Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury

- 1205

• Name	Hubert Walter
  Suffix	Archbishop of Canterbury
  Gender	Male
  Death	13 Jul 1205	Teynham, Kent, England   [1]
  Burial	14 Jul 1205	Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent, England   [1]
  Siblings	1 sibling
  + 1. Theobald Walter   d. Bef 14 Feb 1205 ▻ Maud le Vavasour ,  m. Bef 1201   2. Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury   d. 13 Jul 1205, Teynham, Kent, England
  Person ID	I300	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	5 Sep 2018

  
  

  Father	Hervey Walter,   b. of Weeton, Amounderness, Lancashire, England
  Mother	Maud de Valognes,   b. of Parham, Suffolk, England
  Family ID	F2436	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  He was raised in the household of his uncle, the justiciar of England Ranulph de Glanville, along with his brother Theobald Walter (who would become chief butler of England and Ireland and the founder of enduring lordships in Munster and Leinster); Geoffrey fitz Peter (who would succeed Hubert as justiciar, serving in that office while Hubert was chancellor); and, for a few years in the early 1180s, the future king John. One of the truly remarkable figures of his day, he was an essential part of England's ecclesiastical and secular power structures from the later years of Henry II all the way to king John. Parallel to his ecclesiastical career, first as bishop of Salisbury and then as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was justiciar of England under Richard and then chancellor of England under John. In both offices he was a reformer of uncommon energy. Among his many innovations was the triplicate chirograph record now known as the "feet of fines," so crucial to modern historical and genealogical research. As a sidebar, he can also lay claim to having been England's most quietly effective Crusader. He arrived to the Holy Land in September 1190 in an expedition that included his uncle Ranulph, the then-archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, and the earl of Derby. Conditions were dire, and by November all three of those worthies were dead. Hubert then set about reorganizing matters. He was an executor of Baldwin's will, so he was able to use some of the dead archbishop's possessions to pay the common soldiers the wages owed them. He personally led sorties against Saladin. By the time Richard arrived in June 1191, the crusader encampment was in far better shape. Hubert continued to be essential, not just as a competent commander, but also as go-between in the endless disputes between temperamental crusader leaders. When Richard took sick in 1192, it was Hubert who arranged a truce with Saladin; shortly afterward, Hubert negotiated the longer-term treaty with Saladin that gave Western Christians access to Jerusalem and to restored Latin services in Bethlehem and Nazareth. As everybody knows, Richard was taken captive in the Holy Roman Empire on his way back to England and Normandy. Inevitably, it was Hubert Walter who was among the first of Richard's subjects to reach him in captivity, and it was Hubert Walter who negotiated the terms for his release.

  
  

• Sources

  [S76] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-ongoing.