Robert of Lexinton

Robert of Lexinton (d. May 29 1250) was a British judge and administrator. He took his name from the village of Laxton, Nottinghamshire, then known as Lexinton and famous for its open-field method of farming. He began work as a clerk to Brian de Lisle, a forest administrator and judge who had succeeded Robert's father Richard as Keeper of Laxton, with whom he worked between 1210 and 1215. In 1214 he was made Prebend at Southwell Minister, and also became custodian of the Archbishopric of York and in command of a group of soldiers charged with securing Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire for the king during the First Barons' War.

After the end of the war Lexinton began a career as a royal justice, sitting as part of a group of judges who handled Eyres in the West Midlands in 1221. Between then and 1244 he served as a justice on Eyre on 64 occasions, acting as a senior justice for 31. [ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16616?&docPos=6&backToResults=list=yes|group=yes|feature=yes|aor=3|orderField=alpha Oxford DNB: Lexinton, Robert of] ] He led one of the two circuits of Eyre judges that Matthew Paris accused in 1240 of collecting money for the King under the pretext of justice, although only one of his Eyre rolls (the one from 1235) still exists. From 1227 to 1244 he was a justice of the bench for the Court of Common Pleas, and he served as the Chief Justice from 1236 until his retirement in 1244.

He attracted the ire of Robert Grosseteste, then Bishop of Lincoln for his treatment of a Dean who had denounced his practice of hearing cases on a sunday, but continued to advance within the church, gaining a church at Rotherham and another prebend, this time at Wells, which he gave up in 1243, considering it to be too far away for him to take an interest in it. He was elected Bishop of Lichfield in 1239 but withdrew his candidature. As a cleric he had no children; he left his lands to his brother John and to an assortment of religious houses he was a patron of. He was buried in Rufford Abbey after his death from paralysis in 1250.

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