perambulate the royal forests in Salop, Staffordshire, and Derby, and call the officers to account. In 1305 he is named with John de Lisle as an additional justice in case of need in Sussex, Surrey, Kent, and Middlesex, pursuant to an ordinance of trailbaston, and although the writ is cancelled, he certainly acted, for he sat at Guildhall 'ad recipiendas billas super articulis de trailbaston.' In the same year, being present at the parliament held at Westminster, he was appointed and sworn in as a commissioner to treat with the Scotch representatives concerning the government of Scotland. On 29 Oct. 1307 he sat at the Tower of London on the trial of the Earl of Athole and convicted him. In 1308, having been appointed to try certain complaints against the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Brabazon was ordered (19 Feb.) to adjourn the hearing, in order to attend the coronation of Edward II. He was twice assigned to hold pleas at York in 1309 and 1312, was detained specially in London in the summer of 1313 to advise the king on matters of high importance, and was still invested with the office of commissioner of forests in Stafford, Huntingdon, Rutland, Salop, and Oxon, as late as 1316.
All these labours told severely on his health. Broken by age and infirmity he, on 23 Feb., asked leave to resign his office of chief justice. Leave was granted in a very laudatory patent of discharge; but he remained a member of the privy council, and was to attend in parliament whenever his health permitted. He was succeeded by William Inge, but did not long survive. He died on 13 June, and his executor, John de Brabazon, had masses said for him at Dunstable Abbey. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. He appears to have had a high character for learning. To his abilities his honours and offices bear testimony, whatever blame may attach to him for his course in politics. He was a landowner in several counties. In 1296 he is enrolled, pursuant to an ordinance for the defence of the sea-coast, as a knight holding lands in Essex, but non-resident, and in the year following he was summoned as a land-owner in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to attend in person at the muster at Nottingham for military service in Scotland with arms and horses. In 1310 he had lands in Leicestershire, and in 1316 at Silbertoft and Sulby in Northamptonshire, at East Bridgeford and Hawkesworth in Nottinghamshire, and at Rollright in Oxfordshire. The property at East Bridgeford came to him through his wife Beatrix, daughter of Sir John de Sproxton, with the advowson of the church appurtenant to the manor. As to this he was long engaged in a dispute, for after he had presented a clerk to the living and the ordinary had instituted him, one Bonifacius de Saluce or Saluciis, claiming apparently through some right connected with the chapel of Trykehull, intruded upon the living and got possession, and though Brabazon petitioned for his removal as early as 1300, the intruding priest was still unousted in 1315. Brabazon left no issue, his one son having died young; he had a daughter, Albreda, who married William le Graunt; his property passed to his brother Matthew, from whom descend the present earls of Meath, barons Brabazon of Ardee, in Ireland.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, i. 78; Dugdale's Origines; Tytler's Scotland, i. 80; History of the Family of Brabazon; Rot. Pat. 9 Edw. II; Thurston's Notts, i. 294; Biographical Peerage, iv. 30; Roberts's Calend. Genealogicum, 461; Parliamentary Rolls, i. 138, 218, 267, 301; Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs, i. 490, ii. 581; Luard's Annales Monastici, iii. 410, iv. 506; Stubbs's Chronicles Edw. I and II, i. 102, 137, 149, 280.]
BRABAZON, Sir WILLIAM (d. 1552), vice-treasurer and lord justice of Ireland, was descended from the family of Roger le Brabazon [q. v.], and was the son of John Brabazon of Eastwell, Leicestershire, and a daughter of —— Chaworth. After succeeding his father he was knighted on 20 Aug. 1534, and appointed vice-treasurer and general receiver of Ireland. In a letter from Chief-justice Aylmer to Lord Cromwell in August 1535 he is styled 'the man that prevented the total ruin and desolation of the kingdom.' In 1536 he prevented the ravages of O'Connor in Carberry by burning several villages in Offaly and carrying away great spoil. In the same year he made so effective a speech in support of establishing the king's authority in opposition to that of the pope that he persuaded the parliament to pass the bill for that purpose. As a result of this, many religious houses were in 1539 surrendered to the king. For these and other services he was, on 1 Oct. 1543, constituted lord justice of Ireland, and he was again appointed to the same office on 1 April 1546. In the same year he drove Patrick O'More and Brian O'Connor from Kildare. In April 1547 he was elected a member of the privy council of Ireland. In the spring of 1548 he assisted the lord deputy in subduing a sedition raised in Kildare by the sons of Viscount Baltinglass. He was a third time made lord justice on 2 Feb. 1549. In August 1550, with the aid of 8,000l. and 400 men from England, he subdued Charles
