Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Verdon, Bertram de
VERDON or VERDUN, BERTRAM de (d. 1192), judge, was the son of Norman de Verdun and Luceline, daughter of Geoffrey de Clinton, chamberlain to Henry I. He is mentioned as adhering to Henry II against his rebel sons in 1173 (Bened. Peterb. i. 51). In 1175 and the three following years he was regularly present as a baron at the sittings of the curia regis (Madox, History of the Exchequer, i. 94), and from 1175 to 1179, and probably later, acted as itinerant justice in eight counties (ib. i. 137; Bened. Peterb. i. 107). He was also sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire from 1168 to 1183 (Pipe Rolls, Pipe Roll Soc., for these years up to 1173; Foss). In March 1177 he was sent with others of the king's counsellors by Henry to Ferdinand to negotiate and announce his intention of making a pilgrimage to Compostella (Bened. Peterb. i. 157). He was seneschal of Ireland in 1184–6, when Giraldus Cambrensis mentions his stay with him (Opera, i. 65). He continued in the service of Richard I, witnessing charters at Canterbury on 1 Dec. 1189, and Westminster in January 1190 (Gerv. Cant. i. 503; Historians of York, iii. 87), and accompanied Richard to the Holy Land. He was surety for Richard's peace with Tancred of Sicily in November 1190 (Rog. Hov. iii. 62), and witnessed a charter at Messina on 23 Jan. 1191 (Pipe Roll. Soc. Anc. Charters, p. 98). He arrived in Palestine in June 1191 (‘Itin. Ricardi’ in Memorials of Richard I, i. 217), and on 21 Aug. was left with Stephen de Longchamp in charge of Acre and the queens of England and Sicily, and the daughter of the Emperor of Cyprus, while Richard proceeded towards Jerusalem (Bened. Peterb. ii. 190; Rog. Hov. iii. 128). He died next year (1192) at Joppa (Bened. Peterb. ii. 150). Among other religious benefactions he founded in 1176 the Cistercian abbey of Croxden in Staffordshire, where his chief lands were (Dugdale, Monasticon, v. 660; Ann. Burton, i. 187).
His first wife was Maud, daughter of Robert de Ferrers, earl of Derby, by whom he had no issue. By his second wife, Rohese, he had two sons, Thomas and Nicholas. Nicholas's only daughter and heiress, Rohese, married Theobald Butler, and was grandmother of Theobald de Verdon [q. v.]
[Authorities cited in text; Dugdale's Baronage of England, i. 471; Foss's Biographia Juridica; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 640.]