Robert de Montbray

Robert de Mowbray (d. 1125), a Norman, was the earl of Northumbria from 1086, when Aubrey de Coucy's lands and titles were redistributed, until 1095 when he was deposed for rebelling against William Rufus, King of England. He was the nephew of Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances.

He and Geoffrey sided with Robert, duke of Normandy, in the Rebellion of 1088 against William Rufus, but they were pardoned at the close of the rebellion. In 1093 Malcolm III of Scotland invaded Northumbria and attacked Alnwick. Robert de Mowbray raised an army and attacked the Scots taking them by surprise. In the ensuing conflict, known as the Battle of Alnwick, Malcolm and his son Edward were slain. Soon after this event Mowbray succeeded to his uncle's large estates.

In 1095 he led a rebellion which had for its object the transference of the crown from the sons of the Conqueror to Stephen of Aumale. Rufus marched against the earl in person, and Mowbray shut himself up in Bamborough Castle. He refused to come to William's Curia Regis, the thrice-annual court where decisions were made and delivered to the great lords, and William subsequently led an army against him and defeated him. He was captured by treachery, escaped, and was captured again.

The earl was dispossessed and imprisoned for life. Fellow conspirators, William of Eu and William of Aldrie, received harsher punishment.

After Robert's downfall , the ancient earldom of the Anglo-Saxons was left vacant for quite some time. It was not really filled again until the time of the Percys in the fourteenth century.

References

• Edward Augustus Freeman, William Rufus, especially Appendices C. C. F. F. (Oxford, 1882).
• Vorlage:1911