Chapter 72 My Ancestral Lines Back to Hugh de Moreville [Originally completed on 22 November 2020] Introduction I have started using the Geni.com website to expand my knowledge of my family tree. A key feature of this website is its “World Family Tree”. Unlike Ancestry.com, where everyone has their own complete (or incomplete) family tree, Geni.com is having its users collaboratively build just a single family tree. On Ancestry.com, there can be one thousand or more duplicate entries for the same person – and these entries often have conflicting information. On Geni.com, there should only be one entry on the entire website for any given person. Individual users on Geni.com can add their ancestral lines until they connect with people already in the World Family Tree. And then their lines immediately become part of this enormous family tree. As of late November 2020, there are just over 150 million individuals in the World Family Tree – see: https://www.geni.com/worldfamilytree A number of my ancestral lines in the World Family Tree on Geni.com go back twenty or thirty generations into the past. This chapter is about one particular ancestral line, which goes back to Hugh de Moreville, Lord Cumberland, Constable of Scotland. Warning! This is a really long chapter and probably shouldn’t be read in one sitting. Going Back Many Generations on an Ancestral Line I am voluntarily self-quarantining (or is it self-isolating?) during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, so I have lots of free time. A week or so ago, I went to the Geni.com website and started going back on various ancestral lines, just to see if I could find an interesting ancestor to write about. Here is the path I ended up taking. Burks Oakley II to Lucy Ann Eunice Darling: Lucy Ann Eunice Darling to Elizabeth Trowbridge: Elizabeth Trowbridge to Margaret Godolphin: Note that that part of the line went through Capt. George Lamberton, who I wrote about this past summer – see: http://www.burksoakley.com/QuincyOakleyGenealogy/57-GeorgeLamberton.pdf Margaret Godolphin to Sir John Godolphin I: Sir John Godolphin I to Baron William de Godolphin: Baron William de Godolphin to Constance Wise: Constance Wise back to Hugh de Moreville, Lord of Cumberland: OK, so this got me to Hugh de Moreville, Lord of Cumberland (1115-1162), and his wife Beatrice de Beauchamp, Heiress of Houghton Conquest (1107-1153). They sounded like interesting people, so I decided to look at them in more detail. Here are brief excerpts from their profiles on Geni.com: Looks like Hugh de Moreville also had the title Constable of Scotland. Here is part of the profile for Hugh de Moreville’s wife, Beatrice de Beauchamp: In looking at Hugh’s profile page on Geni.com, I saw that he was my23rd-great grandfather, and he also was my 24th-great uncle. Interesting that he was my 23rd-great grandfather, but also my 24th-great uncle. I don’t know that I have seen anything like this before. I’ll come back to this at the end of this chapter. I next went to review the main line that I took to get to Hugh de Moreville: Oh no! This happens to me all the time – this is the “shortest blood line” and NOT the line that I actually followed to get back to Hugh de Moreville. This line goes through my 2nd-great grandfather, Ezra Marvin Miller – not through Lucy Ann Eunice Darling. On this line, Hugh de Moreville was my 23rd-great grandfather. Recall that Geni.com always displays just the “shortest blood line” connecting two people. So this means that I have at least two lines going back to Hugh de Moreville. I reconstructed the original path that I followed to get back to Hugh de Moreville: Hugh de Moreville was my 26th-great grandfather on this line. Details about the Life of Hugh de Moreville It turns out that Hugh de Moreville was quite a man. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_de_Morville,_Constable_of_Scotland Hugh de Morville, Constable of Scotland Hugh de Morville (died 1162) of Appleby in Westmorland, England, hereditary Constable of Scotland, was a Norman knight who made his fortune in the service of David FitzMalcolm (d. 1153), Prince of the Cumbrians, later King of Scotland. Hugh came from Morville in the Cotentin Peninsula, in northern France. [Also known as the Cherbourg Peninsula, it is a peninsula in Normandy.] In service of David of Scotland Prince David of Scotland held Cotentin in northern France, given to him by King Henry I of England sometime after 1106. Hugh de Morville joined David’s small military retinue in France. In 1113, following his marriage, Prince David was made Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, and also became Prince of the Cumbrians, having forced his brother King Alexander I to hand over territory in southern Scotland. David achieved this with the help of his French followers. David endowed Hugh with the estates of Bozeat and Whissendine, within his Huntingdon earldom. During David’s conquest of northern England after 1136, Hugh was also given the lordship of Appleby, essentially northern Westmorland. After the death of Edward, Constable of Scotland, in 1138 at the Battle of the Standard, Hugh was awarded that office. In addition, he obtained land and lordships which placed him in the very first rank of the Anglo-Norman nobility in Scotland. These comprised the Lordship of the Regality of Lauderdale, together with detached estates at Saltoun, Haddingtonshire, Nenthorn and Newton Don, Berwickshire, at Dryburgh on the Tweed opposite Old Melrose, and probably also at Heriot in Midlothian. In the west of Scotland, he was given the whole of the Lordship of Cunningham, the northernmost third of Ayrshire. Lauderdale, with a castle at Lauder, was held, it seems, for six knights’ service; Cunningham possibly for two, with a castle at Irvine. In 1150, Hugh made a further mark on the history of southern Scotland by founding Dryburgh Abbey for Premonstratensian canons regular, where he died as a canon in 1162. Marriage and Children Hugh married Beatrice de Beauchamp, the heiress of the manor of Houghton Conquest in Bedfordshire. She is presumed to be a daughter of Robert de Beauchamp (died pre-1130). By Beatrice, he had at least two sons and two daughters, including: 1. Hugh de Morville, Lord of Westmorland (died c. 1202), who inherited his father’s estates in the north of England. He was a principal player in the 1170 murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He subsequently fell out of favor with King Henry II who in 1174 confiscated his Lordship of Westmorland (which he had inherited from his father who had received it from David I) and re-granted it to his sister, Maud de Morville, wife of William de Vieuxpont. 2. Richard de Morville, possibly the second son, who inherited his father’s Scottish estates and lands in the Honour of Huntingdon. He also succeeded to the hereditary office of Constable of Scotland. 3. Simon de Moreville (d. 1167), another possible son. He was seated at Kirkoswald, Cumbria, ward of Leath, Cumberland, and married Ada de Engaine, heiress of the Feudal barony of Burgh by Sands, Cumberland. 4. Ada de Morville, who at some time before 1157, married Roger Bertram, lord of Mitford, Northumberland. 5. Grace de Morville, another possible daughter, wife of the Cumbrian magnate Sir Hubert de Vaux, of Gilsland. Death and Burial Hugh eventually retired as a canon to his foundation at Dryburgh Abbey, where he soon died in 1162. An ancient memorial to him in the south wall is said to mark his burial-place. Here is a Google Map showing the location of Morville, Normandy, France: Here is a map from Wikipedia showing the location of the historical English county of Westmorland: Next is a Google Map showing the location of Dryburgh Abbey, which Hugh de Moreville founded: Finally, a photo of the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, where Hugh de Moreville is buried: More about Dryburgh Abbey and the role that Hugh de Moreville took in establishing it can be found on Wikipedia.org at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryburgh_Abbey Beatrice de Beauchamp Hugh de Moreville was married to Beatrice de Beauchamp, Heiress of the Manor of Houghton Conquest. Houghton Conquest is located in Bedfordshire, just south of Bedford, and I note that her brother Payne de Beauchamp held the title Lord of Bedford. It appears that the Beauchamp family had extensive landholdings in Bedfordshire after the Norman Conquest. As an aside, here is a Google Map showing the location of Houghton Conquest, south of Bedford: Note that Houghton Conquest is less than ten miles from Oakley, Bedfordshire, a wonderful little town that I visited in September 2019. But I digress…. Returning to my Ancestral Lines to Hugh de Moreville Earlier in this chapter, I wrote that I had two different ancestral lines going back to Hugh de Moreville. I previously have identified ancestors from the Middle Ages in England where I have multiple lines going back to the same person. For example, I have at least twelve different lines going back to King Edward I of England. See: http://www.burksoakley.com/QuincyOakleyGenealogy/50-MyLines-to-KingEdward.pdf I thought I should systematically go through the ancestral lines on my father’s side of the family and see if I could find additional lines back to Hugh de Moreville (remember that I have a lot of free time these days). Here is my paternal pedigree, going back to my 2nd-great grandparents: Jumping ahead, I found that I have ancestral lines going back to Hugh de Moreville through Lucy Ann Eunice Darling, Ezra Marvin Miller, Amy Griffey, and Elmony Lester.