General Notes

Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 9FTX-N3
Robert de Bellomont, or Beaumont (son of Roger, grandson of Turlof [Tourade] of Pont Audomere by Wevia, sister to Gunnora, wife of Richard I, Duke of Normandy), came into England with the Conqueror and contributed mainly to the Norman triumph at Hastings. This Robert inherited the earldom of Mellent in Normandy from his mother Adelina, dau. of Waleran, and sister of Hugh (who took the habit of monk in the abbey of Bec), both Earls of Mellent. Of his conduct at Hastings, William
Pictavensis thus speaks: "A certain Norman young soldier, son of Roger de Bellomont, nephew and heir to Hugh, Earl of Mellent, by Adelina his sister, making the first onset in that fight, did what deserveth lasting fame, boldly charging and breaking in upon the enemy with that regiment which he commanded in the right wing of the army," for which gallant services he obtained sixty-four lordships in Warwickshire, sixteen in Leicestershire, seven in Wiltshire, three in Northamptonshire, and one in Gloucestershire, in all ninety-one. His lordship did not however arrive at the dignity of the English peerage before the reign of Henry I, when that monarch created him Earl of Leicester. The mode by which he attained this honour is thus stated by an ancient writer: "The city of Leicester had then four lords, viz., the king, the bishop of Lincoln, Earl Simon, and Yvo, the son of Hugh de Grentmesnel. This Earl of Mellent, by favour of the king, cunningly entering it on that side which belonged to Yvo (then governor thereof, as also sheriff and the king's farmer there), subjecting it wholly to himself, and by this means, being made an earl in England, exceeded all the nobles of the realm in riches and power." His lordship m. 1096, Isabel, dau. of Hugh, Earl of Vermandois This great earl is characterised as "the wisest of all men betwixt this and Jerusalem in worldly affairs, famous for knowledge, plausible in speech, skillful in craft, discreetly provident, ingeniously subtile, excelling in prudence, profound
in council, and of great wisdom." In the latter end of his days he became a monk in the abbey of Preaux, where he d. in 1118, and was s. in the earldom of Leicester by his 2nd son, Robert. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, England, 1883, p. 42, Bellomont, Earls of Leicester]
ROBERT OF MEULAN, LORD OF MEULAN and BEAUMONT, EARL OF LEICESTER, was the leading lay adviser to both William II and Henry I. Although in the course of a long public life he amassed extensive estates in England, Normandy and France, Robert was the nearest thing to a king's minister that contemporary circumstances allowed, the more remarkable as his successors as royal lay advisers -- with the exception of his own son Robert of Leicester, justiciar to Henry II -- tended to come from less exalted ranks of the nobility, men such as the justiciars Ranulf (de) Glanvill(e), Geoffrey FitzPeter, and Hubert de Burgh. Robert's career made a distinctive impression on contemporaries and affords a rare glimpse into how eleventh century politics worked.
The son of a prominent Norman magnate, Roger of Beaumont, and his wife, Adeline, daughter of Waleran, Count of Meulan, Robert made his name by his deeds at his first battle, Hastings. Thereafter, during his father's lifetime, Robert sought his fortune in England. By 1087, he had become one of William I's active curiales and held land in England worth a significant but not spectacular £254. In the early 1080's he had inherited the county of Meulan from his maternal uncle but, despite succeeding to fiefs of Beaumont and Pont Audemer when his father entered the abbey of St. Peter at Préaux (c. 1090), his interests and loyalties remained Anglo-Norman. Unusually, he faithfully supported all of the first three post-Conquest kings. After spending much of 1087-93 in France securing his inheritance, from 1093 he emerged as William Rufus's closest counsel