The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. I.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Browe : or Broy, as Leland gives it; "an ancient baronial family of Champagne,[1] settled in England 1066, and which held fiefs in 1165. (Lib. Niger.)"—The Norman People. Robert de Broy witnesses Simon de Beauchamp's grant to Chicksand Priory, Bedfordshire; Pagan de Beauchamp's d° to Thorney Abbey; and was himself, with Ralph de Broy, a benefactor to Rokesden (Mon. Angl). There is a William de Broie entered in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1198-1203; and in the Great Roll of the Pipe of 1189-90 Robert and Ralph (above-mentioned) occur as land-owners in Bucks and Beds. In the former county the name still existed in the following century; for, about 1272, we find Robert and William le Broy, and Reginald de Broie, holding in Essedon Hundred, mentioned in the Rotuli Hundredorum. A contemporary Robert de Broie—if not the same—was employed in Wales, where Montgomery Castle, about 1233, was repaired "under view of Robert de Broy."—Eyton's Salop. Some years later, the family appears in Cheshire, where William Browe—whom again I am disposed to identify with the Buckinghamshire land-owner—was of Tushingham in 1295, and a second William was living in 1323. Sir Hugh, probably his son, was a Knight Banneret, and one of the men of note in the county summoned to give evidence in the great Scrope and Grosvenor suit. He served abroad, in the retinue of Richard Earl of Arundel, Admiral of England 10 Ric. II.: was commissioned in 1398 to raise archers to go to Ireland; and in 1400 was one of the two Lords Marcher mentioned by Hotspur as having helped him to rout the Welsh rebels at Cader Idrys. "He was a great purchaser and lessee of lands in various townships in Broxton Hundred, as well as a farmer of offices. He forfeited his estates to Henry IV. for rebellion between June 12 and August 18, 1402, in which interval he appears to have died, and his widow, and mother of his children, married again. Probably only a small portion of Sir Hugh's property descended to his posterity, being chiefly some land in the township of Tushingham. It remained vested in the Browes for several generations, as they are mentioned there 8 Henry VII."—Ormerod's Cheshire.