MOREVILLE (ancestor of Alan of Galloway)

[Kathleen Much]

Here's a little bit on the MOREVILLEs.
G.W.S. Barrow, _The Kingdom of the Scots_ (London, 1973), pp.
323-4: "Morville is from Morville, a few kilometres south-west of
Brix, and the Morvilles were prominent tenants on the Honour of
Huntingdon. The family's main stem were vassals of the Norman Honour
of Vernon, which had its _caput_ at Nehou a few miles further south.
The closeness of the Scottish Morvilles to the Norman and Wessex lines
of the family is shown by the fact that Morville charters in Scotland
were witnessed by Alexander de Nehou, Richard de Nehou, and William de
Nehou."
D.G. Manuel, _Dryburgh Abbey_ (Edinburgh, 1922), p. 47: quotes
Chalmers, _Caledonia_ iv, ch. 1, p. 503: "Hugh de Morville came from
Burg in Cumberland. . . . [He] became Constable of Scotland. . . . He
was the original founder of the monastery of Dryburgh, and died in
1162. By Beatrice de Bello Campo, his wife, he left Richard de
Morville, who . . . became the principal minister of William the
Lion." Hugh had "assumed the canonical robe of the monks of Dryburgh."
K.J. Stringer, ed. _Essays of the Nobility of Medieval
Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 64, gives name of Richard de
Morville's wife as Avicia.
G.W.S. Barrow, _The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History_
(Oxford, 1980), p. 17: "In 1200 . . . Helen de Morville, heir of her
father Richard and of her grandmother Beatrice de Beauchamp, was
entitled to four knights' fees respectively at Bozeat, Northants,
Whissendine and Whitwell in Rutland, Offord in Huntingdonshire, and
Houghton Conquest beside Bedford--the 5 hides at Houghton having been
originally acquired by Hugh de Beauchamp, Beatrice's grandfather,
probably not long before 1086." And p. 31: "As a consequence of
Malcolm IV's subjugation of Galloway in 1160, Hugh de Morville the
younger, son of Hugh de Morville the elder who died, as constable of
the king of Scots and founder of Dryburgh Abbey, in 1162, was put in
possession of Borgue, between Kirkcudbright and Gatehouse of Fleet,
but evidently abandoned this estate after the anti-foreign revolt of
Uhtred and Gilbert of Galloway in 1174, when, as Roger of Howden tells
us, the Gallovidians slew or expelled the officials placed over them
by the Scottish Crown, killed many Frenchmen and Englishmen, and
destroyed those castles--no doubt of the motte and bailey type--which
the incomers had had time to erect in that stubbornly separatist
province."
Wood, _Scots Peerage_, p. 78, gives the MOREVILLE arms: "three
chevrons". I suspect something was left out. No colors or other
insignia are stated in the transcript I have.

Kathleen Much
kath...@casbs.stanford.edu