Hugh de Beauchamp

Hugh de Beauchamp (sometimes Hugh of Beauchamp; died after 1101) was a Norman who held lands in England after the Norman Conquest. Background Hugh may have been from Beauchamps in Normandy or perhaps from Calvados. No connection has been established between Hugh and Walter de Beauchamp, founder of the Beauchamp family which later acquired the Earldom of Warwick. Career Hugh was a tenant-in-chief with lands in Bedfordshire. His landholdings in Bedfordshire have been considered to have made him the first feudal baron of Bedford. At the time of the Domesday Book he held 43 manors in Bedfordshire and additional landholdings in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The core of Hugh's lands were those held before the Conquest by Eskil of Ware and men sworn to Eskil, with additional lands coming from thegns and sokemen in the county. Hugh witnessed a charter of King William the Conqueror, which can only be dated to sometime between 1070 and 1089, where he is named as "sheriff", but it is unclear whether he was sheriff of Buckinghamshire or of Bedfordshire. Judith A. Green argues that it is more likely that he was sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Frank Barlow also assigns that office to Hugh in the early part of the reign of King William II. Katharine Keats-Rohan, however, claims that he was sheriff of Bedfordshire. Hugh also appears in the reign of William II as the sheriff of Buckinghamshire on a charter dating to between 1087 and 1095 as well as a charter from 1087.