Honour Guard of the Imperial House of Sellassie - The Noble Corporation of the Knights de Bryan

The counts de Brienne of Brienne-le-Chateau were one of the more distinguished families of medieval France, producing statesmen, diplomats and crusaders. In the twelfth century Sir Guy de Brian IV, first of the lineage identified by name in English records settled in South Wales. The first Irish Bryans came late to Ireland and established themselves in Kilkenny. On December, 31, 1369, Sir Guy de Bryan V was elected 50th Knight of the Order of the Garter. Sir Francis Bryan, worthy scion of this distinguished family, who had been knighted by Henry VII in 1497, served Henry VIII as a close advisor. In the year 1548 he married Joan, only child of James Fitzgerald, 10th Earl of Desmond, and was made Lord Marshall of Ireland.

Their grandson, Colonel William Smith Bryan, with his family of eleven sons, was exiled by Oliver Cromwell to the Virginia Colony before the year 1653. It is from these eleven sons that many American Bryans is in North America with only a very few till resident in Ireland.

Matrilineally descended from the Plantagenets (the first Angevin dynasty which came to rule England, Normandy, Gascony and Guyenne (1153-1453), but lost Anjou itself to the French crown in 1206), it is also noteworthy that, through the operation of the Highland Celtic customary law of matrilinear descent barring marriage of a daughter into another Scottish clan, a practice retraceable to Pictish origin, the Sept of the Knight de Bryan has retained its historic status as a Siol Ailpein sept of the Gaelic Royal House of Dal Riada.

Noble Corporation of the Knights de Bryan

Among the distinctions of this international family of French-Irish origin is their appointment by dynastic firman as The Noble Corporation of the Knights de Bryan, Honour Guard of the Imperial House of Sellassie. Although it is not a prerequisite for a Knight de Bryan to descend from the Bryan family, all knights and dames of the Honour Guard carry the distinction Knight de Bryan (KtB), which accordingly is an independent knightly title that does not necessarily express genealogical affiliation with one of the branches of the Bryan family.