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 to the bishopric (, Hist. du Diocèse de Bayeux, pp. 167-9;, Nouvelle Histoire de Bayeux, p. 131). Yet Fitzhamon held large estates under Bayeux, and was hereditary standard-bearer to the church of St. Mary there (Mémoires de la Soc. des Ant. de la Normandie, viii. 426).

Soon after Fitzhamon bought from Robert of Saint Remi the prisoners taken at Bayeux, and intrigued so successfully with those of them that came from Caen that they treacherously procured the surrender of Caen to Henry (, l. 11259;, xiii. 251). Fitzhamon next served in the siege of Falaise, where he was struck by a lance on the forehead with such severity that his faculties became deranged ( bk. v. p. 625; cf. Gwentian Brut, p. 93). He survived, however, until March 1107. He was buried in the chapter-house of Tewkesbury Abbey, whence his body was in 1241 transferred to the church and placed on the left side of the high altar (Ann. Theok. in Ann. Mon. i. 120). In 1397 the surviving rich chapel of stone was erected over the founder's tomb. The 'vast pillars and mysterious front of the still surviving minster' (, Will. Rufus, ii. 84) still testify to Fitzhamon's munificence. He may have built the older parts of the castle of Creully.

By his wife, Sibyl of Montgomery, a benefactress of Ramsey (Cart. Ramsey, ii. 274, Rolls Ser.), Fitzhamon left no son, and his possessions passed, with the hand of his daughter Mabel, to Henry I's favourite bastard, Robert, under whom Gloucester first became an earldom ( Hist. Nov. bk. i.; in, 306 c, who erroneously calls her Sibyl and her mother Mabel; , iii. 318, calls her Matilda). Mabel was probably Fitzhamon's only daughter ( in Ann. Mon. iv. 22), and certainly inherited all her father's estates, as well as those of Hamon the steward, her uncle (ROB, 306 c). The Tewkesbury tradition was, however, that she had three younger sisters, of whom Cecily became abbess of Shaftesbury, Hawyse abbess of the nuns' minster at Winchester, and Amice the wife of the 'Count of Brittany' (, Monasticon, ii. 60, 452, 473).



FITZHARDING, ROBERT (d. 1170), founder of the second house of Berkeley, appears to have been the second son of Harding, son of [q. v.], the staller (Gesta Regum, i. 429;, Landholders of Gloucestershire, p. 59; , Somerset Domesday, i. 58; , Norman Conquest, iv. 760). Local antiquaries have endeavoured to make out that he was the grandson of a Danish king or sea-rover (, i. 315; Bristol, Past and Present, i. 56), a futile imagination which has been traced to John Trevisa, and is probably older than his date. Robert's eldest brother, Nicolas, inherited his father's fief, Meriet in Somerset. Robert was provost or reeve of Bristol, and was possessed of great wealth; he upheld the cause of Robert, earl of Gloucester, who fought for the empress, and purchased several estates from the earl, among them the manor of Billeswick on the right bank of the Frome, which included the present College Green of Bristol, and the manor of Bedminster-with-Redcliff. He had other lands, chiefly in Gloucestershire, and held of Humphrey de Bohun in Wiltshire, and William, earl of Warwick, in Warwickshire (Liber Niger, pp. 109, 206). Before Henry II came to the throne he is said to have been assisted by Robert, probably by loans of money; when he became king he granted him the lordship of Berkeley Hernesse, and Robert is held to have been the first of the second or present line of the lords of Berkeley [; see ]. He granted a charter to the tenants of his fee near the 'bridge of Bristou.' By his wife Eva he had Maurice, who succeeded him, and four other sons and three daughters. On his estate in Billeswick he built in 1142 the priory or abbey of St. Augustine's for black canons, the present cathedral, and is said to have assumed the monastic habit before his death, which occurred on 5 Feb. 1170. He also founded a school in a building, after-wards called Chequer Hall, in Wine Street, Bristol, for the instruction of Jews and other strangers in the Christian faith. His wife Eva was the founder of a nunnery on St. Michael's Hill, Bristol. Both Robert and, Eva were buried in St. Augustine's Church.

[Smyth's Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 19-62, ed. Maclean; Ellis's Landholders of Gloucestershire