Robert Fitzharding

Robert Fitzharding (c. 1095–1170) was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman from Bristol who was granted the feudal barony of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. He rebuilt Berkeley Castle, and founded the Berkeley family which still occupies it today. He was a wealthy Bristol merchant and a financier of the future King Henry II of England (1133-1189) in the period known as The Anarchy during which Henry's mother, the Empress Matilda (1102-1167), mounted repeated military challenges to King Stephen (d. 1154). Fitzharding founded St. Augustine's Abbey, which after the Reformation became Bristol Cathedral. Many members of the Berkeley family were buried within it, and some of their effigies survive there. As J. Horace Round asserted he was one of the very few Anglo-Saxon noblemen who managed to retain their noble status in Norman England and successfully integrate with the Norman nobility, if not the only one.

Robert Fitzharding is believed to have been the grandson of Eadnoth, who had held the post of Staller under King Edward the Confessor and King Harold. Robert's father Harding of Bristol was the King's Reeve in Bristol, with a house in Baldwin Street. Robert later built a large house in Broad Street, on the River Frome. He became a burgess of the city and sufficiently wealthy to buy from Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester extensive manorial lands around Bristol to its south and west, including Redcliffe, Bedminster, Leigh, Portbury and Billeswick.

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