Richard of Avranches

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[edit] Richard (1101-1120: Second Earl - drowned)

(Kings: Henry I)

Window from Chester Town Hall staircase
Window from Chester Town Hall staircase
Arms
Arms


[edit] Summary

Born in 1094, he was seven when he inherited his father's vast estates (1101). In 1120, aged 26 he was drowned on the wreck of the White Ship.

[edit] Welsh Campaign

In 1114 (aged 10), together with Alexander I of Scotland, Earl Richard led an Anglo-Norman army into Gwynedd as part of a three-pronged campaign organised by Henry I of England against Gruffydd ap Cynan. The Welsh King satisfied the English King with an oath of homage and a suitable fine. The campaign soon fizzled out after the oath-giving, without combat, allowing Richard to return to Chester.

Earl Richard, gave little to Chester's Benedictine abbey during his short earldom; apart from the grant of a mill at Bache, his gifts were restricted to the city and its suburbs. There was a tradition in the abbey that he quarrelled with the abbot over the manor at Saighton and that he 'intended to alter and change the foundation of the said abbey to another religion' and that this was only prevented by his providential death in the White Ship; there may be some substance to the story as the abbacy was left vacant during the last three years of Earl Richard's life.

A curious tale is told of Richard by a monkish writer. Richard, on his return in 1119, from Normandy, where he had been educated, undertook a pilgrimage to the well of St. Winifred, and that, either in going or returning, he was attacked by the Welsh, and compelled to seek refuge in Basingwerk Abbey. In this insecure retreat, continues the monk, Richard applied for relief to St. Werburg, who miraculously raised certain sands in the estuary of the Dee, between Flintshire and the promontory of Wirral in Cheshire, which enabled Richard's constable to pass over to his assistance; and the sands said to have been thus formed, have to this day borne the designation of "the Constable's Sands." The story is interesting because most sources claim that Basingwerk was only founded some time later by the later earl Ranulf de Gernon.

[edit] The White Ship

Six years later, the line of the d'Avranches as Earls of Chester failed when Hugh's son Richard, with his illegitimate half-brother Ottuel, joined the young prince William (heir to Henry I) aboard the doomed White Ship in 1120. The ship foundered, drowning all but one, and Richard died aged 26, leaving no issue.

William of Malmesbury wrote:

  • "Here also perished with William, Richard, another of the King's [Henry I] sons, whom a woman of no rank had borne him, before his accession, a brave youth, and dear to his father from his obedience; Richard d'Avranches, second Earl of Chester, and his brother Otheur; Geoffrey Ridel; Walter of Everci; Geoffrey, archdeacon of Hereford; [Matilda] the Countess of Perche, the king's daughter; the Countess of Chester; the king's niece Lucia-Mahaut of Blois; and many others..."

Richard was married to Lucia-Mahaut, daughter of Stephen, Count of Blois. This particular Count of Blois was also the father of the Stephen who was to later become the English King and who was due to sail on the White Ship as well. Whether the events surrounding the White Ship will ever be completely clear is in doubt. The younger Stephen of Blois (later King Stephen - also Henry I's nephew and the person with the most to gain from the sinking), made his excuses and left, either because he had an attack of diarrhoea or because of outrage at the drunkenness on board.

William of Westminster writes as follows (conveniently getting the date wrong and putting the whole thing down to the wrath of God:

  • A.D. 1120. On the nineteenth of March, the light fell twice on the tomb of the Lord. The same year, king Henry, having subdued all his enemies, and arranged everything in Normandy according to his pleasure, found that joyful things were not to be unmixed with sad ones in this world. For, when his sons William and Richard, and his daughter and niece, and Richard, earl of Chester, and the stewards, and chamberlains, and cupbearers of the king, and many other nobles with them, were sailing joyfully to England, they were all wrecked at sea, and died by drowning, on the twenty-fifth of December, miserably, yet not so as to be pitied ; for their lives had been devoted to irreligious licentiousness. On which account, it is considered that they perished thus in a moment by a strange accident in a most tranquil sea.

Apparently not only were the passengers drunk but also most of the crew.

In his account of the disaster, chronicler Orderic Vitalis claimed that when the Captain Thomas FitzStephen came to the surface after the sinking and learned that William had not survived, he let himself drown rather than face the King (The accuracy of this account is debatable - it describes a full moon, but an ephemeris shows that the moon was new that night). Other souces note that William was a young man on whom many hopes rode, nicknamed ‘the Aetheling’ (an Anglo-Saxon title), because his mother Edith-Matilda was descended from The House of Wessex - so he was a part-Saxon heir to the Normans’ empire.

One source even suggests that prince William together with a few friends, had initially managed to get aboard the ship's single "life-boat" and were heading ashore. In this version they heared the cries of William's sister (Matilda, Countess of Perche) and returned to save her, only for the boat to capsize drowning all hands.

Henry I had not helped to ensure a simple succession as he still holds the record for the largest number of acknowledged illegitimate children born to any English king (around 20 or 25). After Henry heard of the disaster, it is said that he never smiled again. Desperate to secure his family's succession, he had the English barons swear an oath to uphold the rights of his only remaining legitimate child: his daughter Matilda who they were to recognise as their Queen after Henry's death. The time had not yet come for a woman to be accepted on the English throne, so when King Henry died (in December 1135), his nephew, Stephen of Blois (grandson of William the Conqueror through his daughter Adela) siezed the crown and four years later, the status quo degenerated into a patchy Civil War.

[edit] Sources - Richard

  • Britannia.com The Wreck of the White Ship
  • Victoria Chandler, "The Wreck of the White Ship", in The final argument : the imprint of violence on society in medieval and early modern Europe, edited by Donald J. Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon (1998)
  • Robert Lacey, "Henry I and the White Ship" in Great Tales from English History (2003)
  • Rossetti's the "White Ship"
  • A children's version of the White Ship story
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