A Brabant family, that appears to have settled in Normandy. “In 1198 Thomas Brabançon paid a fine of ₤50 in Normandy, and Roger lent ₤15 to the King (Magn. Rotul. Scaccar. Norm.). The family continued in Normandy (La Roque, Maison d’Harcourt, i. 604).”—The Norman People. Jacques le Brabançon followed the Conqueror to England. His descendants, first seated at Betchworth in Surrey, were transplanted into Leicestershire about the time of Henry III. through the heiress of Sir John de Moseley. “Eastwell was for many hundred years the inheritance and chief seat in this county of the antient Family of Brabason; of which house was Sir Roger Brabason, who in 1290 was one of the Judges of the Common Pleas, and had £23 6s. 8d. allowed him as his salary, and was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. In 1307 he was appointed Constable of the Tower, and in 1316, for that he had served the office of Lord Chief Justice till he was very antient, was honourably released from the place, and made one of the King’s Privy Council.’’—Nichol's Leicestershire. As one of the King’s Judges, he had been summoned to Parliament from 1294 to 1314; “but in the latter year had summons among the barons of the realm; for it seems that in those days the parliament was (not unfrequently) called together by a consimilar writ, directed as well to the nobles as to the King’s Justices, which latter were not, on these occasions, distinguished from the barons as cæteris de consilio nostro"—Banks. According to the peerages, he died childless, and the line was carried on by his brother Matthew, the ancestor of the Earl of Meath. “However, if Burton” (History of Leicester, p. 250,) “is to be credited, he had issue a son, William Brabazon, who married Janet, daughter of William Trussel, and had a son John, whose sole daughter and heir Joan, carried the manor of Sproxton in marriage to William Woodford.”—Ibid. Either the above-mentioned William, or his cousin of the same name (for Matthew, too, had a son William) was knight of the shire for Leicester in 1313, and summoned for service in Gascony in 1325. Another Brabazon was slain at Bosworth Field. Sir William, who died in 1552, “seised in fee of the manor of Eastwell, held of the King as of his Duchy of Lancaster,” had been appointed in 1534 Vice-Treasurer and General-Receiver of Ireland, and was “one of the most faithful men to the English interest that had appeared in the country from the Conquest to that day.” The year after his arrival, Lord Chief Justice Aylmer writes to Lord Cromwell, that he “is extolled as having saved the Kingdom and he was three several times named Justiciar. His energy and determination forced the acts abolishing the supremacy and jurisdic­tion of the Pope through the Irish parliament, and obtained the surrender of the religious houses; while, by carrying fire and sword into their territories, he brought the marauding rebel chiefs to their knees. He had acquired an Irish estate, and both his sons—though the elder held lands in various English counties, and occasionally resided at Nether Whitacre in Warwickshire— elected to become Irishmen. This elder son, Edward, who was little more than three years old at the time of his death, was created Baron of Ardee in 1615, and was the father of William, first Earl of Meath. Charles I., who bestowed this title upon the latter in 1627, had at the same time named him one of his Privy Council; and in 1644 he and two others of its members, Sir Henry Tichborne and Sir James Ware, were sent by the Marquess of Ormonde (then Lord Lieutenant) to confer with the King at Oxford on the affairs of Ireland. They had transacted their business, and were on their passage home, when they were chased and captured by a Parliament ship, and had barely time to toss into the sea the King’s packet of letters to Ormonde, before they found themselves prisoners. All three were committed to the Tower, where Meath remained eleven months in confinement He died in 1651, and has been followed by eleven successive Earls of his name.

Sir Anthony, the second son of the Lord Justice, was appointed Governor of Connaught, and became seated at Ballinasloe in Galway. His grandson and namesake “upon the beginning of the commotions in 1641, forsook his religion and became a Papist; his father and grandfather having been good Protestants.” He was the ancestor of the families of Ballinasloe, Partri, Newpark, Carrstown, and Killaly, in the counties of Roscommon, Louth, and Mayo, and of Anthony Brabazon, of Brabazon Park, in the latter county, who received an Irish baronetcy in 1797. It expired with his son, and his estate passed to the children of his sister, Mrs. Hercules Sharpe.