Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester

[3] Their lands on either side of the Channel were committed to a group of guardians, led by their stepfather, William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey.

[3] Robert spent a good deal of his time and resources over the next decade integrating the troublesome and independent barons of Breteuil into the greater complex of his estates.

This helped to consolidate Robert's various estates in the central midlands, which were bounded by Nuneaton, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough.

[6] Robert's actions in the succession period are unknown, but he clearly supported his brother's decision to join the court of the new king Stephen before Easter 1136.

Military action allowed him to add the castle of Pont St-Pierre to his Norman estates in June 1136 at the expense of one of his rivals.

From the end of 1137, Robert and his brother were increasingly caught up in the politics of the court of King Stephen in England, where Waleran secured an ascendancy that lasted until the beginning of 1141.

In that campaign the king awarded Robert the city and castle of Hereford as a bid to establish the earl as his lieutenant in Herefordshire, which was in revolt.

Though details are obscure it seems clear enough that he waged a dogged war with his rival, which in the end secured his control of northern Leicestershire and the strategic Chester castle of Mountsorrel.

During this time the earl also exercised supervision over his twin brother's earldom of Worcester, and in 1151 he intervened to frustrate the king's attempts to seize the city.

[8] The office gave the earl supervision of the administration and legal process in England whether the king was present in, or absent from the realm.

He appears in that capacity in numerous administrative acts, and had a junior colleague in the post in Richard de Luci, another former servant of King Stephen.

The earl filled the office for nearly fourteen years until his death,[8] and earned the respect of the emerging Angevin bureaucracy in England.

[16] About the year 1150, Robert le Bossu, Earl of Leicester, gave to one Solomon, a clerk, an acre of land at Brackley on which to build a house of hospitality for the poor, together with a free chapel and graveyard.