Breton noble whom the king had imposed upon the Honor after the forfeiture of the Breteuil family in 1119. Robert spent a good deal of his time and resources over the next decade integrating the troublesome and independent barons of Breteuil into the greater complex of his estates. He did not join in his brother's great Norman rebellion against King Henry I in 1123–24. He appears fitfully at Henry I's royal court (despite his brother's imprisonment) until 1129, but thereafter the twins were frequently there together. Robert held lands throughout England. During the 1120s and 1130s, he tried to rationalize his estates in Leicestershire. Leicestershire estates of the See of Lincoln and the Earl of Chester were seized by force. This helped to consolidate Robert's various estates in the central midlands, which were bounded by Nuneaton, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough. In 1135, the twins were present at King Henry's deathbed. Robert's actions in the succession period are unknown, but he clearly supported his brother's decision to join the court of the new king Stephen before Easter 1136. During the first two years of the reign, Robert is found in Normandy fighting rival claimants for his Honor of Breteuil. Military action allowed him to add the castle of Pont St-Pierre to his Norman estates in June 1136 at the expense of one of his rivals. From the end of 1137, Robert and his brother were increasingly caught up in the politics of the court of King Stephen in England, where Waleran secured an ascendancy that lasted until the beginning of 1141. Robert participated in his brother's political coup against the king's justiciar, Roger of Salisbury (the Bishop of Salisbury). Civil war in England The outbreak of civil war in England in September 1139 brought Robert into conflict with Earl Robert of Gloucester, the bastard son of Henry I and principal sponsor of the Empress Matilda. His port of Wareham and estates in Dorset were seized by Gloucester in the first campaign of the war. In that campaign the king awarded Robert the city and castle of Hereford as a bid to establish the earl as his lieutenant in Herefordshire, which was in revolt. It is disputed by scholars whether this was an award of a second county to Earl Robert. Probably late in 1139, Earl Robert refounded his father's collegiate church of St Mary de Castro in Leicester as