Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vieuxpont, Robert de
VIEUXPONT or VIPONT (de Veteri Ponte), ROBERT de (d. 1228), baron of Westmorland, was son of William de Vieuxpont, who was lord of Hardingstone, near Northampton, in 1199, and also held Alston and other places in Cumberland by grant of William, king of Scotland. His mother was Matilda, who is said by Dugdale to have been the daughter of Hugh de Morville [q. v.] of Oswaldkirk (Baronage, i. 348, but compare ib. p. 612); she was perhaps connected with the house of Thomas FitzGospatric (see Monasticon, v. 870). Robert was of the house of Robert de Vieuxpont of Vieuxpont in Auge, or Eu, Normandy, who was sent by William the Conqueror to defend La Flèche in 1073 and was killed in the war against the Viscount Hubert in 1085 (Orderic, pp. 533, 649). William, Robert's father, was the brother of another Robert, lord of Courville and Chailloué, near Vieuxpont, and perhaps the Robert de Vieuxpont who in 1168 held eight knights' fees of the honour of Totnes, Devon (Liber Niger, i. 125; Dugdale makes this Robert the same with the Robert who died in 1228, which seems unlikely). On 15 June 1202 John ordered the seneschal of Normandy to give William possession of the lands of his brother Robert in Normandy (Rot. Norm. p. 49).
Robert the younger has been supposed to have held some office in the treasury under Richard I (Foss). Like other men of rank at the time, he was no doubt a good man of business, and had many money transactions with the crown, accounting in 1197 for the ferm of the honour of Tickhill in the West Riding. He was with John in Normandy in 1201, and paid him 20l. and a palfrey to have the custody of the lands of Richard of Scirinton, or Sherrington, Buckinghamshire (Rot. de Oblatis, p. 106), and had custody of Guy of Châtillon, afterwards count of St. Pol. In August 1202 he was present at the relief of Mirebeau, and received charge of several prisoners, whom he afterwards at the king's order delivered to Hugh de Gurnay (Rot. Pat. p. 15). When Arthur (1187–1203) [q. v.] of Brittany was removed from Falaise in 1203, John committed him to Robert's custody at Rouen (Ralph Coggeshall, p. 143). As a reward for his services the king in 1202 gave him the castles of Appleby and Burgh, with the whole bailiwick of Westmoreland during pleasure, and in 1203 by another grant gave him the above to hold to him and his heirs by his then wife, thus passing over to him the barony of Westmoreland or Appleby. He further gave him the castles of Bowes and Richmond, Yorkshire, and sold to him for a hundred marks the custody of the heirs, land, and widow of Hugh Gernegan, remitting to him a debt of the same amount (Rot. de Liberate, p. 66). In that year he was also bailiff of Caen and the Rumois, and the king by a writ addressed to John Marshal ordered that he should have the lordship of Vieuxpont beforetime held by Robert [his uncle], then deceased (Rot. Pat.; Rot. de Liberate; Stapleton). He had the custody of Nottingham Castle, and in 7 and 8 John (May 1205–May 1207) was custos of the counties of Nottingham and Derby, and sheriff in 9 and 10 John (1207–9). From 12 to 17 John (1210–16) he was sheriff of Devonshire, and in 12 John (1210–11) was joint, and in 13 and 14 John (1211–13) sole, sheriff of Wiltshire (Deputy-Keeper of Public Records, 31st Rep. pp. 279, 324, 356). He acted as a judge, for fines were levied before him in 1206. In 1208 he received the custody of the bishopric of Durham. The king gave him many marks of his favour; he was with John at Carrickfergus and Dublin in 1210, and, along with his brother Ivo, is reckoned among his evil counsellors in the list given by Roger of Wendover under 1211. He took part in the war against the Welsh, and in 1212 caused the young Rhys ap Maelgon to be hanged at Shrewsbury (Caradoc, ed. Powel, p. 233). In 1213 he received livery of all the lands of his late father-in-law, John de Builli or Buisli (d. 1212), lord of the honour of Tickhill, and gave the king four palfreys that he might have a fair at his lordship of Bawtry in the West Riding during four days in Whitsun week (Rot. de Oblatis, p. 495).
Vieuxpont did not join the confederate barons in 1214, and was among those who, after the confederates were received in London on 24 May 1215, were forced by threats to desert the king, though he still belonged to his party, and was soon active in supporting him. He received from John the custody of the castle of Carlisle and of the county of Cumberland, held the castle of Durham, had grants of the lands of the insurgents, and in 1216 was one of three lords appointed by the king to hold the castles and all else that belonged to the crown in Yorkshire (Cal. Rot. Pat. pp. 152, 163; Rog. Wend. sub an.). In compliance with a summons from William Marshal (d. 1219) [q. v.], as regent for Henry III, he joined the Earl of Chester at the siege of Mountsorrel Castle in April 1217, and on 20 May took part in the battle of Lincoln. His brother Ivo being on the side of the king's enemies, a writ was issued to the sheriff of Northamptonshire on the 12th to put Robert in possession of Hardingstone and the rest of Ivo's lands. He was one of the witnesses of the treaty of Lambeth on 11 Sept., and is said to have been among the barons who, contrary to the orders of the government, kept possession of the castles and lands of the magnates of the other side (Matt. Paris, Chronica Majora, iii. 33); but his relations with the government during the next few years seem to have been friendly. He was sheriff of Cumberland and a justice itinerant for Northumberland and Yorkshire in 1219 (Foss). A case was pending in the king's court between him and the Countess of Eu in 1220, in which year he attended the second coronation of the king on 17 May (Royal Letters, i. 112, 118). He appears to have disobeyed the order for the surrender of the royal castles, and in 1223 joined the Earl of Chester [see Blundevill, Randulph de] and the malcontents, but made submission with the rest of the party at Northampton, and on 30 Dec. surrendered the castles that he held. He was one of the witnesses to the reissue of the Great Charter on 11 Feb. 1225, was collector of the fifteenth in Westmoreland and the bishopric of Carlisle, and had the custody of the castles of Nottingham, Bolsover, and the Peak. In 1226 he was again a justice itinerant for Northumberland and Yorkshire, and fines were levied before him in 1227 (Foss). He died in 1228, being then in debt to the crown over 1,997l. (Dugdale, Baronage).
He gave lands at Rockley in Wiltshire to the Templars (Monasticon, vi. 834), and, by a charter dated 24 April 1210, Reagill and Milbourne Grange in Westmoreland to the Præmonstratensian abbey of Hepp or Shap in that county (ib. p. 869). His wife Idonea, who was daughter of John de Builly, and died in 1241, confirmed a donation made by her father, and gave a further grant, to the priory of Blythe, Nottinghamshire (ib. iv. 623), granted her manor of Sandbeck in the West Riding to the Cistercian abbey of Roche (ib. v. 503–4), where she desired to be buried, and near which she appears to have resided in widowhood, and founded a chantry in the New Temple, London, for the souls of herself and her husband.
His son John, a minor at the time of his father's death, died in 1242, leaving a son, Robert de Vipont, who joined the party of Simon de Montfort (Wykes), and died in 1265, being apparently slain in the battle of Evesham, leaving two daughters coheiresses: Isabella, who married Roger de Clifford [see under Clifford, Robert de], and Idonea, who married Roger, son of Roger de Leybourne [q. v.]
[Stapleton's Rot. Normann. Scacc., Observations, i. (R. Soc. Antiqq.); Dugdale's Baronage; Foss's Judges; Rot. Litt. Pat., Rot. Litt. Claus., Rot. de Oblatis, Rot. Normann., Rot. de Liberate (these five ed. Hardy), Excerpt. e rot. finium, ed. Roberts, Thirty-first Rep. of Dep.-Keeper of Records (these seven Rocord Publ.); Rog. Wend. (Engl. Hist. Soc.); R. Coggeshall, Matt. Paris's Chronica Majora, Royal Letters, Hen. III (all three Rolls Ser.).]