General Notes

He was the son of Richard Goz, Governor of Avranches in Normandy, and hiswife Margaret, or Em ma, uterine sister of William the Conqueror, daughterof Harletta by Hellowin, her first husba nd. Their children were adaughter Geva and a son Richard, 2nd Earl of Chester, who, with hi s wifeMaude, sister of King Stephen of England, were drowned in 1119, with theson of Henr y I while crossing the English Channel in a storm.

Hugh d'Avranches or Lupus (ie. "Wolf", so-called from his ferocity andacquisitiveness), Ear l of Chester with quasi-regal powers, so created1071 in the reign of his great-uncle of the h alf 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 h is rapacity) "Lupus," was son and heir of Richard(LE Goz), VICOMTE AVRANCHES, &C., in Normand y (son of Thurstan LE Goz),by Emma, daughter of Herluin de Conteville and Herleve (or Harlott e) hiswife, who (by Robert, Duke of Normandy) was mother of William "theConqueror". He is ge nerally supposed to have fought at the battle ofHastings (1066), when, at the utmost, he woul d 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 land s) "to hold as freely by the Sword, as he [the King]himself held the Kingdom of England by th e Crown," becoming thereby CountPalatine (b) thereof, as EARL OF CHESTER. He succeeded his fa ther, whowas living as late as 1082, as VICOMTE D'AVRANCHES, &C., in Normandy. Inthe rebellio n (1096) against William II, he stood loyally by hisSovereign. He m. Ermentrude, daughter o f Hugues, COUNT OF CLERMONT inBeauvaisis, by Margaret, daughter of Hilduin, COUNT OF Rouci an dMONTDIDIER. Having founded the Abbeys of St. Sever in Normandy and St.Werburg at Chester (be sides largely endowing that of Whitby, co. York),he became a monk 3 days before he died 27 Ju ly 1101, at St. Werburg's. Hewas buried in the cemetery at St. Werburg, but his body was afte rwardremoved to the Chapter House by Earl Ranulph le Meschin. [CompletePeerage III:165, XIV:1 70, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]

(b) As such he had his hereditary Baron, who (besides one Robert deRhuddlon, General of his f orces, 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)Wil liam Fitz Niel, Baron of Halton, Hereditary Constable and Marshal,whose descendants took th e name of "de Lacy" and became Earls of Lincolnin 1232. (3) William Malbank, Baron of Nantwic h, or Wich-Malbank, whoseissue maled ended with his grandson. (4) Robert Fitz Hugh, Baron ofM alpas, who dspm, but appears to have been succeeded (in Earl Hugh'slifetime) by David le Cler k (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 Staffor d and Warrington. (6) Richard Vernon, Baron ofShipbrooke. (7) William Venables, Baron of Kind erton, whose issue malecontinued till 1676. (8) Robert Stockport, Baron of Stockport, whoseex istence is somewhat questionable. After 1265, however, when theEarldom of Chester was, by He nry 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 o f Chester, that dignity was conferred, A.D. 1070,by the Conqueror, upon his half-sister's* so n, 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 amongs t the Norman nobility, and an expert soldier, was, forthat respect, chiefly placed so near th ose unconquered Britains, thebetter to restrain their bold incursions; for it was, 'consiliop rudentium,' by the advice of his council, that King William thusadvanced him to that governme nt; his power being, also, not ordinary;having royal jurisdiction within the precincts of hi s earldom--whichhonor he received to hold as freely . . . as the King himself heldEngland b y the crown. But, though the time of his advancement was nottill the year 1070, certain it i s that he came into England with theConqueror and thereupon had a grant of Whitby, in Yorkshi re, whichlordship he soon afterwards disposed of to William de Percy, hisassociate in that fa mous expedition." In the contest between WilliamRufus and his brother, Robert Curthose, thi s powerful nobleman sided withthe former and remained faithful to him during the whole of hi s reign. Hewas subsequently in the confidence of Henry I, and one of that monarch'schief coun cillors.

"In his youth and flourishing age," continues Dugdale, "he was a greatlover of worldly pleasu res 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, aswe re disposed to those sports; but he had also in his family both clerksand soldiers, who wer e men of great honor, the venerable Anselme (abbotof Bec, and afterwards archbishop of Canter bury) being his confessor;nay, so devout he grew before his death, that sickness hanging lon g uponhim, he caused himself to be shorn a monk in the abbey of St. Werberge,where, within th ree days after, he died, 27 July, 1101."

His lordship m. Ermentrude, dau. of Hugh de Claremont, Earl of Bevois, inFrance, by whom he h ad an only son, Richard, his successor. Of hisillegitimate issue were Ottiwell, tutor to thos e children of King Henry Iwho perished at sea; Robert, originally a monk in the abbey of St.E brulf, in Normandy, and afterwards abbot of St. Edmundsbury, in Suffolk;and Geva, the wife o f Geffrey Riddell, to whom the earl gave DraytonBasset, in Staffordshire.

That this powerful nobleman enjoyed immense wealth in England is evidentfrom the many lordshi ps he held at the general survey; for, besides thewhole of Cheshire, excepting the small par t which at that time belongedto the bishop, he had nine lordships in Berkshire, two in Devons hire,seven in Yorkshire, six in Wiltshire, ten in Dorsetshire, four inSomersetshire, thirty-t wo in Suffolk, twelve in Norfolk, one inHampshire, five in Oxfordshire, three in Buckinghamsh ire, four inGloucestershire, two in Huntingdonshire, four in Nottinghamshire, one inWarwicksh ire, and twenty-two in Leicestershire. It appears too, by thecharter of foundation to the abb ey 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. Rob ert, son of Hugo; 3. Hugo, son of Norman; 4. Richard de Vernon; 5.Richard de Rullos; 6. Ranul ph 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;1 4. Richard de Mesnilwarin; 15. Walter de Vernun. The charterconcludes---"Et ut hæc omnia esse nt rata et stabilia in perpetuum, egoCome Hugo et mei Barones confirmavimus (&c.), ita quod s inguli nostrumpropria manu, in testimonium posteris signum in modum Crucisfacerunt:"--and i s 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 Consta bular;Ranulph Dapifer; William Malbanc; Robert FitzHugh; Hugh FitzNorman; Hamode Masci; and B igod de Loges. Those barons, be it remembered, were eachand all of them men of great individu al power and large territorialpossessions. Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, was s. by his only so n (thenbut seven years of age), Richard de Abrincis, as 2nd earl. [Sir BernardBurke, Dorman t and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883,pp. 1-2, Abrincis, Earls of Chest er]

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 wel l 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 so n, who accompanied William to Hastings. Theauthors of "Les Recherches sur le Domesday," to wh om we are so deeplyindebted for information on these points, hesitate to endorse the opiniono f Mons. le Prévost upon these grounds, -- that Richard was living aslate as 1082, when he app ears as a witness to a charter of Roger deMontgomeri, in favour of St. Stephen's at Caen, t o which also his son,Earl Hugh, is a subscriber. Their observations only point, however, toth e probability of Richard, who in 1066 was Seigneur or Vicomte ofAvranches, having been in th e Norman army of invasion, as he survived theevent some sixteen years; at the same time the y deny that there is anyproof that his son Hugh was in the battle, and assert, without statin g 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 estab lishment of William on the throne,and contributed greatly towards the reduction of the Wels h to obedience.That there is authority for their assertion appears from the cartulary ofthe A bbey of Whitby, quoted by Dugdale in his "Monasticon," (Mon. Ang.vol. i, p. 72) where we rea d distinctly that Hugh Earl of Chester andWilliam de Percy came into England with William th e 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 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 wh o bore that surname, has been more or lesscorrectly recorded, but in "Les Recherches" it wil l be found criticallyexamined and carried up to Rongwald, or Raungwaldar, Earl of Maere andth e Orcades in the days of Harold Harfager, or the Fair-haired; whichsaid Rongwald was the fath er of Hrolf, or Rollo, the first Duke ofNormandy. Rongwald, like the majority of his countrym en and kinsmen, hadseveral children by a favourite slave, whom he had married "more Danico,"a nd Hrolf Turstain, th.e son of one of them, having followed his uncleRollo into Normandy, man aged 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-Ri sle, 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 o f 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 acc ompanied himto the Holy Land, and was intrusted to bring back the relics the Duke hadobtaine d from the Patriarch of Jerusalem to present to the Abbey ofCerisi, which he had founded. Rev olting against the young Duke William in1041 (Vide vol. i, p. 21), Turstain was exiled, and h is lands confiscatedand given by the Duke to his mother, Herleve, wife of Herluin deContevill e.

Richard Goz, Vicomte d'Avranches, or more properly of the Avranchin, wasone of the sons of th e aforesaid Turstain, by his wife Judith deMontanolier, and appears not only to have avoide d being implicated in therebellion of his father, but obtained his pardon and restoration t o theVicomté of the Hiemois, to which at his death he succeeded, and to havestrengthened hi s position at court by securing the hand of Emma deConteville, one of the daughters of Herlui n and Herleve, and half-sisterof his sovereign. By this fortunate marriage he naturally recov ered thelands forfeited by his father and bestowed on his mother-in-law, andacquired also muc h property in the Avranchin, of which he obtained theVicomté, in addition to that of the Hiem ois.

There was every reason, therefore, that he should follow his threebrothers-in-law in the expe dition to England, if not prevented by illnessor imperative circumstances. He must have bee n their senior by sometwenty years, but still scarcely past the prime of life, and his son Hu gha stripling under age, as his mother, if even older than her brothers Odoand Robert, coul d not have been born before 1030, and if married atsixteen, her son in 1066 would not be mor e than nineteen at the utmost.Mr. Freeman, who places the marriage of Herleve with Herluin af ter thedeath of Duke Robert in 1035, would reduce this calculation by at leastsix years, rend ering the presence of her grandson Hugh at Senlac morethan problematical. It is at any rate c lear that he must have been a veryyoung man at the time of the Conquest. That "he came into E ngland withWilliam the Conqueror," as stated by Dugdale, does not prove that he wasin the arm y at Hastings, and is reconcilable with the assertion in the"Recherches," that he joined hi m after the Conquest, corroborated by thecartulary of Whitby, before mentioned; very probabl y coming with him inthe winter of 1067, and in company with Roger de Montgomeri, respectingwh ose first appearance in England the same diversity of opinion exists,and it might be his assi stance in suppressing the rebellion in the Westand other parts of the kingdom that gained hi m the favour of the King,and ultimately the Earldom of Chester, at that time enjoyed by Gherb odthe Fleming, brother of Gundrada. The gift of Whitby, in Yorkshire, toHugh, which he soon a fterwards gave to William de Percy, would seem toshow that he had been employed against the r ebels beyond the Humber in1068.

In 1071, Gherbod Earl of Chester being summoned to Flanders by those towhom he had intruste d the management of his hereditary domains, whateverthey were, obtained from King William lea ve to make a short visit to thatcountry; but while there his evil fortune led him into a snar e, 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 informatio nrespecting this Gherbod and his sister would be a great boon to us. Atpresent, what we hea r about them is so vague that it looks absolutelysuspicious.

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

Hugh was in fact a Count Palatine, and had the county of Chester grantedto him to hold as fre ely by the sword as the King held the kingdom by thecrown. He was all but a king himself, an d 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 t he 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 ha dbeen made prisoner in that abortive uprising. In the same year he is alsoaccused of committi ng great cruelties upon the Welsh in the Isle ofAnglesea, which he ravaged in conjunction wit h Hugh de Montgomeri, Earlof Shrewsbury, who lost his life at that period in resisting the la ndingof the Norwegians nnder Magnus III, King of Norway. The Norse poet tellsus the Earl of S hrewsbury was so completely enveloped in armour thatnothing could be seen of his person but o ne eye. "King Magnus let fly anarrow at him, as also did a Heligoland man who stood beside th e King.They both shot at once. The one shaft struck the nose-guard of thehelmet, and bent i t on one side, the other arrow hit the Earl in the eyeand passed through his head, and this a rrow was found to be the King's."

Giraldus Cambrensis gives a similar account, adding some few details,such as the derisive exc lamation of Magnus, "Leit loupe! " -- "Let himleap!" as the Earl sprang from the saddle whe n struck, and fell dead intothe sea.

As this Earl of Shrewsbury was called by the Welsh "Goch," or "the Red,"from the colour of hi s hair, so was Hugh Earl of Chester called "Vras,"or "the Fat." His popular name of Lupus, o r "the Wolf," is not to betraced to his own times, and Dugdale observes that it was an additi on inafter ages for the sake of distinction; about the same time, I presume,that the herald s invented the coat of arms for him -- "Azure, a wolf'shead, erased, argent " -- suggested, p robably, by the name, which, ifindeed of contemporary antiquity, might have been given him fo r 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 retain ers, he kept an army on foot. Heset no bounds either to his generosity or his rapacity. He co ntinuallywasted even his own domains, and gave more encouragement to those whoattended him i n hawking and hunting than to the cultivators of the soilor the votaries of Heaven. He indulg ed in gluttony to such a degree thathe could scarcely walk. He abandoned himself immoderatel y to carnalpleasures, and had a numerous progeny of illegitimate children of bothsexes, but t hey 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 s o ill accorded with the constant violation of its mostdivine precepts. He founded the Abbey o f St. Sever in Normandy, and was agreat benefactor to those of Bec and Ouche (St. Evroult) i n that duchy,and also to the Abbey of Whitby in Yorkshire, and in 1092 restored theancient Ab bey of St. Werburgh at Chester, and endowed it with amplepossessions, substituting Benedictin e 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 greatArchbisho p 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 Abb ey of St. Werburgh, and three days after beingshorn a monk died therein, 6th kalends of Augus t (July 27), 1101.

By his Countess Ermentrude, daughter of Hugh Comte de Clermont, inBeauvoisis, and Margaret d e Rouci, his wife, he had one son, Richard,seven years of age at the time of his father's dea th, who succeeded himin the earldom, married Matilda de Blois, daughter of Stephen, Count ofB lois, by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, and perished with hisyoung wife in the fat al 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 noblem an 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. Hisho usehold contained a bunch of rowdy thugs; it was also cultivated, evenpious. Nicknamed 'the f at' or 'the wolf', Hugh died in the habit of aBenedictine monk. If contemporaries saw a contr adiction, they have leftno sign. Hugh, the son of the count of the Avranchin in western Norma ndyand nephew of William the Conqueror, probably fought at Hastings. Earlyin the 1070s he wa s granted palatine powers over a wide area of thenorthern Welsh Marches centered on Chester w ithin which, except forchurch lands and pleas, he, not the king, was sovereign. This grantall owed Hugh complete freedom to establish, by force, French control overthe northern frontier w ith Wales and to penetrate along the coast ofNorth Wales towards Anglesey. Hugh was outside r oyal supervision, a lawunto himself, a tactic copied with the Montgomerys in Shropshire. Taki ngfull advantage of his opportunity, he campaigned relentlessly against theWelsh, extending h is power to Bangor, where he established a bishopric in1092, and Anglesey. Beyond the Englis h frontier, however, his authoritycould only be sustained by castles, garrisons and repeate d raids which,in turn, provoked continual resistance and rebellion. On its fringes, theNorma n Conquest remained a messy affair. Elsewhere, Hugh was one of theleading magnates in the Ang lo-Norman realms, inheriting Avranches fromhis father in the 1080s and, by 1086, holding lan d in twenty countiesoutside Chester. In the succession disputes after the Conqueror's death,h e supported William II and Henry I. Hugh acquired a foul reputation:vicious; violent; addicte d to gambling and sex; and so greedy 'that,weighed down by a mountain of fat, he could hardl y move.' He was alsogenerous, which explains why his household was always crowded with manya s debauched and sybaritic as he. But there was another side. Hugh was,according to Eadmer, a n old and close friend of Anselm whom he persuadedto come to England in 1092 to supervise th e installation of a communityof monks at St Werburgh's Chester. Open-handed to 'good men, cle rks aswell as knights' as well as bad, he employed a Norman clerk, Gerold, whotook upon himse lf 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 ra ucousatmosphere of passion, carnality, militarism and piety, was nurtured thementality which , in Hugh's lifetime, generated the Crusades. The knightswho, in 1099, stormed Jerusalem an d massacred its inhabitants, some ofthem Hugh's relatives and friends, shared this heady bre w ofself-righteous, self-pitying extremes of hedonism, brutality, guilt,obligation, spiritual ity and remorse. Hugh's only son Richard, who waschildless, drowned in the White Ship in Nove mber 1120. [Who's Who inEarly Medieval England, Christopher Tyerman, Shepheard-Walwyn, Ltd.,L ondon, 1996; and Encyclopaedia Britannica CD, 1997]