Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/378

 feat of war or chivalry. It may be remarked that the features of the 'Moor' are represented in all the seals as of the distinct, and even exaggerated, negro type.

The son of Brocas by his second wife, of the same name as himself, who also held office at Richard's court, was executed in 1400 by Henry IV for his share in the conspiracy formed in favour of his dethroned master. Shakespeare mentions him in his 'Richard II ' as one of the conspirators—

In some of these details the poet was misled by his authorities. The 'Brocas' at Eton and 'Brocas Street' in Windsor take their name from this family, to whom considerable portions of Eton and Windsor once belonged.

 BROCHMAEL, YSGYTHRAWG (fl. 584), king of Powis, is mentioned in Llywarch Hen's elegy (trip. 37), a poem which Dr. Guest (Origines Celticæ, ii. 289) has referred to the overthrow of Uriconium and the desolation of the Severn Valley by Ceawlin, king of the West Saxons in 584. The country of Kyndylan, the chief whose death Llywarch Hen bewails, is there called the land of Brochmael, and it is probable, therefore, that Brochmael was lord of that part of Britain, and that it was under his command that the Welsh (Britons) checked Ceawlin's career of conquest at Fethan-leag or Faddiley. When in 613 (Annales Cambricæ; A.-S. Chron. 607) Æthelfrith of Northumbria overthrew the Welsh at the battle of Chester, Bæda says that the monks of Bangor who had come to pray for the success of their countrymen were under the care of Brochmael, who stayed with them while the battle was fought, and who left them and fled when the victorious Æthelfrith attacked them. In this battle Selim, the son of Cynan, was slain, and as Cynan is said to have been the son of Brochmael, it is evident that he must have been an old man at the time, and 'therefore may very well have been king of Powis when [q. v.] attacked Uriconium'.

 BROCK, DANIEL DE LISLE (1762–1842), bailiff of Guernsey from 1821 to 1842, belonged to an English family established in Guernsey as early as the sixteenth century. His father, John Brock of St. Peter's, who had been a midshipman in the royal navy, married Elizabeth de Lisle, daughter of the then lieutenant-bailiff of the island, and by her had fourteen children, ten of whom attained maturity. John Brock died in 1777, at the age of 48. Daniel de Lisle, his third son, was born in Guernsey on 10 Dec. 1762. After such schooling as the island afforded in those days, he was placed at Alderney under the tuition of M. Vallat, a Swiss pastor, afterwards rector of St. Peter-in-the-Wood, Guernsey, and subsequently at a school at Richmond, Surrey. He was, however, taken away at the age of fourteen to accompany his father, who was in failing health, to France, where the latter died at Dinan. He spent about twelve months in visiting the Mediterranean, Switzerland, and France, in 1785-6, and twelve years later, in 1798, was elected a jurat of the royal court of Guernsey, from which time his name is intimately associated with the history of his native place. On four separate occasions, between 1804 and 1810, he was deputed by the states and royal court of Guernsey to represent them in London, in respect of certain measures affecting the trade and ancient privileges of the island. In 1821 he was appointed bailiff, or chief magistrate, of the island, and soon after was again despatched to London, to protest, which he did with success, against the extension to Guernsey of the new law prohibiting the import of corn until the price should reach 80s. a quarter. In 1832, when the right of the inhabitants to be tried in their own courts was menaced by a proposed extension of the power of writs of habeas corpus to the island, Brock and Mr. Charles de Jersey, king's procureur, were sent to London to oppose the measure, and did so with success. Three years later Brock was once more despatched to London at the head of a deputation to protest against the proposed deprivation of the Channel Islands of their right of exporting corn into England free of duty. Owing to the remonstrance of the deputation, a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the subject, and the bill was subsequently withdrawn. On this occasion the states of Jersey presented Brock with a service of plate valued at 100l., and his portrait was placed in the royal court-house of Guernsey. Brock was married and had two children: a son, who became a captain in the 20th foot, and a daughter. He died in Guernsey on 24 Sept.