Hugh de Morville, Lord of Cunningham and Lauderdale

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." [Barrow, pp. 70–71n.]

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". [Richard Oram, "David: The King Who Made Scotland", (Gloucestershire, 2004), pp. 59–63; A.A.M. Duncan, "Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom", (Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 134, 217–8, 223.] David achieved this with his French followers [A.O. Anderson, "Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: AD 500–1286", (London, 1908), republished, Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson (ed.), (Stamford, 1991), p. 193.]

David endowed Hugh with the estates of Bozeat and Whissendine from his Huntingdon earldom,cite web | author = Keith Stringer | title = Morville, Hugh de (d. 1162) | work = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19378 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/19378 | accessdate = 2006-11-27 ] and the baronies of Lauderdale and (perhaps later) Cunningham in Scotland. [G.W.S. Barrow, "Beginnings of Military Feudalism", p. 251; Keith Stringer, "Early Lords of Lauderdale", in Keith Stringer (ed.), "Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland", (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 46-7, implies that he got his English possessions first, but his patron David acquired his English and southern 'Scottish' possessions at the same time, and there is no evidence that he granted out his English possessions before granting out his Scottish possessions.] During David's take-over of northern England after 1136, Hugh was also given the lordship of Appleby - essentially northern Westmorland. [Keith Stringer, "Morville, Hugh de (d. 1162)"; G.W.S. Barrow, "The Scots and the North of England", p. 138.] After the death of Edward, Constable of Scotland, almost certainly in 1138 at the Battle of the Standard, Hugh was given this position. [Sir Archibald Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters Prior to A.D. 1153", (Glasgow, 1905), p. 379.]

In 1150 Hugh made a further mark on the history of southern Scotland by founding Dryburgh Abbey for Premonstratensian canons regular. [D.E.R. Watt, & N.F. Shead, (eds.), "The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from the 12th to the 16th Centuries", The Scottish Record Society, New Series, Volume 24, (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 101.] Hugh eventually retired there as a canon, soon before his death in 1162. [Keith Stringer, "Early Lords of Lauderdale", p. 46.] An ancient memorial to him in the South wall is said to mark his burial-place.

Hugh married Beatrice, the heiress of Houghton Conquest, and daughter of Robert de Beauchamp, a son of Hugh de Beauchamp of Bedford. They had at least two sons and two daughters, including his successor, Richard de Morville. Another son, Hugh de Morville, Lord of Westmorland, was a principal player in the assassination of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. 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. Hugh II's other sister, Joan (d.1247), married Richard, a younger son of Ralph Gernon of Bakewell, Derbyshire.Fact|date=February 2007

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 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19378, 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)

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