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- Robert de Vieuxpont or Robert de Veteriponte was an Anglo-Norman landowner and administrator in the north of England.
He was born the younger son of William de Vieuxpont and his wife Maud de Morville.
He entered royal service and was initially employed in Normandy as a paymaster of troops and director of military works, including those on Rouen Castle. He was rewarded in February 1203 by being given custody of the castles of Appleby and Brough, to which the lordship of Westmorland was added a month later, together with the shrievalty of Westmorland, to be held in perpetuity. He married Idonea, the daughter of John de Builli, which brought him more land and honours.
After returning from Normandy with King John in late 1203 Vieuxpont became increasingly involved in northern administration. In October 1204 he became High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests including control of the castle of Nottingham, an important royal treasury and power base. In 1206 he was a justice and assessor of tallage in the northern counties, in 1207 he was given custody of the see of York, and in April 1208 custody of the see of Durham. From 1210 to 1216 he was High Sheriff of Devon and from 1210-1213 High Sheriff of Wiltshire. He was highly trusted by John, who put in his care both his treasury, his son Richard and his niece Eleanor. In 1216 he was also entrusted with the custody of Cumberland and Carlisle Castle and from 1217 to 1222 made High Sheriff of Cumberland. He successfully defended his by now considerable holdings from Scottish depredation, building Brougham Castle in the process.
In 1227 he bequeathed his body, along with his estate at Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, to the Knights Templar and died by 1 February 1228. His son and heir, John, died in 1242, his grandson, another Robert, in 1264 and the Vieuxpont inheritance was divided between the younger Robert's daughters Isabella and Idonea. On the death of Idonea however it passed to Isabella's husband Roger de Clifford to forge one of the greatest northern lordships. A daughter Christian married his ward, Thomas, the son of William of Greystoke, heir to the barony of Greystoke in Cumberland.
Vieuxpont [Veteri Ponte, Vipont], Robert de (d. 1228), administrator and magnate, came of a family that took its name from Vieuxpont-en-Auge (Calvados) in Normandy. He was the younger son of William de Vieuxpont (d. in or before 1203), who became an important Anglo-Scottish landowner, and his wife, Maud de Morville (d. c.1210), whose father Hugh (in 1170 one of the assassins of Thomas Becket) forfeited the barony of Westmorland in 1173. Robert's elder brother, Ivo, inherited their father's estates in Northamptonshire and Northumberland, while Robert had entered royal service by 1195, and was custodian of the honours of Peverel, Higham Ferrers, and Tickhill in the latter years of Richard I's reign. But he achieved much greater eminence under John. At first he was principally employed in Normandy, especially as a paymaster of troops and director of military works, including those on Rouen Castle, and in 1203 he became bailli of the Roumois. His services were rewarded by the grant of Vieuxpont itself, formerly held by an uncle who had joined the French, and also by grants in England. In February 1203 he was given custody of the castles of Appleby and Brough, to which the lordship of Westmorland was added a month later; then in October 1203 custody during pleasure was changed to a grant in fee simple, for the service of four knights, and Vieuxpont had become one of the leading barons in northern England. He was also to be given a number of valuable wardships, while his wife, Idonea, the daughter of John de Builli, whom he married before June 1213, brought him lands in Bedfordshire and a claim to the Yorkshire honour of Tickhill. After leaving Normandy with John in December 1203 Vieuxpont was in frequent attendance on the king until the end of 1205, when he became increasingly involved in northern administration. In October 1204 he became sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and so had control of the strategically important castle of Nottingham, which was also a major repository for royal treasure-11,000 marks were sent there from Winchester in July 1207-and thus a base for the king's authority. Employed in 1206 as a justice and assessor of tallage in the northern counties, in 1207 he was given custody of the see of York, and in April 1208 custody of that of Durham. His manifold responsibilities may have been more than he could handle, since at the end of 1208 he had to proffer 4000 marks for royal ‘grace and favour’, and undertake to submit a number of delayed accounts. But he was pardoned 3000 marks of his fine, and though he ceased to be sheriff of Nottingham he continued to be prominent in John's service. He held Durham until 1210, and in the following year was employed in Wales, as the king's lieutenant in Powys. His loyalty to John brought him the accolade of a place in Roger of Wendover's list of that king's evil counsellors, and John himself acknowledged Vieuxpont's reliability by temporarily placing his second son, Richard, and his niece Eleanor in his custody. He also continued to handle substantial sums of royal money-in May 1213 he and Henry of Braybrooke received 30,000 marks from the king's treasure. He accompanied John to France in 1214, and in the civil war that broke out in the autumn of 1215 was one of the principal defenders of royal castles and interests in Yorkshire. In January 1216, moreover, he was entrusted with the custody of Cumberland and Carlisle Castle. He also had important interests of his own to defend in the north-west. His acquisition of Westmorland had been followed by an accumulation of estates in the region, including one on which he built a castle at Brougham, in order to defend his lordship against attack from the north-the constable of Scotland, Alan of Galloway, had a claim to Westmorland through his mother, Helen de Morville, and occupied the lordship for a year when the Scots overran English Cumbria in 1216. Vieuxpont fought for the young Henry III at Lincoln in 1217, but gave much trouble in the years that followed. He was said by Wendover to have continued to plunder after peace had been made, but greater difficulties arose from his claim to Tickhill, which was disputed by Alice, countess of Eu. In order to appease him for the time being the regency government, which had reappointed him sheriff of Cumberland in September 1217, conceded in the following year that he should hold that office without accounting for the profits of office until justice had been done on his claim to Tickhill. In the event he held Cumberland until 1222, without accounting for any issues at all. Having dislodged Alan of Galloway from Westmorland, he was by far the greatest figure in the north-west, which he governed with a heavy hand-there were complaints over his administration of the royal forest in 1220 and 1225, and he quarrelled with William of Lancaster, lord of Kendal, over suits to Westmorland county court. He was not always fractious, however, and served as a justice itinerant in Yorkshire and Northumberland in 1218-19. In 1222 the dispute over Tickhill was settled; Vieuxpont abandoned his claim to the honour, settling instead for six and a half knights' fees and £100 in cash. A further consequence was that he immediately lost his shrievalty of Cumberland, and with it yearly revenues of nearly £300. He may have been discontented, since at the end of 1223 he was one of the adversaries of the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, protesting against the resumption of royal castles and sheriffdoms. But he had been reconciled to the government by February 1225, when he attested the reissue of Magna Carta, and in 1226-7 headed a judicial eyre in Yorkshire. Although Vieuxpont was a benefactor to the Cumbrian monasteries of St Bees and Shap, in 1227 he bequeathed his body, along with his estate at Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, to the knights templar. The bequest itself, and the fact that its witnesses included a doctor, point to failing health, and by 1 February 1228 he was dead, probably very recently. He left a son and a daughter. The latter, Christian, he married to his ward, Thomas, son of William of Greystoke, the heir to the barony of Greystoke in Cumberland. His son and heir, John, died in 1241, his grandson, another Robert, in 1264. Divided between this younger Robert's daughters, the Vieuxpont inheritance was finally reassembled by the Cliffords, to form the basis of one of the greatest, and longest-lasting, northern lordships. Henry Summerson Sources Chancery records (RC) · Chancery records · Pipe rolls, 7 Richard I - 17 John · H. C. M. Lyte, ed., Liber feodorum: the book of fees, 1 (1920) · T. D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli Normanniae, RC (1835) · Curia regis rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (1922-), vols. 9, 11T. Stapleton, ed., Magni rotuli scaccarii Normanniae sub regibus Angliae, 2, Society of Antiquaries of London Occasional Papers (1844) · J. Parker, ed., Feet of fines for the county of York, 3: from 1218 to 1231, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 62 (1921), 42-3 · Bodl. Oxf., MS Dodsworth 70, 83 · J. C. Holt, The northerners: a study in the reign of King John (1961) · D. A. Carpenter, The minority of Henry III (1990) · K. J. Stringer, ‘Periphery and core in thirteenth-century Scotland: Alan, son of Roland, lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland’, Medieval Scotland: crown, lordship and community: essays presented to G. W. S. Barrow, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (1993), 82-113 · H. Summerson, M. Trueman, and S. Harrison, Brougham Castle, Cumbria (1998) · I. J. Sanders, English baronies: a study of their origin and descent, 1086-1327 (1960) · H. M. Colvin, The white canons in England (1951) · Rogeri de Wendover liber qui dicitur flores historiarum, ed. H. G. Hewlett, 3 vols., Rolls Series, [84] (1886-9) · CPR, 1232-47, 284 · T. D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli litterarum clausarum, RC, 1 (1833), 136 · Calendar of the charter rolls, 6 vols., PRO (1903-27), vol. 1, p. 77 Wealth at death very wealthy; wardship of son valued (presumably conservatively) at £400 p.a. in 1241: CPR · tenure of Cumberland valued at nearly £300 p.a. extra © Oxford University Press 2004-5 All rights reserved: see legal notice Henry Summerson, ‘Vieuxpont , Robert de (d. 1228)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28276, accessed 28 Nov 2005] Robert de Vieuxpont (d. 1228): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28276
English translation of the Latin Document above. Re Robert de Vieuxpont 1203. Translated by B Westcott
Account of Robert de Vieuxpont, 1203
Account of Robert de Vieuxpont concerning his receipts
Robert de Vieuxpont gives an account, through William Quaggel’, and John the Queen’s Chaplain,
Of 9 measures 1 quarter and a half of wheat which he received out of the chattels of William Poignard of Bretevill’ and of Verson, in the measure of the same towns,
And of 2 8 measures 4 sesters of wheat which he received out of the chattels of the same William from Lengrova in the measure of the same town,
And of 8 measures 9 sesters 3 quarters of barley which he received out of the chattels of the same William from Bretevill’ and of Verson, in the measure of the same towns,
And of 2 measures 10 sesters of oats which he received out of the chattels of the same William from the same towns in the measure of the same towns,
And of 10 bushels of lentils which he received out of the chattels of the same William from the same towns in the measure of Cad’,
And of 2 bushels of beans which he received out of the chattels of the same, from the same towns, in the same measure,
And of 3 quarters of malt which he received out of the chattels of the same William from the same towns in the measure of Cad’,
And of 2 measures 2 sesters of barley which he received out of the chattels of the same William from Lengrova in the measure of the same town,
And of 1 measure 10 sesters of barley which he received out of the chattels of John Ruffus of Corcella in the measure of Corcella.
Sum; 17 measures 4 sesters 1 quarter and a half of wheat,
And 2 measures 10 sesters of oats,
And 12 measures 9 sesters 3 quarters of barley,
And 10 bushels of lentils,
And 2 bushels of beans,
And 3 quarters of malt.
Into the treasury; nothing.
In expenses of the Queen, the wife of the King, staying at Cad’, to make bread; 3 measures 7 sesters of wheat, by the King’s writ.
Account of Robert de Vieuxpont, 1203
And he owes 13 measures 9 sesters 1 quarter and a half of wheat,
And 2 measures 10 sesters of oats,
And 12 measures 9 sesters 3 quarters of barley,
And 10 bushels of lentils,
And 2 bushels of beans,
And 3 quarters of malt,
Which are worth £193 14s 9d.
The same renders an account for the same debt,
And for 66s 1d which he received from customary payments [censibus] of William Poignard of Bretevill’,
And for 20s which he received from his bakehouse [or furnace] in the same town,
And for 56s from the customary payments and straw [or perhaps some payment in respect of straw] in the same town,
And for 11s 1d from straw [stramine] and customary payments [waspalio] of the same town,
And for £6 which he received from the sale of one windmill at Lengrova of the same William,
And for 40s which he received for one horse of the same William which was sold,
And for 13s which he received from the sale of pigs of the same William,
And for 21s which he received from the feudal aid [auxilio] of the same William at Lengrova,
And for 31s 6d which he received
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- 1228