William de Braose, First Lord of Bramber was previously lord of Briouze, Normandy.
Education
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.
Career
Braose had been given extensive lands in Sussex by 1073. He became feudal baron of the Rape of Bramber 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Views
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.