| Nationality | Beaumont [Newburgh], Henry de, first earl of Warwick (d. 1119), magnate, was the younger son of Roger, lord of Beaumont-le-Roger and Pont Audemer, and Adeline, daughter of Waleran, count of Meulan. His first appearance was at the ducal court just before 1066 when he must have been already a young adult. Before 1100 he married Margaret, daughter of Geoffroy, count of Perche.
There is no firm evidence that Henry participated in the conquest of England, though it is known that his brother, Robert de Beaumont, was at Hastings. According to Orderic Vitalis (writing over fifty years later), Henry was in William the Conqueror's army in England in 1068 and was entrusted with the castle that the king had constructed during his stay in Warwick. It is, however, impossible to verify Orderic's assertion: he might well have been writing retrospectively, with Henry's later earldom of Warwick in mind. If Henry was given Warwick in 1068, he was certainly not holding it in 1086 at the time of the Domesday survey. It is most likely that he spent his young adulthood largely in France in various courts and military households. He appears at the Conqueror's court in the 1070s (though whether in England or in Normandy it is hard to say); in or about 1079 he was with the then count of Meulan, his uncle Hugues, at the abbey of St Pierre-des-Préaux in Normandy. It was doubtless at court in the early 1080s that he made the friendship that guaranteed his future prosperity—his alliance with the Conqueror's second son, William Rufus, who became king in 1087.
Henry de Beaumont is said to have been one of the new king's chief supporters on his accession. He acted as the king's agent in the prosecution of the dissident bishop of Durham, William of St Calais. At some time in 1088, probably before the summer, Henry had his reward and was made the first earl of Warwick. The royal estates suffered heavily from the king's generosity to his friend. Much of Rutland was diverted to Earl Henry; a sizeable part of the estate of the late earl of Hereford, William fitz Osbern (which had come into royal hands in 1075), was made over to him. But it was of Warwick that he was made earl. The king alienated the majority royal holding in the borough of Warwick to Henry, with other royal estates. The bulk of the earldom was provided by the curious expedient of getting Earl Henry's elder brother to give up much of his English patrimony (lands centred in Warwickshire and south Leicestershire). Their father was still alive in 1088, and it is possible that he acted as arbiter in the process of division. Certainly it must have been through his father that Henry obtained a share of the family's estates in Normandy: principally the honour and forest of Le Neubourg (from which genealogists obtained the name Newburgh, by which Henry and his family were on occasion known). Another piece of originality in the creation of the earldom of Warwick (much copied in later creations) was the subordination of several existing barons within the shire to the new earl. There is a good indication of Earl Henry's mettle in reports of his first actions in Warwickshire, chronicled in the records of the abbey of Abingdon. These report that he wasted no time in investigating and asserting his rights over estates to which he might make the barest claim. The abbey paid gold to gain the earl's goodwill and to prevent him swallowing its estates (at Chesterton and Hill in Warwickshire).
According to William of Malmesbury, Earl Henry played an important part in the accession of Henry I in 1100. His power brought further rewards. Around 1107 the earl was granted the marcher lordship of Gower when the client kingdom of the southern Welsh leader, Hywel ap Gronw, broke up. Henry continued to attend on his friend the king until at least 1115. After that date he cannot be proved to have been at court. He was in Warwickshire on one occasion after 1115, but by then his health may have been declining. In, or just before, 1118, the earl left England for good. He entered his family's ancestral abbey at St Pierre-des-Préaux, was received as a monk (the abbey commemorated him in 1122 as comes et monachus), and died there on 20 June 1119. He was buried in the chapter house of the abbey. His wife survived him by many years, dying after 1156, and long enjoying a substantial dower settlement, which may have included the lordship of Gower. Earl Henry passed his English lands on to his eldest son, Roger, who became the second earl of Warwick. He passed his Norman estates on to his second son, Robert de Neubourg. The probability is that this division had been executed at the time of his retirement to Normandy about 1118. Henry left three other sons: Rotrou, later archbishop of Rouen, Geoffrey, and Henry of Gower.
Henry patronized a number of Norman abbeys, but only the Augustinian priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Warwick, had a claim to consider him founder. There is evidence that he was interested in patronizing secular colleges, such as those of the minsters of Warwick and Wellesbourne. The verdict of his contemporaries on Earl Henry was a positive one. William of Malmesbury regarded him as 'a man of honesty and great virtue', and was willing to believe that he had secured the succession for Henry I, following the death of William Rufus in the New Forest in 1100. He also seems to have regarded the earl as mingling the less positive virtue of hedonism with an affable disposition. As far as William was concerned, Earl Henry was less subtle and shrewd than his even more influential elder brother, Robert, count of Meulan and earl of Leicester. However, the affection of the brothers is attested by a Durham source. When Count Robert visited the cathedral monastery in the 1090s, he paid handsomely to have not only his own soul, but also that of his brother, commemorated in the liber vitae. |