General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> 1st Earl Of Chester
Name Suffix:<NSFX> [Earl of Chester
Ancestral File Number:<AFN> V9V6-VH

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 adva