button to main menu  Gents Mag 1856 part 1 p.381
button introduction
button list, 3rd qtr 19th century
button previous page button next page
Gentleman's Magazine 1856 part 1 p.381
whose death is recorded in the Annals of Melrose A.D. 1162.
2. Hugh de Morville, who was implicated in the murder of Becket A.D. 1170.
3. Hugh de Morville, Lord of Burgh, and the husband of Helwise de Stuteville.
The following notices of each of these parties, from authentic records, will substantiate and illustrate the above statement:-
1. Hugh de Morville was attached to the court of David Earl of Cumberland, before the latter succeeded to the crown of Scotland. We find his name as witness to the celebrated "Inquisitio Davidis," relating to the property of the see of Glasgow, as early as the year 1116. In 1131 we find his name amongst the landed proprietors of the counties of Huntingdon, Northampton, and Rutland, who were excused from the payment of Danegeld. In each of these counties his master, David, King of Scotland, was also possessed of property, and in each case the name of Hugh de Morville immediately follows that of King David in the Pipe Rolls of the above year.
On the establishment of peace between David and King Stephen in 1139, the sons of five Scotch Earls were given the former as hostages for the observance of the treaty, amongst whom is mentioned a son of Hugh de Morville.* Hugh assisted David in the following year in his unsuccessful attempt to impose on the church of Durham a Scotch clerk, William Cumin, as Bishop.† From this period till his death his name occurs only as a witness to charters, in his signature to which he describes himself as Constable. In this high office he was succeeded by his son Richard de Morville.
2. The second Hugh de Morville was probably a son of the first, although this cannot be stated with certainty. On the early part of the reign of Henry II. he was the possessor of the honour of Westmerland. This was in the hands of David King of Scotland during the reign of Stephen, as a member of the earldom of Carlisle, which was not restored to the English crown till the third of Henry II.‡ As there is no trace of any grant of Westmerland to Hugh de Morville after this date, it is probable that he derived his title from a grant of David; and of this the presumption is much stronger, if he was, as suggested, the son of one of the chief officers of the Scotch crown. He seems however from the very first to have stood equally high in the favour of Henry, from whom, in the fourth year of his reign, he had a grant of manors of Boroughbridge and Knaresborough.§ In the sixteenth of the same reign he was a justice itinerant in the northern counties;‖ this was in 1170, before the close of which year he was implicated in the murder of Becket. It was not till three years later that (sic) Westmerland was seized into the hands of the crown.¶ The author of the "Memorials of Canterbury" discredits the concurrent statement of the biographers of Becket, that three of his murderers perished in the Holy Land within three years of his death, chiefly on the ground that Hugh de Morville was living and in favour at court in the reign of King John. The fallacy of this assumption has already been pointed out; but we may further direct attention to the singular confirmation here furnished to the narrative of the old biographers. They tell us that Morville did not survive his crime three years, and precisely at that interval we see the crown taking possession of his escheated estates.
3. Hugh de Morville the third was the grandson of Simon de Morville, which Simon was the contemporary of the second Hugh, and not improbably his brother. In the fourth of Henry II. (the very year in which Hugh had the grant of Knaresborough) Simon became possessed of the barony of Burgh in right of his wife Ebria, the daughter of Ranulph Engaigne.**
Of Hugh de Morville the grandson we have no notice till the 6th of Richard, when he succeeded in establishing his right to the forestership of Cumberland, as appertaining to his barony of Burgh, under a grant of Ranulph de Meschines to Turgis Brundis, the ancestor of Ranulph Engaigne.††
The family of Morville, although thus influential at so early a period, does not occur under this surname in Domesday Book. Turning, however, to the Domesday account of Morville in Shropshire we find that Richard, the Constable of the Earl of Shrewsbury, held two knight's fees there. There can be little doubt that this Richard was the princeps familiae, and that his descendants, among whom Richard was a family name, adopted, as
* Richard of Hexham.
† Continuation of Symeon's History of Church of Durham.
‡ Pipe Roll, Cumberland.
§ Pipe Roll, Yorkshire.
‖ Pipe Roll, Northumberland and Cumberland.
¶ Pipe Roll, Westmerland.
** Pipe Roll, Cumberland.
†† Pipe Roll, Cumberland; Testa de Nevill.
button next page
button to main menu Lakes Guides menu.