The son of a clergyman, he studied canon law and theology at Bologna and was tutor to Pope Eugene III's nephew before returning to England to serve successive bishops of Exeter.

After the coronation of Richard I of England, the new king sent Baldwin ahead to the Holy Land, where he became embroiled in the politics of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Born in Exeter around 1125, Baldwin was the son of Hugh d'Eu, Archdeacon of Totnes, and a woman of unknown name who later became a nun.

Gervase of Canterbury's story, that he was from an even humbler background, has been shown by modern scholarship to stem from bias on the medieval chronicler's part.

[12][13] He was well known as a canonist,[14] and often acted as a judge-delegate for the papacy, hearing cases that had reached the Roman Curia and been remanded to local experts for decision.

[15] In 1166, Baldwin was the addressee of a work by John of Salisbury, Expectiatione longa, which was one of the tracts written during the Becket controversy.

[21] The monks put forward three candidates from within Christ Church Priory: Odo, who had been prior of Christ Church and was then Abbot of Battle Abbey, Peter de Leia, a Cluniac prior of Wenlock Priory and later Bishop of St David's, and Theobald, Abbot of Cluny, but none of them found favour with the English bishops.

For his part, Baldwin did not approve of the luxurious and pampered life the monks of Christ Church lived,[25] and felt that they profited too much from the cult of Thomas Becket.

The controversy was long and involved and, at one point, the monks were imprisoned within their own buildings for a year and a half, from January 1188 to August 1189.

[7][b] His plan for financing the church involved soliciting contributions from donors by promising a one-third reduction in penances for annual donations.

[28] In 1188 King Henry II of England called for a tax to support the Third Crusade, following the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187.

[36] Baldwin preached the crusade with Gilbert of Glanville, bishop of Rochester, at Henry's council at Geddington and in April 1188, Baldwin was in Wales on a tour attempting to secure support for the king's crusade, and was forcing his servants and followers to exercise on foot up and down hills in preparation for the journey to the Holy Land.

[41] A side effect of Baldwin's tour of Wales was the implied assertion of royal authority in a section of Henry's domains that had always been somewhat fractious.

[44] After Henry's death, Richard sought and obtained absolution for the sin of disobedience to his father from both Baldwin and Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen.

In November 1189, Richard and the whole court, including the Queen Mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, travelled to Canterbury in an attempt to end the controversy before the papacy become involved.

[52] Leading the English advance guard,[53] Baldwin left Marseilles ahead of Richard together with Hubert Walter and Ranulf de Glanvill.

Baldwin was not a member or close associate of the Glanvill faction, so most likely he was sent ahead to look after the king's interests, whatever the reasons for the inclusion of his companions.

As joint commander of the Angevin advance force, Baldwin is described as leading some 200 knights and 300 men-at-arms under the banner of Saint Thomas Becket.

Alongside the other bishops, Baldwin absolved the crusaders before the attack and it is likely that he joined the Angevin forces and Templar knights that served as rearguard during the army's withdrawal on 13 November.

[61] Indeed, the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi has the archbishop in the midst of the action, as he "fought amongst the rest, but he outstripped them all" in combat.

Sibylla, a first cousin of Henry II, and her two young daughters all died in July from an epidemic ravaging the siege camp where they were living.

The heiress to the kingdom was Sibylla's half-sister Isabella; she was already married to Humphrey IV of Toron, but he was loyal to Guy and seems to have had no ambition to be king.

Maria and Balian abducted Isabella from Humphrey, and compelled her to seek an annulment, so that she could be married to Conrad and enable him to claim the kingship.

[70][g] Baldwin also collaborated with Bartholomew Iscanus on a Liber penitentialis, which is jointly ascribed to both of them in a Lambeth Palace manuscript, MS 235.

Another work often attributed to Baldwin, the Ad laudem Bartholomaei Exoniensis episcopi de coloribus rhetoricis, survives in three manuscripts and a fragment of a fourth.

[4] His work was more influential in his inspiration and support for the development of decretal collections, rather than in terms of the actual influence of his judicial decisions themselves.

The documents relating to this dispute, which dragged on into the archbishopric of Hubert Walter, are published in one whole volume of the Rolls Series, which was edited by the Victorian historian William Stubbs.

[77] Baldwin's long-running dispute with his cathedral chapter caused the chronicler Gervase of Canterbury to characterise him as "a greater enemy to Christianity than Saladin.

[80] The historian A. L. Poole called Baldwin a "distinguished scholar and deeply religious man, [but he] was injudicious and too austere to be a good leader.