Brian of Brittany

[2][dubious – discuss] Godwine and Edmund, sons of Harold Godwinson, escaped after the Battle of Hastings to Leinster, where they were guests of King Diarmait.

Later in the same year Brian and William fitzOsbern were sent to relieve sieges at Shrewsbury and Exeter by English forces rebelling against Norman lordship.

They were too late to save the former but a sally by the defenders of Exeter drove the English into the path of Brian and William who "punished their audacity with great slaughter".

[10] However, The Complete Peerage states that he was among the invaders of southern Italy, and E. A. Freeman has him holding Kastoria in Thessaly for Bohemond I of Antioch until 1083, identifying him with the 'Bryennius' of Books V and VI of Anna Komnene's the Alexiad.

[9][11] In 1084 he witnessed a charter of his eldest brother Geoffrey Boterel in Brittany[12] and another donating property to the abbey of Saint-Florent, Saumur in Anjou in that year.