Robert Bemborough
He was challenged to single combat by Jean de Beaumanoir, the captain of Josselin, the nearest stronghold controlled by the French-supported Blois faction.
According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, this purely personal duel between the two leaders became a larger struggle when Bemborough suggested a combat between twenty or thirty knights on each side, a proposal that was enthusiastically accepted by de Beaumanoir.
The 19th-century Breton historian Arthur de La Borderie gives a highly dramatic account of Bemborough's death, derived from earlier narratives.
While his companions belabour de Keranrais, the English leader makes a desperate effort to rise and seek his opponent; he finds before him Geoffroy du Bois, who in turn launches his axe into his chest.
[6]Froissart portrays both Bemborough and his opponent Beaumanoir as ideal representatives of chivalry, who fight for honour and glory rather than personal gain.
Pierre Le Baud standardised this version in his History of the Bretons (1480), in which Bemborough (called 'Richard Bambro') is portrayed as a soldier animated by a vicious desire to avenge the death of English leader Thomas Dagworth.
[6] An alternative point of view is portrayed in Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novel Sir Nigel, in which Bemborough (called Richard of Bambro in the novel) is a hardy knight who accepts the combat as an honourable means to continue the fight after a truce has been declared.
Conan Doyle's Bambro is an "old soldier", described as a "rugged Northumbrian" (his name being a reference to Bamburgh) schooled in the tough Anglo-Scots border wars: "a dry, hard, wizened man, small and fierce, with beady black eyes and quick furtive ways."
Doyle says that he was "hated in the country where he raised money for the Montfort cause by putting every parish to ransom and maltreating those who refused to pay", but that he approached the battle in a purely chivalrous spirit.
He was killed after failing to close his visor properly, allowing Alain de Keranrais to thrust his spear through the gap; he was then finished off by Du Bois.
