Henry de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Warwick

Henry de Beaumont, (alias de Newburgh), 1st Earl of Warwick (died 20 June 1119) was a Norman nobleman who rose to great prominence in England.

Henry was a younger son of Roger de Beaumont by Adeline of Meulan, daughter of Waleran III, Count of Meulan, and Oda de Conteville.

He was given by his father the modest lordship of Le Neubourg, in central Normandy, 12 km NE of his father's caput of Beaumont-le-Roger on the River Risle. From this lordship he adopted for himself and his descendants the surname Anglicised to "de Newburgh", frequently Latinised to de Novo Burgo (meaning "from the new borough/town").

Henry was said, by Orderic Vitalis the Norman monk historian, to have been with William the Conqueror on his 1068 campaign in the Midlands when he was supposedly given charge of Warwick Castle, but there is no supporting evidence for this late source. Little is in fact known of his career before 1088. However he took a leading role in reconciling the Conqueror with his eldest son Robert Curthose in 1081 so he stood high in the Conqueror's favour. In 1088 he was a royal agent in the arrest and trial of the traitorous bishop of Durham, William de Saint-Calais.

In due course he acquired a much greater land-holding in England when, in reward for help in suppressing the Rebellion of 1088, King William II made him Earl of Warwick in 1088. The lands of the earldom were put together from several sources. The bulk was provided by the majority of the lands in Warwickshire and elsewhere recorded as those of his elder brother Robert, Count of Meulan in the Domesday Survey of 1086. He also received large royal estates in Rutland and the royal forest of Sutton, which became Sutton Chase. The complicated arrangement to endow his earldom is unprecedented, and must have been the result of a three way arrangement between his father, his brother and the king.

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