From Brionne, Normandy; “a branch of the Counts of Bryonne, and the Earls of Clare and Hertford, descended from Gilbert, Count of Brionne, son of Richard I. of Normandy. Wido de Brionne, an ancestor of this branch, acquired a seignory in Wales about 1090. Baldwin de Brionne was Viscount of Devon in the Conqueror’s time, and Wido de Brionne, of the Welsh line, held five fees of the barony of Oakhampton in 1165.”—The Norman People. From him descended another Guy, a Welsh marcher-baron, who in 1257 was summoned to attend the King with horse and arms at Chester, “to repel the invasion of that unruly people.” When the Baron’s War broke out, he sided with the barons, who, after their victory at Lewes, committed to his charge Cardiff, and two other castles in Wales; but within two years he had “returned to due obedience,” and in 1266 became one of the sureties for the peaceable conduct of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. He married the heiress of Barnstaple, Eve de Tracy, whose barony passed to her only daughter; but by a second marriage he had a son named after himself, who in 1331 was found to be of unsound mind, and the great Welsh fief was then transferred to the next heir. This latter, Guy or Guyon, the son of the lunatic, and appointed by Edward III. Constable of St. Briavel’s, and Warden of the Forest of Dean, fought in his French and Scottish wars, and was the father of the famous soldier with whom the line terminated. Guy IV. was one of the heroes of an heroic epoch; and from the time that he gained his earliest renown as Standard Bearer to Edward III. at Calais, in 1349, till his death in 1390, there is scarcely a break in the long succession of his services by land and by sea. He was a baron of the realm by writ in 1350; a banneret in 1355; a Knight of the Garter in 1375; three times sent on embassies, twice Admiral of the Fleet; and ever foremost in the victorious train of the last Edward and his son. But on the accession of Richard II., the aspect of the war changed; and his last mission must have been bitter to the soul of the old soldier, for it was to treat for peace with John, Duke of Brittany. He married Elizabeth de Montacute, daughter of the first Earl of Salisbury (who was then, for the second time, a widow) and had two sons; but his race was not fated to endure, for no single descendant remains of him even in the female line. His younger son left no issue; and two little grand-daughters, the children of the elder, Guy (who had died in his lifetime), remained his sole representatives. They were very young—Philippa not more than twelve, and Elizabeth nine— when, at their grandfather’s death, they succeeded to a splendid inheritance, comprising lands in Devon (where Torre Brian still bears his name), Wales, Surrey, Middlesex, and Dorset. Lord Bryan’s demesnes in all these counties are included in the grant of free warren that he received from Edward III, in 1350. In the end it came wholly to Elizabeth, for Philippa, who married John Devereux, remained childless, while her sister, who was the wife of Sir Robert Lovell, had one daughter, named Maud. This second heiress was twice married; first to John Fitz Alan, Earl of Arundel, and then to Sir Richard Stafford; by her first husband she had a son, Humphrey, Earl of Arundel; by her second, a daughter, Avice, Countess of Ormonde. But both son and daughter died s.p.

Brionne: in Leland, Brian. Baldum de Brionne was Viscount of Devon in the Conqueror’s time, and Wido de Brionne acquired a seigneury in Wales. Hence the Bryans and Briants in England.