Hugh Bardolf

Hugh Bardulf
Modern day view of Old Sarum, where Bardulf had custody of the castle, which no longer exists.
Royal justice
In office c. 1185 – c. 1203
Baron of the Exchequer
In office c. 1185 – c. 1203
Personal details
Died	c. 1203
Spouse(s)	Mabel
Occupation	Judge and administrator

Hugh Bardulf or Hugh Bardolf (died c. 1203) was a medieval English administrator and royal justice. Known for his legal expertise, he also served as a financial administrator. He served three kings of England before his death.

Bardulf began his royal service under King Henry II of England, where he was a steward to the royal household. He also served as a royal justice and a sheriff during Henry's reign, and continued as sheriff under Henry's son and successor, Richard I. Because Bardulf was a vassal of Richard's younger brother John, who rebelled against his older brother, Bardulf was denounced briefly as a traitor to Richard. He was quickly restored to royal service, however, and continued in service throughout the rest of Richard's reign and into the reign of John. Bardulf died sometime before 1203, and his heir was his brother, Robert Bardulf.

Historians are divided on Hugh Bardulf's ancestry. Katharine Keats-Rohan says that he was the son of Hamelin Bardulf, a tenant of Hugh Bigod, who held land in Suffolk. Ralph V. Turner, revising John Horace Round's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that Hugh was the son of a Hugh Bardulf that died around 1176. According to Turner and Round, the younger Hugh's mother was Isabel, who may have been a member of the Twist family from Lincolnshire. The younger Hugh acquired land at Waddington, Lincolnshire as a tenant of Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester, sometime in the middle 1140s.

In 1181 Bardulf was at the court of King Henry II of England, where he was steward, or dapifer, an office he held throughout Henry's reign and which he may have held throughout the next reign also. He held that office until Henry's death in 1189. From about 1185 until 1203, Bardulf was a royal justice almost annually, usually as a justice of eyre rather than sitting at Westminster. He performed the duties of sheriff for the following counties: Cornwall from 1184–1187, Wiltshire from 1187 to 1189, Somerset during 1188 and 1189 along with Dorset during the same period, the counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire during 1190 and 1191, Yorkshire from 1191 to 1194, Westmorland from 1191 to 1199, Northumberland from 1194 to 1198, Cumberland during 1198 and 1199, Cornwall again from 1199 to 1200 along with Devonshire, and Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire from 1200 to 1203. In 1194 Bardulf was mentioned on the escheat roll as responsible for the farm of lands held by Osbert de Bayeux, an archdeacon of York.