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Birth:          ABT 1047 Avranches, Manche, Normandy
Death:          27 Jul 1101 St Werburg's Abbey, Cheshire, England

Notes
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http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jweber&id=I05038
died as a monk
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 hæc 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. Planché, 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 Prévost 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 Vicomté 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 Vicomté, 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]

Parents
LE GOZ Richard "le Goz" (ABT 1014 - AFT 1082)
DE CONTEVILLE Emma (ABT 1033 - )

Siblings
D'AVRANCHES Hugh ("Lupus") (ABT 1047 - 27 Jul 1101)
DE GRESLET Albert (ABT 1049 - ABT 1100)
AVRANCHES Judith (Le Goz) (ABT 1052 - )
D'AVRANCHES Maud (or Margaret) (ABT 1054 - )

Marriage To DE CLERMONT Ermentrude (ABT 1066 - )
    m.  

Notes

Parents
DE CREIL (DE CLERMONT) Hugh (ABT 1030 - 1101)
DE MONTDIDIER (DE ROUCY) Margaret (Marguerite) (ABT 1045 - ABT 1110)

Children by DE CLERMONT Ermentrude ABT 1066 - 
D'AVRANCHES Richard (ABT 1094 - 25 Nov 1120)

Marriage To ----- ----- (mistress) ()
    m.  

Notes


Children by ----- ----- (mistress) 
D'AVRANCHES Maud (ABT 1068 - )
FITZ HUGH Robert I (ABT 1072 - 25 Nov 1120)

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