Robert de Bethune Robert de Bethune Robert de Bethune (died 1148) was a medieval Bishop of Hereford. From a knightly family, he became a teacher before becoming a canon, a type of monk, by 1115. He was elected prior of Llanthony Priory in the middle 1120s, and was named bishop by King Henry I of England in 1130. As bishop, he was often appointed a judge by the papacy, and was known for the care he took of his diocese. After Henry's death in 1135, Bethune first supported King Stephen, who seized the throne from Henry's heiress the Empress Matilda, but when Matilda's
David, Prince of the Cumbrians the greatest warriors of the age, and applauded if they ended in conquest – nor should it be any surprise that he soon sought to express them upon Henry’s death. That he should seek to place those ambitions upon a solid basis of propriety would have been even less remarkable, had a suitable excuse to attack not been conveniently at hand. When Henry I died in 1135, David had already sat upon the throne of Scotland for nearly eleven years. He had also, in his capacity as a great English nobleman, been the first to swear obedience to Henry’s daughter,