Earl of Chester Hugh (le Gros) d'Avranches

• General Notes
  • Title: The Baronage of England, Vol. 1
    Author: William Dugdale
    Publication: 1675
    
    Title: A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire
    Abbrev: Burke's Extinct
    Author: Sir Bernard Burke
    Publication: Burke's Peerage Genealogical Publishing Co., London and
    Baltimore, 1883
    
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        2nd Earl of Chester, Vicomte d'Avranches. Hugh was one of William the Conqueror's chief councillors and contributed 60 ships for the invasion of England in 1066. He was rewarded with vast estates. When Gerbod, earl of Chester, left England in 1071, the Conqueror bestowed his earldom on Hugh. The earldom was granted as a palatinate, giving Hugh powers greater than the norm under the feudal system. William's purpose in giving Hugh such strength was to allow him to function as the main bulwark against his Welsh adversaries. "Extravagant without being liberal he loved show, was always ready for war, and kept an army rather than a household. An inordinate craving for sport lead him to lay waste his own lands that he might have more space for hunting and hawking. He was gluttonous and sensual, becoming so unwieldy that he could scarcely walk, and was generally styled 'Hugh the Fat;' he had many children by different mistresses. His wars with the Welsh were carried on with a savage ferocity, which made the name 'Wolf" [Lupus] bestowed on him in later days an appropriate designation. At the same time he was a wise counsellor, a loyal subject. . ." In the rebellion of 1088, he remained faithful to William Rufus. In 1098, he and Hugh [son of Roger of Montgomery], earl of Shrewsbury, completed the conquest of Anglessy and subdued the larger part of northern Wales. Between the death of King Rufus in 1100 and his own death in 1101, Hugh was one of the principal councillors of the new King Henry I. Having founded the Abbeys of St. Sever in Normandy and St. Werburg at Chester, besides largely endowing that of Whitby, Yorkshire, he became a monk on July 23, 1101, and died four days later. CP notes that "his career was chiefly notorious for gluttony, prodigality and profligacy." He was buried in the cemetery of St. Werberg, but his body was later removed to the Chapter House by earl Ranulph le Meschin.
    
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        Upon the detention of Gherbod, a prisoner in Flanders, a Fleming who first held the Earldom of Chester, that dignity was conferred, A.D. 1070, by the Conqueror, upon his half-sister's* son, Hugh de Abrincis (or Avranches, in Normandy), surnamed Lupus, and called by the Welch, Vras, or "the Fat." "Which Hugh," says Dugdale, "being a person of great note at that time amongst the Norman nobility, and an expert soldier, was, for that respect, chiefly placed so near those unconquered Britains, the better to restrain their bold incursions; for it was, 'consilio prudentium,' by the advice of his council, that King William thus advanced him to that government; his power being, also, not ordinary; having royal jurisdiction within the precincts of his earldom--which honor he received to hold as freely . . . as the King himself held England by the crown. But, though the time of his advancement was not till the year 1070, certain it is that he came into England with the Conqueror and thereupon had a grant of Whitby, in Yorkshire, which lordship he soon afterwards disposed of to William de Percy, his associate in that famous expedition." In the contest between William Rufus and his brother, Robert Curthose, this powerful nobleman sided with the former and remained faithful to him during the whole of his reign. He was subsequently in the confidence of Henry I, and one of that monarch's chief councillors.
    
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        "In his youth and flourishing age," continues Dugdale, "he was a great lover of worldly pleasures and secular pomp; profuse in giving, and much delighted with interludes, jesters, horses, dogs, and other like vanities; having a large attendance of such persons, of all sorts, as were disposed to those sports; but he had also in his family both clerks and soldiers, who were men of great honor, the venerable Anselme (abbot of Bec, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) being his confessor; nay, so devout he grew before his death, that sickness hanging long upon him, he caused himself to be shorn a monk in the abbey of St. Werberge, where, within three days after, he died, 27 July, 1101."
    
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        His lordship m. Ermentrude, dau. of Hugh de Claremont, Earl of Bevois, in France, by whom he had an only son, Richard, his successor. Of his illegitimate issue were Ottiwell, tutor to those children of King Henry I who perished at sea; Robert, originally a monk in the abbey of St. Ebrulf, in Normandy, and afterwards abbot of St. Edmundsbury, in Suffolk; and Geva, the wife of Geffrey Riddell, to whom the earl gave Drayton Basset, in Staffordshire.
    
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        That this powerful nobleman enjoyed immense wealth in England is evident from the many lordships he held at the general survey; for, besides the whole of Cheshire, excepting the small part which at that time belonged to the bishop, he had nine lordships in Berkshire, two in Devonshire, seven in Yorkshire, six in Wiltshire, ten in Dorsetshire, four in Somersetshire, thirty-two in Suffolk, twelve in Norfolk, one in Hampshire, five in Oxfordshire, three in Buckinghamshire, four in Gloucestershire, two in Huntingdonshire, four in Nottinghamshire, one in Warwickshire, and twenty-two in Leicestershire. It appears too, by the charter of foundation to the abbey of St. Werburge, at Chester, that several eminent persons held the rank of baron under him, which Barones and Homines mentioned therein were the following: -- 1. William Melbanc; 2. Robert, son of Hugo; 3. Hugo, son of Norman; 4. Richard de Vernon; 5. Richard de Rullos; 6. Ranulph Venator; 7. Hugh de Mara; 8. Ranulph, son of Ermiwin; 9. Robert de Fremouz; 10. Walkelinus, nephew of Walter de Vernon; 11. Seward; 12. Giselbert de Venables; 13. Gaufridus de Sartes; 14. Richard de Mesnilwarin; 15. Walter de Vernun. The charter concludes---"Et ut hæc omnia essent rata et stabilia in perpetuum, ego Come Hugo et mei Barones confirmavimus (&c.), ita quod singuli nostrum propria manu, in testimonium posteris signum in modum Crucis facerunt:"--and is signed by the earl himself; Richard his son; Hervey, bishop of Bangor; Ranulph de Meschines, his nephew, who eventually inherited the earldom; Roger Bigod; Alan de Perci; William Constabular; Ranulph Dapifer; William Malbanc; Robert FitzHugh; Hugh FitzNorman; Hamo de Masci; and Bigod de Loges. Those barons, be it remembered, were each and all of them men of great individual power and large territorial possessions. Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, was s. by his only son (then but seven years of age), Richard de Abrincis, as 2nd earl. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, pp. 1-2, Abrincis, Earls of Chester]
    
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    * From this, it would appear that Hugh was the son of Emma de Conteville (half-sister of the Conqueror) and Richard, Viscount d'Avranches, rather than being Richard's illegitimate son. I have, thus, corrected my records to reflect this.
    
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        Hugh, Count of Avranches and Earl of Chester presents the world of the eleventh century nobleman in its full diversity. A violent military adventurer, a student of vice and self-indulgence, he was a friend of Anselm. Profligate with his income, he was a patron of monasteries. His household contained a bunch of rowdy thugs; it was also cultivated, even pious. Nicknamed 'the fat' or 'the wolf', Hugh died in the habit of a Benedictine monk. If contemporaries saw a contradiction, they have left no sign. Hugh, the son of the count of the Avranchin in western Normandy and nephew of William the Conqueror, probably fought at Hastings. Early in the 1070s he was granted palatine powers over a wide area of the northern Welsh Marches centered on Chester within which, except for church lands and pleas, he, not the king, was sovereign. This grant allowed Hugh complete freedom to establish, by force, French control over the northern frontier with Wales and to penetrate along the coast of North Wales towards Anglesey. Hugh was outside royal supervision, a law unto himself, a tactic copied with the Montgomerys in Shropshire. Taking full advantage of his opportunity, he campaigned relentlessly against the Welsh, extending his power to Bangor, where he established a bishopric in 1092, and Anglesey. Beyond the English frontier, however, his authority could only be sustained by castles, garrisons and repeated raids which, in turn, provoked continual resistance and rebellion. On its fringes, the Norman Conquest remained a messy affair. Elsewhere, Hugh was one of the leading magnates in the Anglo-Norman realms, inheriting Avranches from his father in the 1080s and, by 1086, holding land in twenty counties outside Chester. In the succession disputes after the Conqueror's death, he supported William II and Henry I. Hugh acquired a foul reputation: vicious; violent; addicted to gambling and sex; and so greedy 'that, weighed down by a mountain of fat, he could hardly move.' He was also generous, which explains why his household was always crowded with many as debauched and sybaritic as he. But there was another side. Hugh was, according to Eadmer, an old and close friend of Anselm whom he persuaded to come to England in 1092 to supervise the installation of a community of monks at St Werburgh's Chester. Open-handed to 'good men, clerks as well as knights' as well as bad, he employed a Norman clerk, Gerold, who took upon himself the moral instruction of his fellow courtiers, using admonitory stories from the Bible and, no doubt more popular, stirring tales of Christian warriors and 'holy knights.' In such a raucous atmosphere of passion, carnality, militarism and piety, was nurtured the mentality which, in Hugh's lifetime, generated the Crusades. The knights who, in 1099, stormed Jerusalem and massacred its inhabitants, some of them Hugh's relatives and friends, shared this heady brew of self-righteous, self-pitying extremes of hedonism, brutality, guilt, obligation, spirituality and remorse. Hugh's only son Richard, who was childless, drowned in the White Ship in November 1120. [Who's Who in Early Medieval England, Christopher Tyerman, Shepheard-Walwyn, Ltd., London, 1996; and Encyclopaedia Britannica CD, 1997]
    
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        Hugh, Earl of Chester. Also Earl of Avranches. Also called Hugh Lupus (wolf) and Hugh the Fat. Nephew of William I, sister married Count William d'Eu; daughter, Matilda, married Count Robert of Mortain. Virtual sovereign of Cheshire. Captured Anglesey from the Welsh, 1098; became so fat he could barely crawl; d. 1101. Holdings in 20 counties. [The Domesday Book, Crescent Books, New Jersey, 1995.]
    
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    Author: Cokayne, George E.
    Periodical: The Complete Peerage
    Publication: Sutton Publishing, Gloucestershire, 2000
    
    Author: Hammond, Peter W.
    Periodical: The Complete Peerage, Vol. XIV: Addenda and Corrigenda
    Publication: Sutton Publishing, Gloucestershire, 1998
    
    Title: Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans: Many of the English Ancestral Lines Prior to 1300 of those Colonial Americans with known Royal Ancestry but Fully Developed in all Possible Lines
    Abbrev: Boyer, Med English Ancestors (2001)
    Author: Compiled by Carl Boyer 3rd
    Publication: Carl Boyer 3rd, PO Box 220333, Santa Clarita, CA 91322-0333,
    2001
    Page: p. 48, CHESTER 3

Click here for details of le Gros' family with Ermentrude de Clermont

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