Wace, the 12th century historian, says that "at the time of the invasion of England, Roger was summoned to the great council at Lillebonne, on account of his wisdom; but that he did not join in the expedition as he was too far advanced in years." Although Roger could not fight, he did not hesitate in contributing his share of the cost, for he provided at his own expense sixty vessels for the conveyance of the troops across the channel. Furthermore, his eldest son and heir fought bravely at Hastings as noted in several contemporary records. As a result, Roger's elder sons were awarded rich lands in England, and both eventually were made English earls by the sons of the Conqueror.
He married circa 1048 or earlier Adeline of Meulan, daughter of Waleran III, Count de Meulan and Oda de Conteville, and sister and heiress of a childless Count of Meulan. Meulan eventually passed to their elder son who became Count of Meulan in 1081. Their surviving children were:
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Roger's son Robert was a powerful English and French nobleman, revered as one of the wisest men of his age. Chroniclers speak highly of his eloquence, his learning, and three kings of England valued his counsel.
He accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066, where his service earned him more than 91 lordships and manors. When his mother died in 1081, Robert inherited the title of Count of Meulan in Normandy, also the title of Viscount Ivry and Lord of Norton. He did homage to Philip I of France for these estates and sat as French Peer in the Parliament held at Poissy.
At the Battle of Hastings Robert was appointed leader of the infantry on the right wing of the army.
He and his brother Henry were members of the Royal hunting party in the New Forest, when William Rufus received his mysterious death wound, 2 August 1100. He then pledged alligience to William Rufus' brother, Henry I of England, who created him Earl of Leicester in 1107.
On the death of William Rufus, William, Count of Evreux and Ralph de Conches made an incursion into Robert's Norman estates, on the pretence that they had suffered injury through some advice that Robert had given to the King; their raid was very successful for they collected a vast booty.
In 1096 he married (Isabel) Elizabeth de Vermandois, daughter of Hugh Magnus and a scion of the French royal family. Their children were:
According to Henry of Huntingdon, Robert died of shame after "a certain earl carried off the lady he had espoused, either by some intrigue or by force and stratagem." His wife Isabella remarried in 1118 to William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey.
Waleran was the son of Robert de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth de Vermandois, and the twin brother of Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester. He is not referred to by any surname in a contemporary document other than 'Waleran son of Count Robert'.
Waleran was born in 1104, the eldest of twin sons of Robert de Beaumont, count of Meulan, who was also to become earl of Leicester in 1107. On their father's death in June 1118, the boys came into the wardship of King Henry I of England. They remained in his care till late in 1120 when they were declared adult and allowed to succeed to their father's lands by a division already arranged between the king and their father before his death. By the arrangement, Waleran succeeded to the county of Meulan upriver on the Seine from the Norman border, and the principal family Norman honors of Beaumont and Pont Audemer. His great possessions included the forest of Brotonne, which was centred on his castle of Vatteville on the left bank of the Seine. As part of the family arrangement, Waleran also received a large estate in Dorset centred on the manor of Sturminster Marshall.
Late in 1122 Waleran was drawn into a conspiracy with Amaury de Montfort, count of Evreux, in support of the claimant to Normandy, William Clito, son of Robert Curthose. The king however detected the conspiracy, and Waleran and his young colleagues were caught unawares by a preemptive strike by the king's army against the rebel centre of Montfort-sur-Risle. Waleran rallied and based his resistance to the king at his castle of Brionne. In October 1123 he lost his fortress of Pont Audemer on the Norman coast to a siege, despite calling in military help from his French relations and allies. After a winter of raiding, on 25 March 1125, Waleran proceeded to the relief of his castle of Vatteville, with his three brothers-in-law, Hugh de Châteauneuf, Hugh de Montfort and William, Lord of Bréval. The returning column was intercepted by a force of knights and soldiers of Henry I's household between Bourgtheroulde and Boissy-le-Châtel, the royal commander being given variously as William de Tancarville or Odo Borleng. The royal household troops decisively defeated Waleran when he attempted a mounted charge at the head of his men, shooting their horses from under them. Waleran's remaining castles continued to resist until 16 April 1124 when Waleran was forced by the king to order his seneschal Morin du Pin to surrender them. Waleran's lands were seized and he was imprisoned first at Rouen, then at Bridgnorth in Shropshire and finally at Wallingford Castle.
Waleran was released for unknown reasons in 1129. He resumed an active role at court and he and his twin brother were both present at Henry's deathbed. He was probably involved in the discussions of the Norman magnates in December 1135 as to who should succeed to Normandy and England.
The accession of Stephen may have taken him by surprise but he had already offered his allegiance to the new king before Easter 1136. At the court he was betrothed to the king's infant daughter, Mathila, and received the city and county of Worcester as her marriage portion. After Easter he went to Normandy taking authority from the king to act as his lieutenant in the duchy. In September he commanded the army of Norman magnates which repelled the invasion by Geoffrey of Anjou, husband of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. He was also able to capture the chief rebel Roger de Toeni. He remained there until the following spring and then returned to England.
The next year he attended the king on his tour of Normandy, crossed back to England with him at the end of the year, by which time he was beginning to undermine the previous ascendancy at court of the bishops of Winchester and Salisbury. He and his family began to monopolise favour and patronage at Stephen's court and they alienated the faction headed by Earl Robert of Gloucester, who in retaliation adopted the cause of his half-sister, the Empress. In June 1138, Waleran was in Normandy to confront successfully again an invading Angevin army. Waleran used his extensive connections at the French court to mobilise a large force of French knights to assist him. It was probably in 1138 that he received the second title of Earl of Worcester. He founded the Cistercian abbey of Bordesley at the end of that year to mark his arrival in the county. The same year his youngest brother Hugh received the earldom of Bedford and other relations were similarly honoured.
Before Easter 1139 Waleran was in Paris on an embassy to his cousin, the new King Louis VII of France. On his return he was the motivating force behind the overthrow of the court faction headed by the justiciar, Bishop Roger of Salisbury. The bishop and his family were arrested in June, and their wealth and many of their possessions confiscated.
With the arrival of Robert of Gloucester in England in September 1139, the civil war between Stephen and Mathilda's supporters got under way. One of the first attacks Gloucester sponsored was an assault on Waleran's English base at Worcester. The city was attacked and sacked on 7 November 1139. Waleran retaliated savagely against the rebel centres of Sudeley and Tewkesbury.
Waleran was present at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141. He was one of the royalist earls who fled when they saw that the battle was lost. Waleran escaped, but the king was captured and imprisoned at Bristol. Waleran fought on for several months, probably basing himself at Worcester, where he had to deal with the defection of his sheriff, William de Beauchamp. At last late in the summer of 1141 Waleran gave up the struggle as news reached him that his Norman lands were being taken over by the invading Angevin army. He surrendered to the Empress Mathilda, and had to accept her appropriation of the abbey of Bordesley as it had been founded on a royal estate. However, once in Normandy, Waleran was accepted at the court of Geoffrey of Anjou, and his lands in England and Normandy were confirmed to him. His first marriage, to the king's daughter Mathilda, had ended with the child's death in London in 1137. Around the end of 1142, Waleran married Agnes, daughter of Amaury de Montfort, count of Evreux. As a result of the marriage he obtained estates in the Pays de Caux and the lordship of Gournay-sur-Marne in the Ile de France. Waleran had already obtained his mother's marriage portion of the honor of Elbeuf on the Seine on her death in or around 1139. Despite the political reverses on 1141, Waleran was considerably wealthier at the end of the year than he had been at the beginning.
Waleran served with Geoffrey, Count of Anjou at the siege of Rouen in 1143/4. During it he captured and burnt the suburb of Emendreville and the Church of St. Sever, where many of both sexes perished in the flames. He consolidated his position as leader of the Norman nobility by a formal treaty with his cousin Robert du Neubourg, seneschal of Normandy. However, Waleran seems to have turned his mind to the French court at this time. In Easter 1146 he was at Vézelay for the preaching of the Second Crusade and attended the great assembly of magnates at Paris from April to June 1147 to meet the pope and Louis VII. On 29 June he was joint leader of the Anglo-Norman crusaders on their rendezvous with Louis VII at Worms. He accompanied the crusade to Syria and its unfortunate conclusion before Damascus. He seems to have left Palestine before King Louis, taking the sea voyage home. He was shipwrecked somewhere on his return, perhaps on the coast of Provence. He promised to build an abbey of Cistercians if he survived the wreck, and in due course he built the abbey of St Mary de Voto (of the Vow) or Le Valasse in fulfilment of his vow.
Waleran's great influence in Normandy survived till 1151, but the new regime of Duke Henry was not sympathetic to him. He made the fatal error of temporising with the Capetian court and assisting the campaigns of Louis VII, his overlord for Meulan. Though his support gained Waleran the hugely profitable wardship of the great county of Vermandois during the minority of his young cousin Count Ralph II, it also led to his downfall. In the second half of 1153 he was ambushed by his nephew and enemy Robert de Montfort, who held him captive while his Norman and English estates were stripped from Waleran by Duke Henry's friends and officers. The earldom of Worcester was suppressed.
Although Waleran was released, his power in Normandy was broken, and an attempt to reclaim Montfort-sur-Risle from his nephew was a humiliating failure. Waleran was an outsider at the court of Henry II, and between 1160 and 1162 lost his Norman lands and castles when he supported Louis VII against Henry II. His last years were eked out as a landowner and justice in the duchy. The last notice of his activities is a settlement of his affairs relating to his priory of Gournay-sur-Marne around the end of 1165. Twenty days before his death he entered the abbey of St Peter of Préaux, the ancestral abbey of his family south of Pont Audemer in Normandy, and died as a monk there on 9 or 10 April 1166. He was buried in its chapter house alongside several other members of his dynasty.
Waleran was an important twelfth-century character in ways other than political. He was a literate man educated in the liberal arts and philosophy. The elegy to him by Stephen de Rouen, monk of Bec-Hellouin reveals that he composed Latin verse. In 1142 he tells us that he personally researched the deeds in the archive of Meulan priory before confirming its possessions. Like his twin brother, he also seems to have been an assiduous writer of letters and a number of them survive. He was also a literary patron, as Geoffrey of Monmouth dedicated the earliest edition of his History of the Kings of Britain to him in 1136.
He married, firstly, Matilda, daughter of King Stephen of England and Matilda of Boulogne, Countess de Boulogne, circa March 1136. She died in 1137 aged only four. He married, secondly, Agnes de Montfort, daughter of Amaury III de Montfort, Count of Evreux, and Agnes de Garlande, in 1141/2. Their children were:
Robert was one of the principal followers of Henry the Young King in the Revolt of 1173-1174 against his father Henry II. He is also called Robert Blanchemains (meaning "White Hands" in French). He was the son of Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, a staunch supporter of Henry II, and he inherited from his father large estates in England and Normandy.
When the revolt of the younger Henry broke out in April 1173, Robert went to his castle at Breteuil in Normandy. The rebels' aim was to take control of the duchy, but Henry II himself led an army to besiege the castle; Robert fled, and the Breteuil was taken on September 25 or 26.
Robert apparently went to Flanders, where he raised a large force of mercenaries, and landed at Walton, Suffolk, on September 29, 1173. He joined forces with Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk, and the two marched west, aiming to cut England in two across the Midlands and to relieve the king's siege of Robert's castle at Leicester. However, they were intercepted by the king's supporters and defeated in battle at Fornham, near Bury St Edmunds, on October 17. Robert, along with his wife and many others, was taken prisoner. Henry II took away the earl's lands and titles as well. He remained in captivity until January 1177, well after most of the other prisoners had been released. The king was in a strong position and could afford to be merciful; not long after his release Robert's lands and titles were restored, but not his castles. All but two of his castles had been destroyed, and those two (Montsorrel in Leicestershire and Pacy in Normandy) remained in the king's hands.
Robert had little influence in the remaining years of Henry II's reign, but was restored to favor by Richard I. He carried one of the swords of state at Richard's coronation in 1189. In 1190 Robert went on pilgrimage to Palestine, but he died in Greece on his return journey.
Robert married Pernelle[1], who was either a granddaughter or great-granddaughter of Hugh de Grandmesnil. They had five children:
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