Hugues d\' Avranches

Hugues d' Avranches (v. 1047 - Chester, July 27th 1101), Viscount of Avranches and 1st Count de Chester, was one of the large tycoons Normands of England. It was sometimes called Hugh Lupus (Hugues the Wolf).

Portrait

He was the son of Richard '' Goz '' († after 1082), Viscount of Avranches, and Emma, perhaps girl of Herluin de Conteville and Arlette, the mother of the Conquérant, but filiation is not proven.

The Norman chronicler of the 12th century, Vital Orderic, draws up a negative portrait of Hugues d' Avranches. “ It was not liberal but spendthrift It kept any measurement neither to give, nor to receive; daily it devastated its goods and supported much more the bird-catchers and the hunters that the farmers and the priests It devoted without reserve to all the carnal pleasures ”. Vital reproaches him in particular for multiplying the concubines and for being a goinfre. So much so that at the end of his life, Hugues had become so large that it could hardly go. It was then called Hugues the Large . Always according to the Norman chronicler, the Viscount of Avranches had habit to surround himself by an excessively many domesticity. As many character traits and attitudes which scandalized the monk Vital.

Hugues d' Avranches in Normandy then in England

He inherited his father not only the Vicomté of Avranches, but also of other grounds disseminated through the east of the Normandy.

He became an important adviser of Guillaume, the Duc of Normandy. Its contribution, at the time of the Conquest of England, was of 60 ships. It probably took part in the Bataille of Hastings in 1066.

At the time of the Rebellion of 1088, Hugues d' Avranches is one of rare the large Anglo-Norman barons not to support revolted against the king.

Hugues fought in the Vexin against the French in 1097. In 1100, Henri I {{er}} Beauclerc succeeded William Rufus like King d' Angleterre. Hugues d' Avranches joined himself the new sovereign.

Hugues d' Avranches vis-a-vis the Welsh

Hugues, count de Chester since 1071, having the capacities of a king on his new territory, benefitted from this opportunity to pass the major part of his life to be fought against his Welsh neighbors, and to establish of force a control on all the north of the border with the Wales. He will penetrate the unfavourable territory along the coast, and extended his territory until Bangor, where he establishes one évêché in 1092, and in the island of Anglesey. The Welsh called it Hugh Flaidd , i.e. Hugues the Wolf .

He dies in 1101 in the monastery Benedictines Holy-Vaubourg which he had founded with Chester and in which he had withdrawn himself a few days before, feeling death to come, but was deposited in 1102 by Anselme of Canterbury.

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