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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 theopinion of Mons. le Prévost upon these grounds, -- that Richard wasliving as late as 1082, when he appears as a witness to a charter ofRoger de Montgomeri, in favour of St. Stephen's at Caen, to which alsohis son, Earl Hugh, is a subscriber. Their observations only point,however, to the probability of Richard, who in 1066 was Seigneur orVicomte of Avranches, having been in the Norman army of invasion, ashe survived the event some sixteen years; at the same time they denythat there is any proof that his son Hugh was in the battle, andassert, without stating on what authority, that Hugh only joined theConqueror in England after the victory at Senlac, when he rendered thenew King most important services by his valour and ability in theestablishment of William on the throne, and contributed greatlytowards the reduction of the Welsh to obedience. That there isauthority for their assertion appears from the cartulary of the Abbeyof Whitby, quoted by Dugdale in his "Monasticon," (Mon. Ang. vol. i,p. 72) where we read distinctly that Hugh Earl of Chester and Williamde Percy came into England with William the Conqueror in 1067: "AnnoDomini millesimo sexagesimo septimo," and that the King gave Whitby toHugo, which Hugo afterwards gave to William de Percy, the founder ofthe abbey there. We have here, therefore, a parallel case to that of Roger deMontgomeri (Vide vol i, p. 181), and must similarly treat it as anopen question. The descent of Richard, surnamed Goz, Le Gotz, or Le Gois, fromAnsfrid the Dane, the first who bore that surname, has been more orless correctly recorded, but in "Les Recherches" it will be foundcritically examined and carried up to Rongwald, or Raungwaldar, Earlof Maere and the Orcades in the days of Harold Harfager, or theFair-haired; which said Rongwald was the father of Hrolf, or Rollo,the first Duke of Normandy. Rongwald, like the majority of hiscountrymen and kinsmen, had several children by a favourite slave,whom he had married "more Danico," and Hrolf Turstain, th.e son of oneof them, having followed his uncle Rollo into Normandy, managed tosecure the hand of Gerlotte de Blois, daughter of Thibaut Count ofBlois and Chartres, which seems to have been the foundation of thisbranch of the great Norse family in Normandy, and the stock from whichdescended the Lords of Briquebec, of Bec-Crispin, ofMontfort-sur-Risle, and others who figure as companions of theConqueror. The third son of Gerlotte was Ansfrid the Dane, the first Vicomte ofthe Hiemois, and father of Ansfrid the second, surnamed Goz, abovementioned, whose son Turstain (Thurstan, or Toustain) Goz was thegreat favouritc of Robert Duke of Normandy, the father of theConqueror, and accompanied him to the Holy Land, and was intrusted tobring back the relics the Duke had obtained from the Patriarch ofJerusalem 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 Duketo 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 deMontanolier, and appears not only to have avoided being implicated inthe rebellion of his father, but obtained his pardon and restorationto the Vicomté of the Hiemois, to which at his death he succeeded, andto have strengthened his position at court by securing the hand ofEmma de Conteville, one of the daughters of Herluin and Herleve, andhalf-sister of his sovereign. By this fortunate marriage he naturallyrecovered the lands forfeited by his father and bestowed on hismother-in-law, and acquired also much property in the Avranchin, ofwhich he obtained the Vicomté, 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 byillness or imperative circumstances. He must have been their senior bysome twenty years, but still scarcely past the prime of life, and hisson Hugh a stripling under age, as his mother, if even older than herbrothers Odo and Robert, could not have been born before 1030, and ifmarried at sixteen, her son in 1066 would not be more than nineteen atthe utmost. Mr. Freeman, who places the marriage of Herleve withHerluin after the death of Duke Robert in 1035, would reduce thiscalculation by at least six years, rendering the presence of hergrandson Hugh at Senlac more than problematical. It is at any rateclear that he must have been a very young man at the time of theConquest. That "he came into England with William the Conqueror," asstated by Dugdale, does not prove that he was in the army at Hastings,and is reconcilable with the assertion in the "Recherches," that hejoined him after the Conquest, corroborated by the cartulary ofWhitby, before mentioned; very probably coming with him in the winterof 1067, and in company with Roger de Montgomeri, respecting whosefirst appearance in England the same diversity of opinion exists, andit 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 thoseto whom he had intrusted the management of his hereditary domains,whatever they were, obtained from King William leave to make a shortvisit to that country; but while there his evil fortune led him into asnare, and falling into the hands of his enemies, he was thrown into adungeon, "where he endured," says Orderic, "the sufferings of a longcaptivity, cut off from all the blessings of life." Whether he endedhis days in that dungeon Orderic does not tell us. A little moreinformation respecting this Gherbod and his sister would be a greatboon to us. At present, what we hear about them is so vague that itlooks 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 Rhuddlanand Robert de Malpas, and other fierce knights, made great slaughteramongst the Welsh. Hugh was in fact a Count Palatine, and had the county of Chestergranted to him to hold as freely by the sword as the King held thekingdom 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 Williamthe Conqueror, but in the rebellion against Rufus, in 1096, he stoodloyally by his sovereign; he is charged, however, with havingbarbarously blinded and mutilated his brother-in-law, William Comted'Eu, who had been made prisoner in that abortive uprising. In thesame year he is also accused of committing great cruelties upon theWelsh in the Isle of Anglesea, which he ravaged in conjunction withHugh de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury, who lost his life at thatperiod in resisting the landing of the Norwegians nnder Magnus III,King of Norway. The Norse poet tells us the Earl of Shrewsbury was socompletely enveloped in armour that nothing could be seen of hisperson but one eye. "King Magnus let fly an arrow at him, as also dida 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 oneside, the other arrow hit the Earl in the eye and passed through hishead, 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 deadinto the sea. As this Earl of Shrewsbury was called by the Welsh "Goch," or "theRed," 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 notto be traced to his own times, and Dugdale observes that it was anaddition in after ages for the sake of distinction; about the sametime, I presume, that the heralds invented the coat of arms for him --"Azure, a wolf's head, erased, argent " -- suggested, probably, by thename, which, if indeed of contemporary antiquity, might have beengiven him for his gluttony, a vice to which Orderic says he wasgreatly addicted. "This Hugh," he tells us, "was not merely liberal,but prodigal; not satisfied with being surrounded by his ownretainers, he kept an army on foot. He set no bounds either to hisgenerosity or his rapacity. He continually wasted even his owndomains, and gave more encouragement to those who attended him inhawking and hunting than to the cultivators of the soil or thevotaries of Heaven. He indulged in gluttony to such a degree that hecould 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 Churchcommon to his age, which so ill accorded with the constant violationof its most divine precepts. He founded the Abbey of St. Sever inNormandy, 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, andendowed it with ample possessions, substituting Benedictine monks inlieu of the secular canons who had previously occupied it; Richard, amonk of Bec, being brought over by Abbot Anselm, the Earl's confessorand afterwards the great Archbishop of Canterbury, to be the firstabbot 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 afterbeing shorn 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 succeededhim in the earldom, married Matilda de Blois, daughter of Stephen,Count of Blois, by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, andperished with his young wife in the fatal wreck of the White Ship in1119, leaving no issue.
Karl-Heinz
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