Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester

1090–1147

Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester, was an illegitimate son of Henry I and the most important military supporter of his half-sister Empress Matilda during the Anarchy. A wealthy cross-Channel magnate, he provided troops, castles and political credibility to her claim. Robert captured King Stephen at Lincoln in 1141 but was himself captured at Winchester and exchanged for the king. His death in 1147 seriously weakened Matilda’s cause.

Robert is a major character in Sharon Kay Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept and appears in Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael world. Historical fiction usually presents him as capable, loyal and more politically realistic than Matilda’s other supporters. His absence from the royal succession despite obvious ability highlights the legal and social limits placed on illegitimate birth.

In Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael’s Penance, Cadfael leaves Shrewsbury without formal permission and enters the contested country around Gloucester and the Thames Valley. Elizabeth Chadwick’s A Place Beyond Courage places Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, court politics and dynastic power, and political ambition and government. Other novels featuring Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester include Ellis Peters’s An Excellent Mystery, Elizabeth Chadwick’s Lady of the English, and Elizabeth Chadwick’s The Love Knot.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester

The Anarchy 1135–1154 CE

Series

Series featuring Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester (3 series)

Chronicles of Brother Cadfael in Order

by Ellis Peters 19 books 4.5

The Holy Thief

4.6

Brother Cadfael’s Penance

4.6

Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Order

by Sharon Kay Penman 5 books 4.5

The five Angevin novels trace the Plantagenet dynasty from the succession crisis after Henry I through Henry II and Eleanor’s turbulent marriage, their sons’ rebellions, Richard I’s crusade, captivity and final campaigns. The sequence combines royal family drama with the Anarchy, Angevin state-building, church–crown conflict and the Third…

All books in this series

When Christ and His Saints Slept

4.4

Time and Chance

4.4

Devil’s Brood

4.7

Lionheart

4.3

A King’s Ransom

4.6

William Marshal in Order

by Elizabeth Chadwick 6 books 4.3

Elizabeth Chadwick’s William Marshal cycle follows the Marshal family and the households bound to it from the civil war of the Anarchy to the crisis of King John’s reign. A Place Beyond Courage centres on William’s father, John Marshal, while The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion trace…

All books in this series