Bread History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms

The surname Bread was first found in Cheshire where "in the township of Davenham, [the family] was settled from a remote period the family of La Bret, which terminated in a direct line in Richard Breete of Davenham, early in the 16th century. Hamund la Bret witnessed the grant of Little Mereton to Gralam de Lostock, temp. Henry III.; and Richard le Brette de Daneham occurs among the contributors to the feast on the consecration of Vale Royal Abbey, A.D. 1336." 1

In Scotland, the variant Braid was typically seen or extensions there of. "The name of a family which once possessed extensive territories on the south side of Edinburgh and took their surname from their lands. The first of the name recorded is Henry de Brade, who appears in the middle of the twelfth century as owner of not only the Braid Hills, but also of Blackford Hill, the Plewlands, and Bavelaw. He was sheriff of Edinburgh in the reign of William the Lion, and as Henricus de Brade marescallus, witnessed the gift of a toft in Stirling to the church of Glasgow by William the Lion before 1199. He and his successors were proprietors of the Braids for nearly two hundred years, and with one exception they all used the patronymic Henry. In the reign of William the Lion, probably about the year 1200, Henry de Brade, sheriff of Edinburgh, was witness to a gift of the church of Boeltun by William de Ueteri ponte, son and heir of William de Ueteri ponte and Emma de Sancto Hylario to the church of the Holy Rood of Castle of Maidens and the canons serving the same. Before 1214 he witnessed a gift by Robert de Lyne to the monks of Neubotle, and before 1220 he is one of the witnesses to a charter by John de Morham to the same monks. 2