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Birth:          1104 of Meulan, Normandy
Death:          9 Apr 1166 Abbey, Preaux, Normandy
Burial:         Abbey, Preaux, Normandy

Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waleran_de_Beaumont,_1st_Earl_of_Worcester
Waleran de Beaumont, Count of Meulan, 1st Earl of Worcester (1104 – 9 April 1166, 
Preaux), 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'.
Early life[edit]

Waleran was born in 1104, the elder 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-le-Roger 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.

Rebellion and Imprisonment[edit]

Late in 1122 Waleran was drawn into a conspiracy with Amaury III of Montfort, count 
of Évreux, 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 1124, 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.

Lieutenant of Normandy[edit]

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, Matilda, 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 mobilize 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.

Civil war[edit]

With the arrival of Robert of Gloucester in England in September 1139, the civil war 
between Stephen and Matilda'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 centers 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. It may have been at this time that he seized and fortified the 
Herefordshire Beacon for the bishop of Hereford complained of his lordship of this 
castle in 1148. 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 Matilda, 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 Matilda, 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 Évreux. 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 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.

Political Decline[edit]

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 and his Worcestershire castles destroyed in 1155.

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.

Aristocrat and humanist[edit]

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 of 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.

Waleran founded Cistercian abbeys at Bordesley, Worcestershire (1139), and Le 
Valasse, Normandy (c.1150), though in both cases the abbeys were taken over by the 
king. He was a generous patron of the two ancestral Benedictine monasteries of 
Préaux (St Peter for men and St Leger for women). He was besides accepted as 
advocate of the abbey of Bec-Hellouin, and was patron of its priory at Meulan, 
founding another at Beaumont-le-Roger. He founded a Benedictine priory at Gournay-
sur-Marne. He endowed a major hospital at Pont Audemer, which still survives.

Family and children[edit]

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 
Évreux, and Agnes de Garlande, in 1141/2.

He had children with Agnes de Montfort (the boys as they appear in order in his 1165 
charter to Gournay priory):
1.Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan.
2.Isabelle de Meulan (d. 10 May 1220), married twice: 1.ca 1161 Geoffroy, lord of 
Mayenne;
2.ca 1170 Maurice II, lord of Craon.

3.Waleran de Meulan
4.Amaury de Meulan, lord of Gournay-sur-Marne.
5.Roger de Meulan or Beaumont, viscount of Évreux.
6.Raoul (Ralph) de Meulan.
7.Etienne (Stephen) de Meulan.
8.Mary de Meulan.

Parents
DE BEAUMONT Robert (ABT 1046 - 5 Jun 1118)
DE VERMANDOIS Elizabeth (Isabel) (1081 - Jul 1147)

Siblings
DE BEAUMONT Adeline (ABT 1097 - )
DE BEAUMONT Isabel (Elizabeth) (ABT 1101 - ABT 1147)
DE BEAUMONT Robert "Bossu" (1104 - 5 Apr 1168)
DE BEAUMONT Waleran (1104 - 9 Apr 1166)
DE BEAUMONT Maude (ABT 1116 - AFT 1189)

Marriage To DE MONTFORT Agnes (Elizabeth) (ABT 1122 - 15 Dec 1181)
    m. 1141 

Notes

Parents
DE MONTFORT Amauri III (ABT 1070 - 1137)
DE GARLENDE Agnes (ABT 1095 - 1181)

Children by DE MONTFORT Agnes (Elizabeth) ABT 1122 - 15 Dec 1181
DE BEAUMONT Robert (ABT 1142 - Oct 1207)
DE MEULAN Isabelle (ABT 1148 - 10 May 1220)

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