His grandfather had had his lands seized and his grandmother Maud de St. Valery had been captured by forces of KingJohn of England in 1210. She was imprisoned, along with John's father William, in Corfe Castle and walled alive inside the dungeon. Both mother and son starved to death on the King's orders. This was probably due to John's grandfather's conflict with the monarch, open rebellion and subsequent alliance with Llewelyn the Great. John's nickname Tadody means "fatherless" in the Welsh.
Hiding and imprisonment
At his family's fall from Royal favour John de Braose was initially hidden on Gower and spent some time in the care of his uncle Giles de Braose, Bishop of Hereford, but finally in 1214 John and his younger brother Philip were taken into custody. They were imprisoned until after King John had died (in 1216), the throne passing to Henry III. John was released from custody in 1218.
In 1226 another surviving uncle Reginald de Braose sold him the honour of Bramber, and he inherited more lands and titles when this uncle died a few years later in 1228. Sometime in the 1220s, he established the deer park, Parc le Breos in the Gower Peninsula.
He and Margaret, his Welsh wife, had three sons, his heir, William de Braose the eldest son, John and Richard (born about 1225 in Stinton, Norfolk) the youngest, (buried in Woodbridge Priory, Suffolk) having died before June 1292.
Death and legacy
In 1232 John was killed in a fall from his horse on his land in Bramber, Sussex at 34 years of age. His widow soon remarried to Walter III de Clifford. William de Braose (born about 1224; died 1291 in Findon, Sussex), his eldest son, succeeded him in the title of Lord of Bramber. John the younger son became Lord of the manor of Corsham in Wiltshire and also later Lord of Glasbury on Wye.
William de Braose (c. 1224–1291) also had a son named William de Braose who died "shortly before 1st May 1326".[1]
^Richardson & Everingham, Magna Carta Ancestry, p137.
References
Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, by Douglas Richardson & Kimball G. Everingham, Published 2005, Genealogical Publishing Com
Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700, by Frederick Lewis Weis, Lines: 29A-28, 246–30.