In the earlier portion of the thirteenth century, Robert May, otherwise de Braybrooke, a favourite of King John, and landed proprietor in Braybrooke, built a castle on his estates for his residence. His eldest son, Henry, married Christian Ledlet, a great heiress, and assumed the name of Ledlet. The estates passed by marriage to the Griffin family, who were created Barons de Braybrooke, 1688, the barony expiring for lack of male heirs, 1742; but the heiress married William Whitwell, whose son assumed the name of Griffin and was created Baron Braybrooke, 1788, with limitation to his nephew, Richard Neville Aldworth, who succeeded to the barony, and assumed the name of Neville in addition to and after Aldworth, from whom is descended the extant Baron Braybrooke. Henry de Braybrooke, probably the son of Robert, was a "justice itinerant" in county Beds. and was dragged from the bench at Dunstable by the Norman Falcasius—who held Bedford Castle for the King against the barons—and cast into a dungeon of the castle for having given adverse judgments in thirty-five law suits which had been instituted by Falcasius. The boy Robert was probably born in the castle, and educated in the little monastery in the forest hard by, or possibly in the more distant great abbey of Medehamsted (Peterborough), and in his youthful wanderings would doubtless sometimes visit the neighbouring town of Lutterworth, where Wyclif, the leader of the Lollards, Braybrooke's victims, was afterwards to pass away from this world. After his preliminary studies he went to Oxford, where he became a licentiate of civil law, and took Holy Orders. His very first act after ordination displays his character as a determined supporter of Papal supremacy, and at the same time demonstrates the influence of his family. In spite of the statute of provisors, recently passed, and of præmunire, he obtained a provision from the Pope for induction into the living of Hinton, in Cambridgeshire, the patronage being vested in the Fellows of Peterhouse; and notwithstanding the penalties attaching to the offence, obtained the living in 1360, and held it nineteen years. In 1366, he was nominated Prebendary of Fenton, in York Cathedral, which he exchanged for that of Friday Thorpe in the same cathedral, 1376, and the same year was appointed Archdeacon of Cornwall, and Prebendary of Wells. In 1380, he was constituted Dean of Salisbury, and a few months after exchanged his archdeaconry for the rectory of Bideford, resigning at the same time the rectory of Hinton. The following year, by virtue of a Bull of Pope Urban VI., he was appointed sixty-third Bishop of London, succeeding Courtney, who had been translated to Canterbury in place of Archbishop Sudbury, who had been beheaded on Tower Hill three months before by the Wat Tyler insurgents.