Feudal barony of Eaton Bray
The feudal barony of Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire was an English feudal barony founded in 1205 when the manor of Eaton (from 16th-century "Eaton Bray") was granted by King John to his household steward William I de Cantilupe (d.1239),[4][5] together with many others, including Aston (later Aston Cantlow) in Warwickshire.
In 1221[6] Cantilupe built a castle at Eaton, which became the caput of his feudal barony and was described by the monks of nearby Dunstable Priory in the Annals of Dunstable as being "a serious danger to Dunstable and the neighbourhood".
[9] Eaton had been held at the time of William the Conqueror by the latter's uterine half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, but later escheated to the crown.
The de Cantilupe family which came to England at some time after the Norman Conquest of 1066 originated at one of three similarly named manors in Normandy, from which they took their name: Canteloup in Calvados, east of Caen;[10] Canteloup in Manche east of Cherbourg on the eastern tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula (Cotentin); or Chanteloup in Bréhal,[11] Manche, on the south-west side of the Cherbourg Peninsula, favoured by most sources as an ancient castle survives there.
The descent of the feudal barony of Eaton was as follows:
