Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor’s Note
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Bibliography of C.Warren Hollister’s Publications
- 1 C.Warren Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I
- 2 From the Thames to Tinchebray: The Role of Normandy in the Early Career of Henry I
- 3 Henry I and the English
- 4 The Irish Sea Province and the Accession of Henry I
- 5 Henry I, Count Helias of Maine, and the Battle of Tinchebray
- 6 Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan and Leicester: His Lands, his Acts, and his Self-Image
- 7 The Double Display of Saint Romanus of Rouen in 1124
- 8 Henry I and the English Church: The Archbishops and the King
- 9 The Fiscal Management of England under Henry I
- 10 Henry I’s Administrative Legacy: The Significance of Place-Date Distribution in the Acta of King Stephen
- 11 The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope: The Marital Fortunes of Agnes of Essex
6 - Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan and Leicester: His Lands, his Acts, and his Self-Image
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor’s Note
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Bibliography of C.Warren Hollister’s Publications
- 1 C.Warren Hollister and the Private Life of Henry I
- 2 From the Thames to Tinchebray: The Role of Normandy in the Early Career of Henry I
- 3 Henry I and the English
- 4 The Irish Sea Province and the Accession of Henry I
- 5 Henry I, Count Helias of Maine, and the Battle of Tinchebray
- 6 Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan and Leicester: His Lands, his Acts, and his Self-Image
- 7 The Double Display of Saint Romanus of Rouen in 1124
- 8 Henry I and the English Church: The Archbishops and the King
- 9 The Fiscal Management of England under Henry I
- 10 Henry I’s Administrative Legacy: The Significance of Place-Date Distribution in the Acta of King Stephen
- 11 The Child-Bride, the Earl, and the Pope: The Marital Fortunes of Agnes of Essex
Summary
Robert of Beaumont, lord of Beaumont-le-Roger and Pont Audemer, count of Meulan and Leicester, died in 1118. He belonged to a generation of the Anglo- Norman aristocracy which experienced critical changes in what it meant to be an aristocrat, and which enjoyed the enormous opportunities presented by the conquest of England by the Norman dynasty. Unfortunately, his generation was the one which immediately preceded the expansion in the production of written acts by lay people so suggestively explored by Michael Clanchy. The collection of Robert’s acts does not therefore result in much of a harvest, quite unlike the hundreds of acts which survive for his sons. In the case of Count Robert, only thirteen full Latin texts survive, although there are notices of over twice that many. But such as survive are important. Few though they are, they reveal how the Anglo-Norman aristocracy was already changing its attitude to the written act, and how pre-Conquest English influences were having an impact on the aristocracy as much as the royal household.
Robert’s career provides a frame for what we can learn from his written acts. He was a member of the first generation of the Anglo-Norman nobility. He fought on the field of Hastings as a young knight in Duke William’s army, and lived to lead a wing of Henry I’s army at Tinchebray forty years later. In between those two defining events, he was a loyal servant of the Conqueror, raised himself to great power at the court of William Rufus, and was there when Rufus’s reign ended abruptly and unexpectedly in a clearing in the New Forest. It was Robert who was principally responsible for raising Rufus’s brother, Henry, to the throne, and Robert was well known thereafter as the king’s friend, his chief supporter. But Robert’s story is not simply that of a successful courtier. He was at the heart of the rise of a new aristocracy and a new order in northern France. He took advantage of his opportunities, and he adapted and aggrandized himself to a level of power and wealth beyond the imagination of his predecessors.
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- Henry I and the Anglo-Norman WorldStudies in Memory of C. Warren Hollister, pp. 91 - 116Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007