Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bardolf, Hugh
BARDOLF, HUGH (d. 1203), justiciar of the Curia Regis, is presumed to have been son of William Bardolf (sheriff of Norfolk 16–21 Hen. II), and first appears in attendance on the court at Chinon, 5 April 1181, where he tests a charter as ‘Dapifer’ (Mon. Ang. vii. 1097), a post which he retained till the end of the reign (1189). He held pleas in Worcestershire (1187), and acted as an itinerant justice (1184–9). He also sat in the Curia Regis, and acted as sheriff of Cornwall (1185–7), and Wilts (1188), and was associated in the charge of the kingdom on Henry's departure for France in 1188 (Matt. Paris). At the accession of Richard I he was sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, and a justice itinerant, and was associated in the justiciarship with the bishops of Durham (Puiset) and Ely (Longchamp), when the king went on the crusade (December 1189), but was one of Richard's sureties at Messina in November 1190 (Rog. Hov. iii. 28, 62), having probably quarrelled with Longchamp. In the possibly spurious letter of February 1191 he was associated with Walter of Coutances in the commission that was to supplant Longchamp (ib. p. 96). Returning accordingly, he was among those excommunicated by Longchamp, but was specially offered pardon if he would surrender Scarborough and his counties of Yorkshire and Westmoreland (ib. p. 154). In 1193, as ‘justitiarius regis’ and sheriff of Yorkshire, he assisted the archbishop of York to fortify Doncaster for Richard, but refusing, as John's vassal, to besiege Tickhill, was denounced as a traitor (ib. 206), and on Richard's return (March 1194) was dismissed from his post (ib. p. 241); but was at once transferred to Northumberland, and ordered to take it over from the bishop of Durham (Puiset), and, on his resistance, to seize it (July 1194). At Puiset's death (March 1195) the castles of Norham and Durham were surrendered to him (ib. pp. 249, 261, 285), and, remaining faithful to Richard, he retained his counties (Northumberland and Cumberland) till John's accession (1199). From John he received the counties of Nottingham and Derby and the custody of Tickhill Castle. He continued to act as an itinerant justice and to sit in the Curia Regis till his death in 1203 (Ann. Wav. p. 255). He appears from the rolls to have acted as a baron of the exchequer in all three reigns.
[Eyton's Court and Itinerary of Henry II (1878); Roger of Hoveden (Rolls series); Dugdale's Baronage, i. 683; Foss's Judges of England (1848), ii. 325.]