Michael Linton's Bayeux Tapestry: 1066 - A Medieval Mosaic and Puzzles

Amerenges :

for Averenges or Avranches. This house can be distinctly traced back to the father of the first Duke of Normandy, Rognavald, Earl of More. Besides his two legitimate sons, he had, by a favourite slave whom he espoused more danico, a third, named Hrollager, who settled with them in Neustria. Hrollager's three grandsons each became the founder of an illustrious Norman stock. From the eldest, Anslac de Bastembourg, came the Bertrams, Sires de Briquebec, and the younger house of Montfort-sur-Rille; from the second William, the barons of Bec-Crespin; and from the third, Ansfrid the Dane who was Viscount of Exmes, or Hiesmes, before 978, the house of Avranches. He was the first Viscount of Hiesmes that is on record, and his descendants inherited this dignity, as well as his surname of Le Gotz or Gois. Toustain Le Gois, his grandson, was Chamberlain to Duke Robert the Magnificent, Stood high in his favour, and went with him to the Holy Land; but having rebelled against his successor, forfeited the whole of his possessions, which were granted to the new Duke's mother, Arletta. Toustain's son Richard, however, who had never swerved from his allegiance, obtained his pardon, and set matters straight by a judicious alliance. He married Emma, or Emmeline, de Conteville, Arletta's daughter, who brought him back all the lands that his father had lost; and acquired numerous other estates, notably in the Avranchin, from whence he took his name. In Duke William's charter to the Abbey of St. Evroult (about 1064), he signs himself Richard d'Avranches, being at that time Seigneur or Viscount of the Avranchin. Wace mentions him at the battle of Hastings:

"D'Avrancin i fu Richarz:"

but most commentators agree that this was a mistake, and that (though he was certainly still living sixteen years after the battle), it was his son Hugh Lupus, and not himself, that came over with the Conqueror. The French authorities, however (Recherches sur le Domesday), are of a different opinion, because, according to the invariable custom of the time in Normandy, Hugh could not have borne the territorial name of Avranches till after his father's death. There is also a passage quoted by Dugdale from the cartulary of Whitby, which declares that Hugh Earl of Chester, and his brother-in-arms, William de Percy, came into England with King William the year after the Conquest, 1067.

Hugh Lupus or Le Loup, so styled from the wolf's head that he bore on his banner, D'azur a la teste de loup arrachee d'argent,^[30] was a skilful and daring leader, and whether he served at Hastings or not, at all events greatly aided his uncle in his subsequent campaigns against the Welsh. The first guerdon he received was the lordship of Whitby in Yorkshire (of which he afterwards disposed in favour of his friend William de Percy;) but a far more splendid recompense awaited him. When Gherbod the Fleming, on whom the Conqueror had conferred the Earldom of Chester, obtained leave to re-visit his own country 111 1071, and there, falling into his enemies' hands, was "cut off from all the blessings of life" in a dungeon, King William made his nephew Hugh Earl Palatine in his stead, "to hold the county as freely by the sword, as the King himself held England by the crown."^[31] He had royal jurisdiction, with the state and court of a sovereign prince, and a parliament of eight barons, nominated by himself. His special mission was to check the incursions of the Welsh, and in 1096 he joined Hugh de Montgomerie, Earl of Shrewsbury, in invading and ravaging the Isle of Anglesey. He stood loyally by William Rufus during the rebellion that shook his throne, and is charged with having mutilated and blinded his own brother-in-law, William Count d'Eu, one of the insurgents whom he had taken prisoner. His possessions were simply enormous. Beside the entire county of Chester ("excepting what then belonged to the Bishop, which was not much"), he held one hundred and twenty-four manors in different parts of the country, and the magnificence of his household is vaunted by Gaimar:

"Quiens homs estoit li quens Huons!
L'empereur de Lumbardie
Ne menoit pas tiele compagnie
Come il fesoit de gent privee."

"He was," says Ordericus, "not abundantly liberal but profusely prodigal, and carried not so much a family as an army still along with him; he took no account either of his receipts or his disbursements, and daily wasted his estate." Dugdale speaks of him more kindly. "In his youth and flourishing age," he tells us, "he was a great lover of worldly pleasures and secular pomp; profuse in giving, and much delighted with enterludes, jesters, horses, dogs, and other like vanities; having a large attendance of such persons of all sorts, as were disposed to those sports. But he had also in his family, both clerks and soldiers who were men of great honor, the venerable Anselme (Abbot of Bec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) being his Confessor; nay, so devout he grew before his death, that, sickness hanging long upon him, he caused himself to be shorn a monk in the Abbey of St. Werburge, where, within three days after, he died;" in July, 1101. This was the Abbey he had himself founded at Chester, and in which he lies buried. He had governed Cheshire for exactly thirty years "with great honour and renown."

His wife was Ermyntrude, daughter of Hugh, Count of Clermont, by whom he had three sons; Philip (probably the eldest), who died before him; Robert, a monk of St. Evroult, and afterwards Abbot of St. Edmund's-bury; and Richard, a boy of only seven years old at the time of his death, who succeeded as Earl of Chester. There were also several illegitimate children (amongst whom Dugdale includes Abbot Robert), one, named Ottiwell, who was tutor to the sons of Henry the First, and another, Geva, the wife of Geoffrey Ridel.

The young Earl grew up, and was married to a kinswoman of Royal blood, Maud, second daughter of the Count de Blois or Champagne, who afterwards reigned as King Stephen, and of Maud, Countess of Boulogne. But in the first promise and springtime of their life, he and his youthful Countess perished in the famous wreck of the "Blanche Nef," when the King's two sons and the flower of the English nobility were lost at sea; and with him were drowned his bastard brother Ottiwell, his sister Geva, and her husband. Though barely twenty-five when he met his early doom, the young Earl had already done good service to Henry I., to whom he loyally adhered from the time he was of age to bear arms. He died childless, the last of the illustrious house of Avranches, and his cousin Ranulph de Meschines became the next Earl of Chester.

A family that bore the same name, but different arms, had, however, been settled in Kent, from the time of the Conquest, and are derived by the author of the 'Norman People,' from a younger brother of Hugh Lupus. But the Norman genealogists declare this family (which existed in France as well as in England) to be entirely distinct; and are positive that the great Earl had only four sisters: 1. Judith, married to Richer de L'Aigle (Aquila.): 2. Elisende, Countess of Eu: 3. Isabella, married to a son of Gilbert, Earl of Corbeil; and 4. Matilda, married to Randolf de Briquessart, Viscount of Bayeux, who was the mother of his eventual heir, Ranulph de Meschines. Had there been a younger brother, he or his children would naturally have succeeded to the Earldom, rather than his sister's son.

This Kentish family held the great barony of Folkestone, brought in dower by the grand-daughter of William de Arques, its first Norman Lord, Maud de Monneville, who was given in marriage to Riwallon or Ruallon d'Avranches, by Henry I. Their son William is said to have founded the church upon its present site, about 1138. The line had ended with another William, fourth of the name, before 1235. His sister Maud, styled "the great heiress of Folkestone," conveyed the barony to Hamon de Crevecoeur, another puissant Kentish lord. An offset of this family, under the name of Evering (a corruption of Avranches), probably lingered in the county to the end of the seventeenth century. They held of the Honour of Folkestone the manor of Evering, sometimes called Avranches, to which they had given their name; and bore the three chevrons of their Seigneurs on a different field. "Sir William de Avranches was one of the knights who held each a portion of land for the defence of Dover Castle, being bound by their tenure to provide men-at-arms to keep watch and ward within it, at certain appointed times, and to defend each of them a certain tower in the castle; that defended by Sir William, being styled Avranches Tower."—Hasted's Kent.