General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> Of Belvoir Castle, Baron/Governor/Domesday L
Amongst the most distinguished companion in arms of the Conqueror was Robert de Todeni, a nobleman of Normandy, upon whom the victorious monarch conferred, with numerous other grants, an estate in the county of Lincoln upon the borders of Leicestershire. Here de Todeni erected a stately castle and, from the fair view it commanded, gave it the designation of Belvoir Castle, and here he established his chief abode. At the time of the General Survey, this powerful personage possessed no less than eighty extensive lordships, viz., two in Yorkshire, one in Essex, four in Suffolk, one in Cambridge, two in Hertfordshire, three in Bucks, four in Gloucestershire, three in Bedfordshire, nine in Northamptonshire, two in Rutland, thirty-two in Lincolnshire, and seventeen in Leicestershire. "Of this Robert," saith Dugdale, "I have not seen any other memorial than that the Coucher-Book of Belvoir recordeth: which is, that bearing a venerable esteem to our sometime much celebrated protomartyr, St. Alban, he founded near to his castle a priory for monks and annexed it as a cell to that great abbey in Hertfordshire, formerly erected by the devout King Offa in honour of that most holy man." Robert de Todeni, Lord of Belvoir, d. in 1088, leaving issue by his wife Adela, William, who assumed the surname of Albini; Berenger; Geoffrey; Robert; and Agnes. He was s. by his eldest son, William de Albini, Brito, Lord of Belvoir. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, England, 1883, p. 160, Daubeney, Barons Daubeney, Earl of Bridgewater]
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Held 131 manors in Warwichshire and Lincolnshire. In his older age he became a monk at Eversham.
From:  RAOUL DE TOENI
The Conqueror and His Companions
by J.R. Planché, Somerset Herald. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874 (made available by Pat Patterson)

"From Robert, a cadet of this house, the family of Stafford is descended, but I have not been able to satisfy myself as to the exact place of Robert and his brother Nigel de Stafford in the pedigree. They were probably younger brothers of the subject of this memoir, or possibly his uncles. They appear in Domesday as possessors of considerable property, but whether companions of the Conqueror in 1066 is uncertain. The first Robert de Toeni who assumed the name of Stafford, from the Castle of Stafford, married, it is said, Avicia de Clare; but I cannot identify any such person."@@S48@@