descendant of whom, Sir Reginald Braybroc, knight, married in the reign of Henry IV a granddaughter of John de Cobham, whose only child Joan married Sir Thomas Brooke, father of Sir Edward Brooke of Cobham, ancestor of the noble family of Cobham.
[Fuller's Worthies, i. 121, ii. 294, 350; Roger de Wendover (ed. Coxe), iii. 237, 301, 356, iv. 14, 94; Rymer's Fœdera (ed. Clarke), i. 175; Matt. Paris, Chron. Mat. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 533, 587, 644, iii. 87 n.; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 8, 9; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 67, 728; Courthope's Historic Peerage (Cobham title); Rot. Claus, i. 200 a, 243 a, 321 a, 631 a, 655 a, ii. 77, 151; Madox's Exch. ii. 335; Cal. I. P. M. i. 45; Camden's Brit. (ed. Gough), i. 324; Excerpta e Rot. Fin. i. 80, 258.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.35
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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