General Notes

Hugh d'Avranches or Lupus (ie. "Wolf", so-called from his ferocity and acquisitiveness), Earl of Chester with quasi-regal powers, so created 1071 in the reign of his great-uncle of the half blood William I ("The Conqueror").  [Burke's Peerage, p. 2884 on the Barony of Vernon]

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EARLDOM OF CHESTER (II, 1)

HUGH D'AVRANCHES, styled by his contemporaries "VRAS," or "LE GROS" and, in after ages (from his rapacity) "Lupus," was son and heir of Richard (LE Goz), VICOMTE AVRANCHES, &C., in Normandy (son of Thurstan LE Goz), by Emma, daughter of Herluin de Conteville and Herleve (or Harlotte) his wife, who (by Robert, Duke of Normandy) was mother of William "the Conqueror".  He is generally supposed to have fought at the battle of Hastings (1066), when, at the utmost, he would have been but 19 years old; anyhow, not long afterwards in 1071, he received from the King, his maternal uncle, the whole of the county Palatine of Chester (exception the Episcopal lands) "to hold as freely by the Sword, as he [the King] himself held the Kingdom of England by the Crown," becoming thereby Count Palatine (b) thereof, as EARL OF CHESTER. He succeeded his father, who was living as late as 1082, as VICOMTE D'AVRANCHES, &C., in Normandy. In the rebellion (1096) against William II, he stood loyally by his Sovereign. He m. Ermentrude, daughter of Hugues, COUNT OF CLERMONT in Beauvaisis, by Margaret, daughter of Hilduin, COUNT OF Rouci and MONTDIDIER. Having founded the Abbeys of St. Sever in Normandy and St. Werburg at Chester (besides largely endowing that of Whitby, co. York), he became a monk 3 days before he died 27 July 1101, at St. Werburg's. He was buried in the cemetery at St. Werburg, but his body was afterward removed to the Chapter House by Earl Ranulph le Meschin. [Complete Peerage III:165, XIV:170, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]

(b) As such he had his hereditary Baron, who (besides one Robert de Rhuddlon, General of his forces, who d. 3 July 1088, many years before him) are generally considered to have been eight, as under, viz. (1) Eustace of Mold, Baron of Hawarden, co. Flint, Hereditary Steward; (2) William Fitz Niel, Baron of Halton, Hereditary Constable and Marshal, whose descendants took the name of "de Lacy" and became Earls of Lincoln in 1232. (3) William Malbank, Baron of Nantwich, or Wich-Malbank, whose issue maled ended with his grandson. (4) Robert Fitz Hugh, Baron of Malpas, who dspm, but appears to have been succeeded (in Earl Hugh's lifetime) by David le Clerk (or Belward), said to have been his son-in-law. (5) Hamond de Massey, Baron of Dunham-Massey, who representation (through Fitton, Venables and Booth) passed to the Greys, Earls of Stafford and Warrington. (6) Richard Vernon, Baron of Shipbrooke. (7) William Venables, Baron of Kinderton, whose issue male continued till 1676. (8) Robert Stockport, Baron of Stockport, whose existence is somewhat questionable.  After 1265, however, when the Earldom of Chester was, by Henry III, annexed to the Crown, the dignity of these Barons became merely titular.

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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.

"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."

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.

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 hÊc 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]

Note: Sir Bernard Burke's genealogy has been superceded somewhat, although much of the "meat" still holds.

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HUGH D'AVRANCHES, EARL OF CHESTER
The Conqueror and His Companions
by J.R. PlanchÈ, Somerset Herald. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874.

Here is a personage who, under the more popular name of Hugh Lupus, is perhaps almost as well known as the Conqueror himself.

Wace in his "Roman de Rou," speaks only of his father Richard:

"D'Avrancin i fu Richarz."

But it is generally contended that Richard was not in the battle, and that it was Hugh, his son, who accompanied William to Hastings. The authors of "Les Recherches sur le Domesday," to whom we are so deeply indebted for information on these points, hesitate to endorse the opinion of Mons. le PrÈvost upon these grounds, -- that Richard was living as late as 1082, when he appears as a witness to a charter of Roger de Montgomeri, in favour of St. Stephen's at Caen, to which also his son, Earl Hugh, is a subscriber. Their observations only point, however, to the probability of Richard, who in 1066 was Seigneur or Vicomte of Avranches, having been in the Norman army of invasion, as he survived the event some sixteen years; at the same time they deny that there is any proof that his son Hugh was in the battle, and assert, without stating on what authority, that Hugh only joined the Conqueror in England after the victory at Senlac, when he rendered the new King most important services by his valour and ability in the establishment of William on the throne, and contributed greatly towards the reduction of the Welsh to obedience. That there is authority for their assertion appears from the cartulary of the Abbey of Whitby, quoted by Dugdale in his "Monasticon," (Mon. Ang. vol. i, p. 72) where we read distinctly that Hugh Earl of Chester and William de Percy came into England with William the Conqueror in 1067: "Anno Domini millesimo sexagesimo septimo," and that the King gave Whitby to Hugo, which Hugo afterwards gave to William de Percy, the founder of the abbey there.

We have here, therefore, a parallel case to that of Roger de Montgomeri (Vide vol i, p. 181), and must similarly treat it as an open question.

The descent of Richard, surnamed Goz, Le Gotz, or Le Gois, from Ansfrid the Dane, the first who bore that surname, has been more or less correctly recorded, but in "Les Recherches" it will be found critically examined and carried up to Rongwald, or Raungwaldar, Earl of Maere and the Orcades in the days of Harold Harfager, or the Fair-haired; which said Rongwald was the father of Hrolf, or Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy. Rongwald, like the majority of his countrymen and kinsmen, had several children by a favourite slave, whom he had married "more Danico," and Hrolf Turstain, th.e son of one of them, having followed his uncle Rollo into Normandy, managed to secure the hand of Gerlotte de Blois, daughter of Thibaut Count of Blois and Chartres, which seems to have been the foundation of this branch of the great Norse family in Normandy, and the stock from which descended the Lords of Briquebec, of Bec-Crispin, of Montfort-sur-Risle, and others who figure as companions of the Conqueror.

The third son of Gerlotte was Ansfrid the Dane, the first Vicomte of the Hiemois, and father of Ansfrid the second, surnamed Goz, above mentioned, whose son Turstain (Thurstan, or Toustain) Goz was the great favouritc of Robert Duke of Normandy, the father of the Conqueror, and accompanied him to the Holy Land, and was intrusted to bring back the relics the Duke had obtained from the Patriarch of Jerusalem to present to the Abbey of Cerisi, which he had founded. Revolting against the young Duke William in 1041 (Vide vol. i, p. 21), Turstain was exiled, and his lands confiscated and given by the Duke to his mother, Herleve, wife of Herluin de Conteville.

Richard Goz, Vicomte d'Avranches, or more properly of the Avranchin, was one of the sons of the aforesaid Turstain, by his wife Judith de Montanolier, and appears not only to have avoided being implicated in the rebellion of his father, but obtained his pardon and restoration to the VicomtÈ of the Hiemois, to which at his death he succeeded, and to have strengthened his position at court by securing the hand of Emma de Conteville, one of the daughters of Herluin and Herleve, and half-sister of his sovereign. By this fortunate marriage he naturally recovered the lands forfeited by his father and bestowed on his mother-in-law, and acquired also much property in the Avranchin, of which he obtained the VicomtÈ, in addition to that of the Hiemois.

There was every reason, therefore, that he should follow his three brothers-in-law in the expedition to England, if not prevented by illness or imperative circumstances. He must have been their senior by some twenty years, but still scarcely past the prime of life, and his son Hugh a stripling under age, as his mother, if even older than her brothers Odo and Robert, could not have been born before 1030, and if married at sixteen, her son in 1066 would not be more than nineteen at the utmost. Mr. Freeman, who places the marriage of Herleve with Herluin after the death of Duke Robert in 1035, would reduce this calculation by at least six years, rendering the presence of her grandson Hugh at Senlac more than problematical. It is at any rate clear that he must have been a very young man at the time of the Conquest. That "he came into England with William the Conqueror," as stated by Dugdale, does not prove that he was in the army at Hastings, and is reconcilable with the assertion in the "Recherches," that he joined him after the Conquest, corroborated by the cartulary of Whitby, before mentioned; very probably coming with him in the winter of 1067, and in company with Roger de Montgomeri, respecting whose first appearance in England the same diversity of opinion exists, and it might be his assistance in suppressing the rebellion in the West and other parts of the kingdom that gained him the favour of the King, and ultimately the Earldom of Chester, at that time enjoyed by Gherbod the Fleming, brother of Gundrada. The gift of Whitby, in Yorkshire, to Hugh, which he soon afterwards gave to William de Percy, would seem to show that he had been employed against the rebels beyond the Humber in 1068.

In 1071, Gherbod Earl of Chester being summoned to Flanders by those to whom he had intrusted the management of his hereditary domains, whatever they were, obtained from King William leave to make a short visit to that country; but while there his evil fortune led him into a snare, and falling into the hands of his enemies, he was thrown into a dungeon, "where he endured," says Orderic, "the sufferings of a long captivity, cut off from all the blessings of life." Whether he ended his days in that dungeon Orderic does not tell us. A little more information respecting this Gherbod and his sister would be a great boon to us. At present, what we hear about them is so vague that it looks absolutely suspicious.

In consequence of this "evil fortune" which befell Gherbod, the King, continues Orderic, gave the earldom of Chester to Hugh d'Avranches, son of Richard, surnamed Goz, who, in concert with Robert de Rhuddlan and Robert de Malpas, and other fierce knights, made great slaughter amongst the Welsh.

Hugh was in fact a Count Palatine, and had the county of Chester granted to him to hold as freely by the sword as the King held the kingdom by the crown. He was all but a king himself, and had a court, and barons, and officers, such as became a sovereign prince.

We hear but little of him during the remainder of the reign of William the Conqueror, but in the rebellion against Rufus, in 1096, he stood loyally by his sovereign; he is charged, however, with having barbarously blinded and mutilated his brother-in-law, William Comte d'Eu, who had been made prisoner in that abortive uprising. In the same year he is also accused of committing great cruelties upon the Welsh in the Isle of Anglesea, which he ravaged in conjunction with Hugh de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury, who lost his life at that period in resisting the landing of the Norwegians nnder Magnus III, King of Norway. The Norse poet tells us the Earl of Shrewsbury was so completely enveloped in armour that nothing could be seen of his person but one eye. "King Magnus let fly an arrow at him, as also did a Heligoland man who stood beside the King. They both shot at once. The one shaft struck the nose-guard of the helmet, and bent it on one side, the other arrow hit the Earl in the eye and passed through his head, and this arrow was found to be the King's."

Giraldus Cambrensis gives a similar account, adding some few details, such as the derisive exclamation of Magnus, "Leit loupe! " -- "Let him leap!" as the Earl sprang from the saddle when struck, and fell dead into the sea.

As this Earl of Shrewsbury was called by the Welsh "Goch," or "the Red," from the colour of his hair, so was Hugh Earl of Chester called "Vras," or "the Fat." His popular name of Lupus, or "the Wolf," is not to be traced to his own times, and Dugdale observes that it was an addition in after ages for the sake of distinction; about the same time, I presume, that the heralds invented the coat of arms for him -- "Azure, a wolf's head, erased, argent " -- suggested, probably, by the name, which, if indeed of contemporary antiquity, might have been given him for his gluttony, a vice to which Orderic says he was greatly addicted. "This Hugh," he tells us, "was not merely liberal, but prodigal; not satisfied with being surrounded by his own retainers, he kept an army on foot. He set no bounds either to his generosity or his rapacity. He continually wasted even his own domains, and gave more encouragement to those who attended him in hawking and hunting than to the cultivators of the soil or the votaries of Heaven. He indulged in gluttony to such a degree that he could scarcely walk. He abandoned himself immoderately to carnal pleasures, and had a numerous progeny of illegitimate children of both sexes, but they have been almost all carried off by one misfortune or another."

With all this he displayed that curious veneration for the Church common to his age, which so ill accorded with the constant violation of its most divine precepts. He founded the Abbey of St. Sever in Normandy, and was a great benefactor to those of Bec and Ouche (St. Evroult) in that duchy, and also to the Abbey of Whitby in Yorkshire, and in 1092 restored the ancient Abbey of St. Werburgh at Chester, and endowed it with ample possessions, substituting Benedictine monks in lieu of the secular canons who had previously occupied it; Richard, a monk of Bec, being brought over by Abbot Anselm, the Earl's confessor and afterwards the great Archbishop of Canterbury, to be the first abbot of the new community.

Being seized with a fatal illness, this pious profligate assumed the monastic habit in the Abbey of St. Werburgh, and three days after being shorn a monk died therein, 6th kalends of August (July 27), 1101.

By his Countess Ermentrude, daughter of Hugh Comte de Clermont, in Beauvoisis, and Margaret de Rouci, his wife, he had one son, Richard, seven years of age at the time of his father's death, who succeeded him in the earldom, married Matilda de Blois, daughter of Stephen, Count of Blois, by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, and perished with his young wife in the fatal wreck of the White Ship in 1119, leaving no issue.

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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]