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Birth:          1104 Normandy, France
Death:          5 Apr 1168 England
Burial:         Leicester Abbey, Leicester, Leicestershire, England

Notes
or b in Leicester?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_de_Beaumont,_2nd_Earl_of_Leicester
Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester (1104 – 5 April 1168) was Justiciar of 
England 1155–1168.

The surname "de Beaumont" is given him by genealogists. The only known 
contemporary surname applied to him is "Robert son of Count Robert". Henry 
Knighton, the fourteenth-century chronicler notes him as Robert "Le Bossu" (meaning 
"Robert the Hunchback" in French).
Early life and education[edit]

Robert was an English nobleman of Norman-French ancestry. He was the son of 
Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan and 1st Earl of Leicester, and Elizabeth de 
Vermandois, and the twin brother of Waleran de Beaumont. It is not known whether 
they were identical or fraternal twins, but the fact that they are remarked on by 
contemporaries as twins indicates that they were probably identical.

The two brothers, Robert and Waleran, were adopted into the royal household shortly 
after their father's death in June 1118 (upon which Robert inherited his father's 
second titles of Earl of Leicester). Their lands on either side of the Channel were 
committed to a group of guardians, led by their stepfather, William, Earl of Warenne or 
Surrey. They accompanied King Henry I to Normandy, to meet with Pope Callixtus II in 
1119, when the king incited them to debate philosophy with the cardinals. Both twins 
were literate, and Abingdon Abbey later claimed to have been Robert's school, but 
though this is possible, its account is not entirely trustworthy. A surviving treatise on 
astronomy (British Library ms Royal E xxv) carries a dedication "to Earl Robert of 
Leicester, that man of affairs and profound learning, most accomplished in matters of 
law" who can only be this Robert. On his death he left his own psalter to the abbey he 
founded at Leicester, which was still in its library in the late fifteenth century. The 
existence of this indicates that like many noblemen of his day, Robert followed the 
canonical hours in his chapel.

Career at the Norman court[edit]

In 1120 Robert was declared of age and inherited most of his father's lands in 
England, while his twin brother took the French lands. However, in 1121, royal favour 
brought Robert the great Norman honors of Breteuil and Pacy-sur-Eure, with his 
marriage to Amice de Gael, daughter of a Breton intruder the king had forced on the 
honor after the forfeiture of the Breteuil family in 1119. Robert spent a good deal of 
his time and resources over the next decade integrating the troublesome and 
independent barons of Breteuil into the greater complex of his estates. He did not join 
in his brother's great Norman rebellion against King Henry I in 1123–24. He appears 
fitfully at the royal court despite his brother's imprisonment until 1129. Thereafter the 
twins were frequently to be found together at Henry I's court.

Robert held lands throughout the country. In the 1120s and 1130s he tried to 
rationalise his estates in Leicestershire. Leicestershire estates of the See of Lincoln 
and the Earl of Chester were seized by force. This enhanced the integrity of Robert's 
block of estates in the central midlands, bounded by Nuneaton, Loughborough, Melton 
Mowbray and Market Harborough.

In 1135, the twins were present at King Henry's deathbed. Robert's actions in the 
succession period are unknown, but he clearly supported his brother's decision to join 
the court of the new king Stephen before Easter 1136. During the first two years of 
the reign Robert is found in Normandy fighting rival claimants for his honor of Breteuil. 
Military action allowed him to add the castle of Pont St-Pierre to his Norman estates in 
June 1136 at the expense of one of his rivals. From the end of 1137 Robert and his 
brother were increasingly caught up in the politics of the court of King Stephen in 
England, where Waleran secured an ascendancy which lasted till the beginning of 
1141. Robert participated in his brother's political coup against the king's justiciar, 
Roger of Salisbury (the Bishop of Salisbury).

Civil war in England[edit]

The outbreak of civil war in England in September 1139 brought Robert into conflict 
with Earl Robert of Gloucester, the bastard son of Henry I and principal sponsor of the 
Empress Matilda. His port of Wareham and estates in Dorset were seized by 
Gloucester in the first campaign of the war. In that campaign the king awarded Robert 
the city and castle of Hereford as a bid to establish the earl as his lieutenant in 
Herefordshire, which was in revolt. It is disputed by scholars whether this was an 
award of a second county to Earl Robert. Probably in late 1139, Earl Robert refounded 
his father's collegiate church of St Mary de Castro in Leicester as a major Augustinian 
abbey on the meadows outside the town's north gate, annexing the college's 
considerable endowment to the abbey.

The battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141 saw the capture and imprisonment of King 
Stephen. Although Count Waleran valiantly continued the royalist fight in England into 
the summer, he eventually capitulated to the Empress and crossed back to Normandy 
to make his peace with the Empress's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. Earl Robert had 
been in Normandy since 1140 attempting to stem the Angevin invasion, and 
negotiated the terms of his brother's surrender. He quit Normandy soon after and his 
Norman estates were confiscated and used to reward Norman followers of the 
Empress. Earl Robert remained on his estates in England for the remainder of King 
Stephen's reign. Although he was a nominal supporter of the king, there seems to 
have been little contact between him and Stephen, who did not confirm the foundation 
of Leicester Abbey till 1153. Earl Robert's principal activity between 1141 and 1149 
was his private war with Ranulf II, Earl of Chester. Though details are obscure it 
seems clear enough that he waged a dogged war with his rival that in the end secured 
him control of northern Leicestershire and the strategic Chester castle of Mountsorrel. 
When Earl Robert of Gloucester died in 1147, Robert of Leicester led the movement 
among the greater earls of England to negotiate private treaties to establish peace in 
their areas, a process hastened by the Empress's departure to Normandy, and 
complete by 1149. During this time the earl also exercised supervision over his twin 
brother's earldom of Worcester, and in 1151 he intervened to frustrate the king's 
attempts to seize the city.

Earl Robert and Henry Plantagenet[edit]

The arrival in England of Duke Henry, son of the Empress Matilda, in January 1153 
was a great opportunity for Earl Robert. He was probably in negotiation with Henry in 
that spring and reached an agreement by which he would defect to him by May 1153, 
when the duke restored his Norman estates to the earl. The duke celebrated his 
Pentecost court at Leicester in June 1153, and he and the earl were constantly in 
company till the peace settlement between the duke and the king at Winchester in 
November 1153. Earl Robert crossed with the duke to Normandy in January 1154 and 
resumed his Norman castles and honors. As part of the settlement his claim to be chief 
steward of England and Normandy was recognised by Henry.

Earl Robert began his career as chief justiciar of England probably as soon as Duke 
Henry succeeded as King Henry II in October 1154.[1] The office gave the earl 
supervision of the administration and legal process in England whether the king was 
present or absent in the realm. He appears in that capacity in numerous administrative 
acts, and had a junior colleague in the post in Richard de Luci, another former servant 
of King Stephen. The earl filled the office for nearly fourteen years until his death,[1] 
and earned the respect of the emerging Angevin bureaucracy in England. His opinion 
was quoted by learned clerics, and his own learning was highly commended.

He died on 5 April 1168,[1] probably at his Northamptonshire castle of Brackley, for 
his entrails were buried at the hospital in the town. He was received as a canon of 
Leicester on his deathbed, and buried to the north of the high altar of the great abbey 
he had founded and built. He left a written testament of which his son the third earl 
was an executor, as we learn in a reference dating to 1174.

Church patronage[edit]

Robert founded and patronised many religious establishments. He founded Leicester 
Abbey and Garendon Abbeyin Leicestershire, the Fontevraldine Nuneaton Priory in 
Warwickshire, Luffield Abbey in Buckinghamshire, and the hospital of Brackley, 
Northamptonshire. He refounded the collegiate church of St Mary de Castro, 
Leicester, as a dependency of Leicester abbey around 1164, after suppressing it in 
1139. Around 1139 he refounded the collegiate church of Wareham as a priory of his 
abbey of Lyre, in Normandy. His principal Norman foundations were the priory of Le 
Désert in the forest of Breteuil and a major hospital in Breteuil itself. He was a 
generous benefactor of the Benedictine abbey of Lyre, the oldest monastic house in 
the honor of Breteuil. He also donated land in Old Dalby, Leicestershire to the Knights 
Hospitallers who used it to found Dalby Preceptory.

Family and children[edit]

He married after 1120 Amice de Montfort, daughter of Raoul II de Montfort, himself a 
son of Ralph de Gael, Earl of East Anglia. Both families had lost their English 
inheritances through rebellion in 1075. They had four children:
1.Hawise de Beaumont, who married William Fitz Robert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester and 
had descendants.
2.Robert de Beaumont, 3rd Earl of Leicester who married Petronilla de Grandmesnil 
and had descendants.
3.Isabel, who married: Simon de St. Liz, Earl of Huntingdon and had descendants.
4.Margaret, who married Ralph V de Toeni and had descendants through their 
daughter, Ida de Tosny.

Literary references[edit]

He is a major character in The Holy Thief and a minor character in Brother Cadfael's 
Penance, of the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. He is also a major character in 
Cecelia Holland's novel The Earl

Parents
DE BEAUMONT Robert (ABT 1046 - 5 Jun 1118)
DE VERMANDOIS Elizabeth (Isabel) (1081 - Jul 1147)

Siblings
DE BEAUMONT Adeline (ABT 1097 - )
DE BEAUMONT Isabel (Elizabeth) (ABT 1101 - ABT 1147)
DE BEAUMONT Robert "Bossu" (1104 - 5 Apr 1168)
DE BEAUMONT Waleran (1104 - 9 Apr 1166)
DE BEAUMONT Maude (ABT 1116 - AFT 1189)

Marriage To DE MONTFORT Amice (ABT 1103 - ABT 31 Aug 1168)
    m.  

Notes

Parents
DE MONTFORT Raoul (Ralph) II (ABT 1078 - )
FITZ OSBERNE Emma (Avise) (ABT 1075 - )

Children by DE MONTFORT Amice ABT 1103 - ABT 31 Aug 1168
BEAUMONT Isabel or Elizabeth (ABT 1121 - AFT May 1188)
HARCOURT [DE BEAUMONT] Robert "Blanchmains" (ABT 1121 - 31 Aug 1190)
DE BEAUMONT Margaret (ABT 1125 - )
OF LEICESTER Hawise "de Beaumont" (ABT 1129 - )

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