Hugh de Morville, Lord of Cunningham

Hugh de Morville (died 1162) was a Norman knight who made his fortune in the service of David fitz Malcolm, Prince of the Cumbrians (1113–24) and King of Scots (1124–53).

His parentage is said by some to be unclear, but G. W. S. Barrow, in his Anglo-Norman era states:

"it seems probable that the father of William, and the first Hugh de Morville, was the Richard de Morville who witnessed charters by Richard de Redvers for Montebourg and the church of St. Mary in the castle of Néhou in the early twelfth century."^[1]

Hugh came to David's service when (and because) David held Cotentin in north France, which in turn indicates that Hugh was personally from Normandy and therefore unlikely to be son of a Morville who already had settled to England.

Hugh came from Morville in the Cotentin Peninsula, territory controlled by David since it had been given to him by King Henry I of England some time after 1106. It must have been sometime soon after 1106 that Hugh joined David's small French household followers and military retinue. In 1113 David became Earl of Huntingdon-Northampton (by marriage) and Prince of the Cumbrians, after forcing his brother Alexander, King of Scots, to hand over territory in southern "Scotland".^[2] David achieved this with his French followers^[3]

David endowed Hugh with the estates of Bozeat and Whissendine from his Huntingdon earldom,^[4] (which, since they are attested as his wife Beatrice's dowry, David presumably arranged by granting Hugh the wife who was herself inheriting them - this is a usual pattern of medieval rewards to lords: the reward comes in form of inheritance of an heiress whom the favored knight marries) and the baronies of Lauderdale and (perhaps later) Cunningham in Scotland.^[5] During David's take-over of northern England after 1136, Hugh was also given the lordship of Appleby - essentially northern Westmorland.^[6] After the death of Edward, Constable of Scotland, almost certainly in 1138 at the Battle of the Standard, Hugh was given this position.^[7]

In 1150 Hugh made a further mark on the history of southern Scotland by founding Dryburgh Abbey for Premonstratensian canons regular.^[8] Hugh eventually retired there as a canon, soon before his death in 1162.^[9] An ancient memorial to him in the South wall is said to mark his burial-place.

Hugh married Beatrice de Beauchamp, the heiress of Houghton Conquest.^[10] Based on namesake traditions and land inheritance, she is presumed to be a daughter of Robert († bef. 1130) (son of Hugh), but there are no contemporary documents that state her parentage.^[11] Hugh and Beatrice had at least two sons and two daughters.^[4] Hugh de Morville, Lord of Westmorland, inherited his estates of north England. He was a principal player in the assassination of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.^[4] He subsequently fell out of favour with the king and was forfeited (1174) when the Lordship of Westmorland (which he had inherited from his father who had received it from David I) was granted to his sister, Maud, whose husband was William de Vieuxpont.^[4] Richard de Morville, possibly the second son, inherited the Scottish estates along with his father's lands in the honour of Huntingdon. He also successed in the constableship of Scotland.^[4] It has been proposed that Simon de Moreville (d. 1167), of Kirkoswald, Cumbria, ward of Leath, Cumberland, who married Ada de Engaine, heiress of Burgh-by-Sands, was a son of Hugh and Beatrice.^[12] Before 1157, Hugh II's other sister, Ada married Roger Bertram, lord of Mitford, Northumberland.^[4]

It has been suggested that Grace, wife of the Cumbrian magnate Sir Hubert de Vaux, of Gilsland, was yet another daughter of Hugh and Beatrice.

Notes

Bibliography

• Anderson, Alan Orr Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: AD 500–1286, (London, 1908), republished, Marjorie Anderson (ed.) (Stamford, 1991)
• Barrow, G.W.S., The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History, Oxford, 1980, p. 71n.
• Barrow, G. W. S., "Beginnings of Military Feudalism", in G.W.S. Barrow (ed.), The Kingdom of the Scots, (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 250–78
• Barrow, G. W. S., (editor) The Scots and the North of England in The Kingdom of the Scots, (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 130–47
• Duncan, A.A.M., Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom, (Edinburgh, 1975)
• Lawrie, Sir Archibald, Early Scottish Charters Prior to A.D. 1153, (Glasgow, 1905)
• Oram, Richard, David: The King Who Made Scotland, (Gloucestershire, 2004)
• Stringer, Keith, Early Lords of Lauderdale, in Keith Stringer (ed.), Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland, (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 44–71
• Stringer, Keith, Morville, Hugh de (d. 1162), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 27 Nov 2006
• Watt, D.E.R. & Shead, N.F. (eds.), The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from the 12th to the 16th Centuries, The Scottish Records Society, New Series, Volume 24, (Edinburgh, 2001)