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 sister Matilda in Normandy, where he procured the surrender of Caen and Bayeux to her husband in June 1138. On 30 Sept. 1139 he landed at Arundel with 140 knights and the Empress Matilda herself. Leaving her in Arundel Castle he set off with only twelve followers, and rode hurriedly across southern England to Bristol, where the empress soon rejoined him. There he set up his headquarters as commander-in-chief of her forces in the civil war which followed, and as her chief assistant in the government of the western shires, which his influence and his valour quickly brought to acknowledge Matilda as their lady.

At the opening of 1141 he headed, in conjunction with his son-in-law, Earl Ranulf of Chester, the whole forces of her party in an expedition for the relief of Lincoln Castle, which Stephen was besieging, and he received the surrender of Stephen himself at the close of the battle which took place under the walls of Lincoln on Candlemas day. He afterwards accompanied the empress in her triumphal progress to Winchester and London, as also in her flight to Oxford when driven out of London. Later in the same year he was with her during the double siege at Winchester, when she besieged the bishop in his fortified house of Wolvesey, and was in her turn blockaded in the city by ‘the king's queen with all her strength.’ On 14 Sept. Robert succeeded in covering his half-sister's retreat from Winchester, and in cutting his own way out afterwards; but he was overtaken and made prisoner at Stockbridge. The queen sent him into honourable confinement in Rochester Castle till arrangements could be made for his release in exchange for Stephen, who was in prison at Bristol under the charge of Countess Mabel. A project for Stephen's restoration as titular king, with Robert as acting ruler of England under him, was foiled by the earl's refusal to join in any such compromise without his sister's consent; and a simple exchange of the captives, though long opposed by Robert on the ground that an earl was no equivalent for a king, was carried into effect at the beginning of November.

Shortly before midsummer in the next year, 1142, Robert was sent by the empress to Anjou to persuade her (second) husband (Geoffrey of Anjou) to come to her assistance in England. Finding, however, that Geoffrey would not stir till he had completed his conquest of Normandy, Robert was forced to join him in a campaign which lasted till the close of the autumn. Robert was apparently recalled by tidings that Stephen was blockading Matilda in Oxford Castle. He hurried back to England, taking with him his little nephew, the future King Henry II, and three or four hundred Norman men-at-arms. His force being too small to effect Matilda's relief directly, he sought to draw Stephen away from Oxford by laying siege to Wareham, a castle of his own which Stephen had seized during his absence. The king, however, did not move; Robert, after receiving the surrender of Wareham, took Portland and Lulworth, and then summoned all his sister's partisans to meet him at Cirencester. She had meanwhile made her escape, and before Christmas Robert was able to bring her child to meet her at Wallingford. All three seem to have shortly afterwards returned to Bristol, and to have remained chiefly there throughout the next four years. In July 1143 Robert won another great victory over Stephen near Wilton. In 1144 he again led all his forces in person against the king, who was endeavouring to raise the blockade which Robert had formed round Malmesbury; Stephen, however, retreated without giving battle.

Next year Robert planned an attack upon Oxford (which had surrendered to Stephen after Matilda's escape), and for that purpose raised a great fortification at Farringdon. This new fortress, however, soon fell into the hands of the king; and from that moment Robert struggled in vain against the rapid disintegration of the Angevin party. What remained of it seems to have been held together for two more years solely by his tact and his energy, for as soon as he was gone it fell utterly to pieces. In the spring of 1147 he escorted young Henry from Bristol to Wareham on his way back to Anjou; in the autumn he fell sick of a fever, and on 31 Oct. he died at Bristol. There, in the choir of the church of a Benedictine priory which he had founded in honour of St. James, outside the city wall, he was buried beneath a tomb of green jasper stone (Chron. Tewkesb., Monast. ii. 61), which in Leland's day had been replaced by ‘a sepulchre of gray marble set up upon six pillers of a smaull hethe’ (Itin. vii. 85, ed. 1744).

Robert appears to have been a happy compound of warrior, statesman, and scholar. His love of letters made him the chosen patron, and, as it seems, the familiar friend, of William of Malmesbury, who dedicated his ‘Gesta Regum Anglorum’ and ‘Historia Novella’ to him in terms of affectionate admiration; the ‘Historia Novella,’ indeed, was written at Robert's own special desire. For his capacity as a statesman it may be said that his sister's cause almost invariably prospered when she allowed him to direct her counsels, and declined as soon as she neglected his advice;