Robert (Montgomery) de Belleme (abt. 1057 - 1131)

Born about 1057 in Normandy, France

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 8 May 1131 at about age 74 in Wareham Castle, Dorset, England

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Biography

He lost his lands in 1102, which went to the crown. Arundel (both barony and Earldom) went to Adeliza the widow of King Henry I, and thus to the d'Aubigny family, and later to the FitzAlans. Shrewsbury or Shropshire ("Salop") did not have an Earl for centuries.

"Robert was baptized at Sées by Thierry de Mathonville, abbot of St Evroult, before the abbot's departure for the Holy Land about 1057. He can be found attesting charters before the Norman conquest of England in company with his father and elder brother, Roger. In 1073 he was knighted by William I at Fresnay, during a campaign by which the king sought to enforce the overlordship of Maine which he had won in 1063; and in 1077–8, like many of the younger generation of Norman nobles, Bellême joined the first rebellion by the king's eldest son, Robert Curthose. His mother, Mabel, was killed in December 1077 and Robert, together with other members of the family, witnessed a confirmation to Troarn made in her memory. It appears that shortly thereafter there was a division of family interests, with Robert taking responsibility for the family's holdings in northern France and his father, Roger, taking up residence in England with his new wife and other sons. Robert probably did not inherit his mother's lands outright, for his father retained an interest in his first wife's property; but he certainly seems to have been in day-to-day control during the 1080s. He received a memorandum from his father about routine matters of tenure, for example, and in 1086 he can be found judging two lawsuits involving tenants of the family's French lands. His relations with the king were good, for William the Conqueror arranged Bellême's marriage to Agnes, the heir of the small, but strategically important, county of Ponthieu, to the north-east of Normandy; and in 1087, when news reached him of William's death, Robert was on his way to visit the king in Rouen to discuss important business. Bellême, anxious about the uncertainty which attended a changeover of power, immediately returned home and, like other Norman nobles, expelled the garrisons which the king had placed in his castles.

"Bellême's marriage to Agnes, the elder daughter of Gui, count of Ponthieu, was arranged before 1087, but may not have taken place until about 1092, perhaps because of the age of Agnes. Their union was neither long-lasting nor successful and Agnes left Robert, probably shortly after the birth of their only child, Guillaume Talvas, and returned to Ponthieu; but despite the lurid story of marital collapse given in Orderic Vitalis's ecclesiastical history (Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist., 4.300), there are no signs of discord between Robert and his father-in-law, Count Gui, with whom he judged a plea in the ducal court at Rouen in 1093. Robert witnessed a charter given by Gui, apparently on his deathbed, and it may be that Agnes returned to Ponthieu in the later 1090s to act on her father's behalf because of his advanced age. She probably took her son with her since he does not attest Robert's acts until 1106."^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Thompson, Kathleen. "Bellême, Robert de, earl of Shrewsbury and count of Ponthieu (bap. c. 1057, d. in or after 1130), magnate." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 27 March 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2042.

• http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/NORTHERN%20FRANCE.htm#GuyIPonthieudied1100B

• Yeatman, John Pym. The Early Genealogical History of the House of Arundel (Mitchell and Hughes, London, 1882) Page 8:" Count of Beleseme, Alencon, etc.; Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, etc., 1098; forfeited his English Earldom 1102; imprisoned at Wareham by Henry I. 1113"