Robert de Beaufeu


Robert de Beaufeu was a secular canon of Salisbury and a minor poet.

Life

Educated at the University of Oxford, he gained, at an early age, a reputation for learning, and became the friend of Gerald of Wales, Walter Map, and other scholars. He was granted the prebend of Horton, near Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, where he built a hall house, part of which survives in the structure of the present 16th century Horton Court.

Works

He is said have written a work entitled Encomium Topographiæ, after hearing the Topographia Hiberniæ of Gerald of Wales read by the author at a festival at Oxford.
A poem in praise of ale, Versus de commendatione Cervisiæ, in a manuscript in the Cambridge University Library, bears his name, and has been argued as suggesting that he was an Englishman.