Robert de Beaufeu
Robert de Beaufeu was a secular canon of Salisbury and a minor poet.
Life
Educated at the University of Oxford, he gained, at an early age, a reputation for learning, and became the friend of Gerald of Wales, Walter Map, and other scholars. He was granted the prebend of Horton, near Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, where he built a hall house, part of which survives in the structure of the present 16th century Horton Court.Works
He is said have written a work entitled Encomium topographiae, after hearing the Topographia Hiberniae of Gerald of Wales read by the author at a festival at Oxford. His authorship of this piece depends on Gerald of Wales's self-serving story reporting the praise that Robert gave to Gerald's Topographia Hiberniae.A poem in praise of ale, Versus de commendatione cervisiae, in a manuscript in the Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.6.42, bears his name. It has been argued as suggesting that he was an Englishman.