William de Braose, 1st Lord of Bramber

Braose was also awarded lands around Wareham and Corfe in Dorset, two manors in Surrey, Southcote in Berkshire and Downton in Wiltshire,[1] and became one of the most powerful of the new feudal barons of the early Norman era.

He was a pious man and made considerable grants to the Abbey of Saint Florent, in Saumur, and endowed the foundation of priories at Sele near Bramber and at Briouze.

He was soon occupying a new Norman castle at Bramber, guarding the strategically important harbour at Steyning, and began a vigorous boundary dispute and power struggle with the monks of Fécamp Abbey in Normandy, to whom William the Conqueror had granted Steyning, brought to a head by the Domesday Book, completed in 1086.

Braose built a bridge at Bramber and demanded tolls from ships travelling further along the river to the busy port at Steyning.

Braose also had to organise a mass exhumation of all Bramber's dead, the bodies being transferred to the abbey's churchyard of Saint Cuthman's in Steyning.