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 dealt hardly with his brothers in making no provision for them (ib, 808 D) probably out of the estates of their mother. When Rufus made his abortive invasion of France in 1097, he secured Normandy, which the duke had handed over to him the year before, by employing Robert to fortify Gisors. In this expedition Robert acted as captain of the king's forces. Early in the next year he engaged in war with Helias of Maine, and invited the king to come over and help him. Rufus did little worthy of notice, and soon left his ally to carry on the war alone. Robert strengthened the castles he held in Maine and built new ones; he oppressed the people and violated the lands of the church. Indignant at the wrongs done him, Helias, though with an inferior force, met him in the open field at Saônes, and, calling on God and St. Julian, beat off the invaders. In spite of this check Robert carried on the war. A fearful story is told of his starving three hundred prisoners to death during the season of Lent. After another victorious engagement Helias was taken prisoner by Robert's men and delivered to Rufus. The war was now again taken up by the king, and Robert went on ravaging the land until the submission of Le Mans to Rufus (ib, 768, 772; William Rufus, ii. 213–41).

On the death of his brother Hugh, earl of Shrewsbury, in 1098, Robert claimed to succeed to his earldom and estates in England. Before Rufus allowed him to do so he made him pay 3,000l. as a relief, the exact sum in which his brother had been fined less than two years before. Robert was now earl of Shrewsbury, lord of Arundel and Chichester, and of many other estates in England, and of Montgomery and the lands conquered in Wales by his father and brother, the Earls Roger and Hugh. Before long he succeeded, after another payment to the king, to the estates of Roger of Bully, lord of Tickhill and Blythe. He was now by far the most powerful lord that owed homage to the English king. The earl at once began to strengthen himself in his newly acquired lands. Leaving his father's castle at Quatford, he took up his abode at Bridgenorth, and raised fortifications there, of which the remains are still to be seen. His castle at Bridgenorth completed the group of fortresses that defended Shrewsbury, the capital of his earldom, by commanding the valley of the Severn. Against the Welsh he raised a stronghold at Careghova, in Denbigh (. ii. 49; William Rufus, ii. 147–64). On his Welsh lands he bred horses from stallions imported from Spain, and in the reign of Henry II, Powys was still famous for his breed (, Itin. Cambriæ, op. vi. 143). In 1099 Earl Robert was again at war with Helias, who was trying to reconquer Maine from William. The story that in this war he ordered villeins to be thrown into the ditch of Mayet to fill it up (, 16038) is, Mr. Freeman observes,' a bit of local Cenomannian romance' (W. Rufus, ii. 292). Robert was in Normandy in 1100 when he heard of the death of William II. He hastened to England, did homage to Henry, and received from him the confirmation of his honours and estates. Nevertheless, on the return of Duke Robert in the next year, he and his brothers Arnulf and Roger began to conspire together in Normandy against the king. To reward him and to secure his help, the duke granted him the patronage of the bishopric of Séez, the castle of Argentan and the forest of Goufflers. When the duke then landed in England, Bellême must have been foremost among the discontented nobles who upheld his claims (. ii. 49;, Hist. Nov. p. 430). His power was still further increased in 1101, when,by the death of his father-in-law, he succeeded to the county of Ponthieu, the inheritance of his son. By the acquisition of this fief he became a member of a higher political rank than he had hitherto reached; he was 'entitled to deal with princes as one of their own order' (W. Rufus ii. 423), while the geographical position of his new territory made his alliance of peculiar value to the rulers of England, France, and Normandy. Henry knew that he was unfaithful to him; spies were set to watch him, and all his evil deeds were reported and written down. In 1102 he was summoned to appear in the king's Easter court, there to answer forty-five charges brought against him. He set out for Winchester, taking men with him to be his compurgators. On his way he changed his mind and turned back to his own castles. When the king found that he did not come, he declared that if he failed to appear he would be outlawed. Again he caused the earl to be summoned, and this time Robert flatly refused to obey. He made alliances with the Welsh and Irish. Henry persuaded Duke Robert to attack his Norman possessions. The duke's attack was easily beaten off, and only brought fresh desolation on the land. In England Henry called out the force of the kingdom, and laid siege to Arundel. Robert, who was busy in Shropshire, urging on the still unfinished works of fortification, could give no help to his men in Arundel, and allowed them to surrender the place to the king. As a condition of their surrender they obtained a promise from Henry that their lord should be allowed to leave the