Nielsen Hayden genealogy

Hugh de Morville

Male - Bef 1174


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  • Name Hugh de Morville 
    Gender Male 
    Death Bef 1174  [1
    Siblings 3 siblings 
    Person ID I554  Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
    Last Modified 11 Nov 2015 

    Father Hugh de Morville,   b. of Morville, Manche, Normandy, France Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 1162, Dryburgh Abbey, Roxburghshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Mother Beatrice de Beauchamp,   b. of Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F3905  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • One of the murderers of Thomas Becket; excommunicated by Alexander III, 25 March 1171. Died without issue.

      Not to be confused with Hugh de Morville of Burgh-by-sands, d. 1202, who was this Hugh de Morville's cousin.

      "If we take the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a whole, there are merely two important examples of partition between surviving sons, and each arose in exceptional circumstances rather than from any deep-seated family desire 'to keep English estates distinct from Scottish'. The Brus partition of c. 1138 was followed by the division of the Moreville lands: the former had been precipitated by war, the later was dictated by King Henry II. In the 1140's King David had settled the lordship of north Westmoreland upon his Constable, Hugh de Moreville of Lauderdale and Cunningham (d. 1162). But when the northern shires were surrendered in 1157, Henry II recognized the Moreville title only on the condition that Hugh stood down in favor of his (oldest?) son and namesake, subsequently a member of Henry II's military household, an Angevin royal justice, and one of the assassins of Thomas Becket. King Henry's concern to reassert systematically his powers in the north country was made fully explicit when Hugh II died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in c. 1173. Most of Westmoreland proper thereupon escheated to the crown, although Hugh was survived by his brother Richard, successor in 1162 to Lauderdale and Cunningham and the Constableship of Scotland, and by his sister Maud, wife of William de Vieuxpont II. Here the royal will made a rare intervention in succession and descent." [Earl David of Huntingdon by K. J. Stringer, Edinburgh University Press, 1985, p. 196. A footnote reads: "It has usually been assumed that the younger Hugh de Moreville's estates escheated for his support of the Scots in 1173-4."]

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