 Some modern historians contend that the name may have come from Brix, Manche, near Cherbourg in the Cotentin Peninsula, and that they came to England after King Henry I of England's conquest of Normandy.What is known clearly is that this Robert de Brus is first mentioned during the period 1094 and 1100, as a witness to a charter of Hugh, Earl of Chester, granting the church of Flamborough, Yorkshire, to Whitby Abbey.Possibly the Earl of Chester about 1100–1104 enfeoffed Robert of certain portions of his Cleveland fee in Lofthouse, Upleatham, Barwick, Ingleby, and other places.