General Notes

vol 1, pg 12, Ormerod's  "History of Cheshire"
vol 1, pg 49, Ormerod's  "History of Cheshire"

Hugh d'Avranches or Lupus (ie. "Wolf", so-called from his ferocity andacquisitiveness), Earl of Chester with quasi-regal powers, so created1071 in the reign of his great-uncle of the half blood William I ("TheConqueror").  [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) hiswife, who (by Robert, Duke of Normandy) was mother of William "theConqueror".  He is generally supposed to have fought at the battle ofHastings (1066), when, at the utmost, he would have been but 19 yearsold; anyhow, not long afterwards in 1071, he received from the King, hismaternal uncle, the whole of the county Palatine of Chester (exceptionthe Episcopal lands) "to hold as freely by the Sword, as he [the King]himself held the Kingdom of England by the Crown," becoming thereby CountPalatine (b) thereof, as EARL OF CHESTER. He succeeded his father, whowas living as late as 1082, as VICOMTE D'AVRANCHES, &C., in Normandy. Inthe rebellion (1096) against William II, he stood loyally by hisSovereign. He m. Ermentrude, daughter of Hugues, COUNT OF CLERMONT inBeauvaisis, by Margaret, daughter of Hilduin, COUNT OF Rouci andMONTDIDIER. 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. Hewas buried in the cemetery at St. Werburg, but his body was afterwardremoved to the Chapter House by Earl Ranulph le Meschin. [CompletePeerage III:165, XIV:170, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]

(b) As such he had his hereditary Baron, who (besides one Robert deRhuddlon, General of his forces, who d. 3 July 1088, many years beforehim) 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 Lincolnin 1232. (3) William Malbank, Baron of Nantwich, or Wich-Malbank, whoseissue maled ended with his grandson. (4) Robert Fitz Hugh, Baron ofMalpas, who dspm, but appears to have been succeeded (in Earl Hugh'slifetime) by David le Clerk (or Belward), said to have been hisson-in-law. (5) Hamond de Massey, Baron of Dunham-Massey, whorepresentation (through Fitton, Venables and Booth) passed to the Greys,Earls of Stafford and Warrington. (6) Richard Vernon, Baron ofShipbrooke. (7) William Venables, Baron of Kinderton, whose issue malecontinued till 1676. (8) Robert Stockport, Baron of Stockport, whoseexistence is somewhat questionable.  After 1265, however, when theEarldom of Chester was, by Henry III, annexed to the Crown, the dignityof these Barons became merely titular.

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Upon the detention of Gherbod, a prisoner in Flanders, a Fleming whofirst held the Earldom of Chester, that dignity was conferred, A.D. 1070,by the Conqueror, upon his half-sister's* son, Hugh de Abrincis (orAvranches, in Normandy), surnamed Lupus, and called by the Welch, Vras,or "the Fat." "Which Hugh," says Dugdale, "being a person of great noteat that time amongst the Norman nobility, and an expert soldier, was, forthat respect, chiefly placed so near those unconquered Britains, thebetter to restrain their bold incursions; for it was, 'consilioprudentium,' by the advice of his council, that King William thusadvanced him to that government; his power being, also, not ordinary;having royal jurisdiction within the precincts of his earldom--whichhonor he received to hold as freely . . . as the King himself heldEngland by the crown. But, though the time of his advancement was nottill the year 1070, certain it is that he came into England with theConqueror and thereupon had a grant of Whitby, in Yorkshire, whichlordship he soon afterwards disposed of to William de Percy, hisassociate in that famous expedition." In the contest between WilliamRufus and his brother, Robert Curthose, this powerful nobleman sided withthe former and remained faithful to him during the whole of his reign. Hewas subsequently in the confidence of Henry I, and one of that monarch'schief councillors.

"In his youth and flourishing age," continues Dugdale, "he was a greatlover of worldly pleasures and secular pomp; profuse in giving, and muchdelighted with interludes, jesters, horses, dogs, and other likevanities; having a large attendance of such persons, of all sorts, aswere disposed to those sports; but he had also in his family both clerksand soldiers, who were men of great honor, the venerable Anselme (abbotof Bec, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) being his confessor;nay, so devout he grew before his death, that sickness hanging long uponhim, 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, inFrance, by whom he had an only son, Richard, his successor. Of hisillegitimate issue were Ottiwell, tutor to those children of King Henry Iwho 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 DraytonBasset, in Staffordshire.

That this powerful nobleman enjoyed immense wealth in England is evidentfrom the many lordships he held at the general survey; for, besides thewhole of Cheshire, excepting the small part which at that time belongedto the bishop, he had nine lordships in Berkshire, two in Devonshire,seven in Yorkshire, six in Wiltshire, ten in Dorsetshire, four inSomersetshire, thirty-two in Suffolk, twelve in Norfolk, one inHampshire, five in Oxfordshire, three in Buckinghamshire, four inGloucestershire, two in Huntingdonshire, four in Nottinghamshire, one inWarwickshire, and twenty-two in Leicestershire. It appears too, by thecharter of foundation to the abbey of St. Werburge, at Chester, thatseveral eminent persons held the rank of baron under him, which Baronesand 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, sonof Ermiwin; 9. Robert de Fremouz; 10. Walkelinus, nephew of Walter deVernon; 11. Seward; 12. Giselbert de Venables; 13. Gaufridus de Sartes;14. Richard de Mesnilwarin; 15. Walter de Vernun. The charterconcludes---"Et ut hæc omnia essent rata et stabilia in perpetuum, egoCome Hugo et mei Barones confirmavimus (&c.), ita quod singuli nostrumpropria manu, in testimonium posteris signum in modum Crucisfacerunt:"--and is signed by the earl himself; Richard his son; Hervey,bishop of Bangor; Ranulph de Meschines, his nephew, who eventuallyinherited the earldom; Roger Bigod; Alan de Perci; William Constabular;Ranulph Dapifer; William Malbanc; Robert FitzHugh; Hugh FitzNorman; Hamode Masci; and Bigod de Loges. Those barons, be it remembered, were eachand all of them men of great individual power and large territorialpossessions. Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, was s. by his only son (thenbut seven years of age), Richard de Abrincis, as 2nd earl. [Sir BernardBurke, 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. Planché, Somerset Herald. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874.

Here is a personage who, under the more popular name of Hugh Lupus, isperhaps 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, andthat it was Hugh, his son, who accompanied William to Hastings. Theauthors of "Les Recherches sur le Domesday," to whom we are so deeplyindebted for information on these points, hesitate to endorse the opinionof Mons. le Prévost upon these grounds, -- that Richard was living aslate as 1082, when he appears as a witness to a charter of Roger deMontgomeri, in favour of St. Stephen's at Caen, to which also his son,Earl Hugh, is a subscriber. Their observations only point, however, tothe probability of Richard, who in 1066 was Seigneur or Vicomte ofAvranches, having been in the Norman army of invasion, as he survived theevent some sixteen years; at the same time they deny that there is anyproof that his son Hugh was in the battle, and assert, without stating onwhat authority, that Hugh only joined the Conqueror in England after thevictory at Senlac, when he rendered the new King most important servicesby 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 ofthe Abbey of Whitby, quoted by Dugdale in his "Monasticon," (Mon. Ang.vol. i, p. 72) where we read distinctly that Hugh Earl of Chester andWilliam de Percy came into England with William the Conqueror in 1067:"Anno Domini millesimo sexagesimo septimo," and that the King gave Whitbyto Hugo, which Hugo afterwards gave to William de Percy, the founder ofthe 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 Ansfridthe Dane, the first who bore that surname, has been more or lesscorrectly recorded, but in "Les Recherches" it will be found criticallyexamined and carried up to Rongwald, or Raungwaldar, Earl of Maere andthe Orcades in the days of Harold Harfager, or the Fair-haired; whichsaid Rongwald was the father of Hrolf, or Rollo, the first Duke ofNormandy. Rongwald, like the majority of his countrymen and kinsmen, hadseveral children by a favourite slave, whom he had married "more Danico,"and Hrolf Turstain, th.e son of one of them, having followed his uncleRollo into Normandy, managed to secure the hand of Gerlotte de Blois,daughter of Thibaut Count of Blois and Chartres, which seems to have beenthe foundation of this branch of the great Norse family in Normandy, andthe stock from which descended the Lords of Briquebec, of Bec-Crispin, ofMontfort-sur-Risle, and others who figure as companions of the Conqueror.

The third son of Gerlotte was Ansfrid the Dane, the first Vicomte of theHiemois, and father of Ansfrid the second, surnamed Goz, above mentioned,whose son Turstain (Thurstan, or Toustain) Goz was the great favouritc ofRobert Duke of Normandy, the father of the Conqueror, and accompanied himto the Holy Land, and was intrusted to bring back the relics the Duke hadobtained from the Patriarch of Jerusalem to present to the Abbey ofCerisi, which he had founded. Revolting against the young Duke William in1041 (Vide vol. i, p. 21), Turstain was exiled, and his lands confiscatedand given by the Duke to his mother, Herleve, wife of Herluin deConteville.

Richard Goz, Vicomte d'Avranches, or more properly of the Avranchin, wasone of the sons of the aforesaid Turstain, by his wife Judith deMontanolier, and appears not only to have avoided being implicated in therebellion of his father, but obtained his pardon and restoration to theVicomté of the Hiemois, to which at his death he succeeded, and to havestrengthened his position at court by securing the hand of Emma deConteville, one of the daughters of Herluin and Herleve, and half-sisterof his sovereign. By this fortunate marriage he naturally recovered thelands forfeited by his father and bestowed on his mother-in-law, andacquired also much property in the Avranchin, of which he obtained theVicomté, in addition to that of the Hiemois.

There was every reason, therefore, that he should follow his threebrothers-in-law in the expedition to England, if not prevented by illnessor imperative circumstances. He must have been their senior by sometwenty years, but still scarcely past the prime of life, and his son Hugha stripling under age, as his mother, if even older than her brothers Odoand Robert, could not have been born before 1030, and if married atsixteen, her son in 1066 would not be more than nineteen at the utmost.Mr. Freeman, who places the marriage of Herleve with Herluin after thedeath of Duke Robert in 1035, would reduce this calculation by at leastsix years, rendering the presence of her grandson Hugh at Senlac morethan problematical. It is at any rate clear that he must have been a veryyoung man at the time of the Conquest. That "he came into England withWilliam the Conqueror," as stated by Dugdale, does not prove that he wasin the army at Hastings, and is reconcilable with the assertion in the"Recherches," that he joined him after the Conquest, corroborated by thecartulary of Whitby, before mentioned; very probably coming with him inthe winter of 1067, and in company with Roger de Montgomeri, respectingwhose first appearance in England the same diversity of opinion exists,and it might be his assistance in suppressing the rebellion in the Westand other parts of the kingdom that gained him the favour of the King,and ultimately the Earldom of Chester, at that time enjoyed by Gherbodthe Fleming, brother of Gundrada. The gift of Whitby, in Yorkshire, toHugh, which he soon afterwards gave to William de Percy, would seem toshow that he had been employed against the rebels beyond the Humber in1068.

In 1071, Gherbod Earl of Chester being summoned to Flanders by those towhom he had intrusted the management of his hereditary domains, whateverthey were, obtained from King William leave to make a short visit to thatcountry; but while there his evil fortune led him into a snare, andfalling 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 inthat dungeon Orderic does not tell us. A little more informationrespecting this Gherbod and his sister would be a great boon to us. Atpresent, what we hear about them is so vague that it looks absolutelysuspicious.

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

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

We hear but little of him during the remainder of the reign of Williamthe Conqueror, but in the rebellion against Rufus, in 1096, he stoodloyally by his sovereign; he is charged, however, with having barbarouslyblinded and mutilated his brother-in-law, William Comte d'Eu, who hadbeen made prisoner in that abortive uprising. In the same year he is alsoaccused of committing great cruelties upon the Welsh in the Isle ofAnglesea, which he ravaged in conjunction with Hugh de Montgomeri, Earlof Shrewsbury, who lost his life at that period in resisting the landingof the Norwegians nnder Magnus III, King of Norway. The Norse poet tellsus the Earl of Shrewsbury was so completely enveloped in armour thatnothing could be seen of his person but one eye. "King Magnus let fly anarrow 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 thehelmet, and bent it on one side, the other arrow hit the Earl in the eyeand 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 himleap!" as the Earl sprang from the saddle when struck, and fell dead intothe 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 betraced to his own times, and Dugdale observes that it was an addition inafter 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'shead, erased, argent " -- suggested, probably, by the name, which, ifindeed of contemporary antiquity, might have been given him for hisgluttony, a vice to which Orderic says he was greatly addicted. "ThisHugh," he tells us, "was not merely liberal, but prodigal; not satisfiedwith being surrounded by his own retainers, he kept an army on foot. Heset no bounds either to his generosity or his rapacity. He continuallywasted even his own domains, and gave more encouragement to those whoattended him in hawking and hunting than to the cultivators of the soilor the votaries of Heaven. He indulged in gluttony to such a degree thathe could scarcely walk. He abandoned himself immoderately to carnalpleasures, and had a numerous progeny of illegitimate children of bothsexes, but they have been almost all carried off by one misfortune oranother."

With all this he displayed that curious veneration for the Church commonto his age, which so ill accorded with the constant violation of its mostdivine precepts. He founded the Abbey of St. Sever in Normandy, and was agreat 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 theancient Abbey of St. Werburgh at Chester, and endowed it with amplepossessions, substituting Benedictine monks in lieu of the secular canonswho had previously occupied it; Richard, a monk of Bec, being broughtover by Abbot Anselm, the Earl's confessor and afterwards the greatArchbishop of Canterbury, to be the first abbot of the new community.

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

By his Countess Ermentrude, daughter of Hugh Comte de Clermont, inBeauvoisis, 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 himin the earldom, married Matilda de Blois, daughter of Stephen, Count ofBlois, by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, and perished with hisyoung 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 theeleventh century nobleman in its full diversity. A violent militaryadventurer, a student of vice and self-indulgence, he was a friend ofAnselm. Profligate with his income, he was a patron of monasteries. Hishousehold contained a bunch of rowdy thugs; it was also cultivated, evenpious. Nicknamed 'the fat' or 'the wolf', Hugh died in the habit of aBenedictine monk. If contemporaries saw a contradiction, they have leftno sign. Hugh, the son of the count of the Avranchin in western Normandyand nephew of William the Conqueror, probably fought at Hastings. Earlyin the 1070s he was granted palatine powers over a wide area of thenorthern Welsh Marches centered on Chester within which, except forchurch lands and pleas, he, not the king, was sovereign. This grantallowed Hugh complete freedom to establish, by force, French control overthe northern frontier with Wales and to penetrate along the coast ofNorth Wales towards Anglesey. Hugh was outside royal supervision, a lawunto himself, a tactic copied with the Montgomerys in Shropshire. Takingfull advantage of his opportunity, he campaigned relentlessly against theWelsh, extending his power to Bangor, where he established a bishopric in1092, and Anglesey. Beyond the English frontier, however, his authoritycould only be sustained by castles, garrisons and repeated raids which,in turn, provoked continual resistance and rebellion. On its fringes, theNorman Conquest remained a messy affair. Elsewhere, Hugh was one of theleading magnates in the Anglo-Norman realms, inheriting Avranches fromhis father in the 1080s and, by 1086, holding land in twenty countiesoutside 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 alsogenerous, which explains why his household was always crowded with manyas debauched and sybaritic as he. But there was another side. Hugh was,according to Eadmer, an old and close friend of Anselm whom he persuadedto come to England in 1092 to supervise the installation of a communityof monks at St Werburgh's Chester. Open-handed to 'good men, clerks aswell as knights' as well as bad, he employed a Norman clerk, Gerold, whotook upon himself the moral instruction of his fellow courtiers, usingadmonitory stories from the Bible and, no doubt more popular, stirringtales of Christian warriors and 'holy knights.' In such a raucousatmosphere of passion, carnality, militarism and piety, was nurtured thementality which, in Hugh's lifetime, generated the Crusades. The knightswho, in 1099, stormed Jerusalem and massacred its inhabitants, some ofthem Hugh's relatives and friends, shared this heady brew ofself-righteous, self-pitying extremes of hedonism, brutality, guilt,obligation, spirituality and remorse. Hugh's only son Richard, who waschildless, drowned in the White Ship in November 1120. [Who's Who inEarly Medieval England, Christopher Tyerman, Shepheard-Walwyn, Ltd.,London, 1996; and Encyclopaedia Britannica CD, 1997]