Ralph Basset

Family/Spouse: Unknown. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Ralph Basset was born in of Drayton Basset, Staffordshire, England; died in 1211.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1144
• Alternate death: Bef 1145
• Alternate death: Abt 1145

Notes:

Justiciar of England under Henry I. Held Drayton through his marriage to Maud Ridel.

Richard married Maud Ridel between Nov 1120 and Apr 1123. Maud (daughter of Geoffrey I Ridel and Geva of Chester) was born in of Drayton, Staffordshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

A justice of England, but not, as sometimes asserted, the chief justiciar. Died as a monk.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

"Basset, Ralph (d. 1127?), justice, was included by the chronicler Orderic Vitalis in his list of new men raised from the dust by Henry I, men allegedly of obscure birth who rose by their service to Henry and acquired great wealth in the process. He came from Montreuil-au-Houlme near Argentan in Normandy, not far from the abbey of St Évroul where Orderic was a monk and to which Ralph was a benefactor. In England either Ralph Basset the justice or an earlier namesake was in 1086 an under-tenant of Robert (I) d'Oilly at Marsworth in Buckinghamshire and Tiscot in Hertfordshire. He could also have been connected with Robert d'Oilly in Normandy, given that Robert may have come from Ouilly-le-Basset. [...]

"Between 1110 and 1127 Basset was one of the most prominent of Henry I's justices, and was described by the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon as one of the 'justices of all England', a description which indicates the geographical scope of his authority, as opposed to those who acted for the king only in their own locality. As such he was an early example of a royal justice who conducted local visitations to investigate the administration of the king's rights, setting a precedent for the later general eyres. Two sessions where he presided have become well known. The first took place at Huntingdon, where a man named Bricstan was brought to trial for concealment of treasure, a case reported by Orderic Vitalis. At the second, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Basset was responsible for hanging forty-four thieves in 1124 at 'Hundehoge', probably Huncote in Leicestershire."

Notes:

Justice of England. Drowned on the White Ship.

"Ridel, Geoffrey (d. 1120), justice, is of uncertain but possibly distinguished origins. There is a single reference in the Domesday survey of Norfolk to a man named Geoffrey Ridel, who is said to have come from Apulia with the brother of Roger (I) Bigod. A family named Ridel was prominent in southern Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and a Geoffrey Ridel who is mentioned between 1061 and 1084 as a lieutenant of Robert Guiscard became duke of Gaeta. That Geoffrey Ridel the justice was well connected is suggested by the fact that his brother Matthew was appointed to the important abbacy of Peterborough in 1102, while Geoffrey himself leased the manor of Pytchley from the abbey, originally, so the abbey claimed, for one year only, though he refused to give up the estate and was still in possession at the time of his death." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

Geoffrey married Geva of Chester. Geva (daughter of Hugh "Lupus" d'Avranches and Ermentrude de Clermont) was born in of Chester, Cheshire, England; died after 1120. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 1144

Notes:

"It has been surmised that she was illegitimate, but there is no evidence on this point, the fact that she did not succeed her brother in the earldom in 1120 being no proof of illegitimacy." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

"Geva cannot have been a legitimate daughter, as otherwise she would have been heiress when her paternal half-brother drowned in the White Ship without issue. The palatine earldom of Chester then passed to the family of the viscounts of Bayeux through Geva's paternal aunt, Hugh's sister." [Peter Stewart, SGM, 21 Sep 2017]

Notes:

Earl of Chester. Called "Lupus" for his savagery toward the Welsh. Also called "le Gros"; a footnote to CP's account of him, following the statement that he stood with the king during the rebellion of 1096, notes that "his career was chiefly notorious for gluttony, prodigality and profligacy."

He founded Chester Abbey, where became a monk three days before his death. He was buried in the cemetery of St. Werburg, but his body was afterwards removed to the Chapter House by Earl Ranulph le Meschin.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Hugh's paternal family were aristocratic landowners of viking descent in the Cotentin. In 1066 Hugh was still a young man and his father vicomte d'Avranches: he was not the 'Viscount Hugh' of the Ship List and is unlikely to have fought at Hastings. Soon afterwards, however, he crossed to England in the service of King William. His first military command was Tutbury Castle in still unpacified Mercia; but probably in 1070 the king instead gave him the much more important castle in the regional capital of Chester and made him an earl. It was a significant promotion, shared, among the Conqueror's other regional commanders in Mercia, only by Roger de Montgomery, an older man close to the king.

Along with Chester and the earldom came the beginnings of a huge landed estate in England. The honour of Chester was accumulated gradually over some twenty years. From the first it was essentially northern, with scattered and not especially valuable outliers over much of the midlands and south. Cheshire was the heart of it, not for its value--a third or less of the total--but for the importance of Chester itself and the fact that the earl received every manor in the shire except the bishop's. Beyond Cheshire the honour came to include a large share of Earl Harold's northern manors and a smaller but still significant portion of those in the south, fragments of several other aristocratic estates, and the scattered holdings of a small number of king's thegns. Together they did not amount to a palatine earldom, a concept unknown in Norman England, but they did make Earl Hugh one of the most powerful men there. The earl revelled in his wealth and status, indulging himself to excess in hunting, war, women, mountains of food, reckless expense, and lavish generosity to the knights and clerks of his household. He fathered many bastards, grew grotesquely fat, and fought the Welsh with a ferocity which embedded him in their memory as Hugh the Wolf. At the same time he was at least conventionally mindful of the perils to his immortal soul, and steadfastly and conspicuously loyal to successive kings.

Hugh married Ermentrude de Clermont. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 1082
• Alternate death: Aft 1082
• Alternate death: Aft 1084

Notes:

Viscount of the Avranchin. Probably Scandinavian in origin. Shown in some sources (including CP) as a son of a "Thurstan le Goz", son of Ansfrid, a Dane.

Another persistent genealogical tradition is the identification of his wife as "Emma de Conteville," an alleged daughter of the Conqueror's mother Herleve by her husband Herluin. His wife is in fact unknown.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1101 and 1103
• Alternate death: 1102

Notes:

Also called Hugh de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis.

Count of Clermont, Breuil-le-Vert, Creil, Gournay, Luzarches, and Mouchy-Saint-Elou.

Hugues married Marguerite de Montdidier about 1080. Marguerite (daughter of Hildouin IV de Montdidier and Adele de Roucy) was born about 1050 in of Montdidier, Somme, Picardy, France; died before 1101. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Marguerite de Roucy.

Notes:

Lord of Clermont; Chamberlain of France for Henri I.

"The first Renaud (i.e. the 1054 seigneur of Clermont) was either dead by May 1061, or at any rate no longer royal chamberlain from then." [Peter Stewart, soc.genealogy.medieval, 20 Dec 2019]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1010

Notes:

Count of Montdidier & Roucy.

Hildouin married Adele de Roucy in 1031. Adele (daughter of Ebles I de Roucy and Beatrix of Hainaut) was born about 1014 in Roucy, Aisne, Picardy, France; died in 1062. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1015 and 1020
• Alternate death: 1063