The Barons de Braose

A Norman nobleman who participated in the Battle of Hastings in support of William the Conqueror, William was given lands in southwest England adjacent to Wales and became one of the most powerful of the Marcher Lords. He was also installed in a new castle at Bramber, to guard the strategically important harbour at Steyning. He also built Knepp Castle, probably as a hunting seat.

A vigorous boundary dispute and power tussle with the monks from Fécamp, to whom King William had granted Steyning, was brought to a head by the time the Domesday Book was completed (1086). It found that de Braose had built a bridge at Bramber and demanded tolls from ships travelling further along the river to the port at Steyning. The monks challenged Bramber's right to bury its parishioners in the churchyard at William's new church of Saint Nicholas, and demanded its burial fees, despite it being built to serve the castle not the town. The monks produced forged documents to defend their position and were unhappy with the failure of their claim on Hastings.

In 1086 the King 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 this. It took a full day, and the Abbey won over the court, forcing de Braose to curtail his bridge tolls, give up various encroachments onto the abbey's lands and organise a mass exhumation and transfer of all Bramber's dead to the churchyard of Saint Cuthman's Church in Steyning.

William was present for the consecration of a church in his hometown of Briouze (hence the name Braose), France, in 1093, and his son, Philip, was issuing charters as Lord of Bramber in 1096, indicating that William died sometime between those dates.