Hugh de Morville, Lord of Westmorland
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Hugh de Morville (died c. 1202 or 1203) was an Anglo-Norman knight who served King Henry II of England in the late 12th century. He is chiefly famous as one of the assassins of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. He held the title Lord of Westmorland, which he inherited from his father, also named Hugh de Moreville.
Hugh is thought to have been his father's eldest son. He appears in the service of Henry from 1158. He and three other of Henry's knights, Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton, plotted Becket's murder after interpreting the king's angry words (supposedly "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?") as a command. They assassinated the archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170, and subsequently took refuge in Knaresborough Castle. The murder caused an uproar, and Henry forfeited the conspirator's lands and sent them to obtain absolution from Pope Alexander III. The Lordship of Westmoreland passed to Hugh's sister (some sources say niece), Maud, in 1174; she held the lands until Hugh's expiation. Hugh died before 1202 or 1203, when his English lands were in the hands of co-heiresses.
Supposedly Pope Alexander sent Hugh and his associates on pilgrimage to the Holy Land; whether they made it there is not known, but a Hugh de Morville appears in service to the Crusader-king Richard I in the 1190s. Whether or not this individual is to be identified with the Lord of Westmoreland, he stood hostage for Richard in 1194, when the king had been captured by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. The German poet Ulrich von Zatzikhoven claimed he got the French language sourcebook for his romance Lanzelet from Hugh de Morville.
[edit] References
- Ulrich von Zatzikhoven; Kirth, Thomas (translator) (2005). Lanzelet. Columbia University Press. ISBN 3110189364
