Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brancastre, John de
BRANCASTRE or BRAMCESTRE, JOHN de (d. 1218), is included among the keepers of the great seal by Sir T. D. Hardy, under the dates of 1203 and 1205; but Mr. Foss gives reasons for believing that the subscriptions to charters supposed to be attached by him as keeper were only affixed in the capacity of a deputy, or a clerk in the exchequer or in the chancery. His signature is found attesting documents from 1200 to 1208. In 1200 or the following year he was made archdeacon of Worcester, in November 1204 was sent to Flanders on the king's service, and on 13 Jan. 1207 was commissioned by King John to take charge of the abbey of Ramsey during a vacancy in the abbacy, and in his capacity of administrator paid thence, in May of the same year, 97l. into the exchequer. In the following October he was rewarded by the king (who exercised the right of presentation during the vacancy in the abbacy) with the vicarage of the parish which was doubtless his birthplace, Brancaster in Norfolk, and on 29 May 1208 was appointed prebendary of Lidington in the church of Lincoln. He died in 1218. One of his name, probably the same, appears as party in several lawsuits in Hertfordshire and Sussex in 1199.
[Hardy's List of Lord Chancellors, &c., 1843; Foss's Judges of England, ii. 43-5; Foss's Tabulæ Curiales, 1865, p. 9; Hardy's Le Neve's Fasti, iii. 73; Rot. Pat. 1835, i. 11, 58, 76, 84; Rot. Claus. 1833, i. 14, 83; Rot. Curiæ Regis, 1835.]