From the castle of Morville, in the Côtentin. “Flourished in England, in Normandy, and in Scotland.”—Sir Frauds Palgrave. Hugo de Morville, the founder of the English house, is first mentioned in a Tynemouth charter of 1138; and Simon (probably his brother) acquired the great barony of Burgh-upon-Sands, through his wife Ada de Engaine. It had come to her, with the Hereditary Forestership of Cumberland, from her grandmother, Ebria de Trivers (see Travers). Ada left two sons, of whom the eldest, Sir Hugh, married another Cumberland heiress, Helewise de Stuteville, who brought him Kirkoswald and Iazenby as her dower. “The great mountain in Cumberland, Hugh-Seat-Morvill, was named after him.” - Hutchinson. Kirkoswald became his favourite residence; and the great castle standing on the river Eden, “once the fairest fabric that eyes ever looked upon,” was built or at least castellated by him. In 1170, he was one of the four courtier-knights that hurried over from Normandy to fulfil what they conceived to be the express will and pleasure of the King in ridding him of Thomas à Beckett (see Fitz Urse). Morville, however, throughout the dreadful tragedy “retained the gentler disposition for which he was distinguished.” He, alone, struck no blow; for,’ while his accomplices were massacring the defence­less Archbishop on the pavement of his own church, and one of them, plunging his sword into the dead man’s skull, vindictively “stirred his brains,” he “contented himself with holding back at the entrance of the transept the crowds who were pouring in through the nave.” After the deed was done, he harboured the assassins for a whole twelvemonth at Knaresborough Castle, where they remained unmolested and unpursued; since it is clear that the arm of the civil law was never brought to bear upon them. “The general fate of the murderers,” says Dean Stanley, “was far less terrible than the popular tradition delighted to believe. It would seem that by a singular reciprocity, the principle for which Becket had contended - that priests should not be subjected to secular courts - prevented the trial of a layman for the murder of a priest by any other than a clerical tribunal. The consequence was, that the perpetrators of what was thought the most heinous crime since the Crucifixion could be visited with no other penalty than excommunication. That they should have performed a pilgrimage to Palestine is in itself not improbable, and one of them” (see Tracy) “certainly attempted it But they seem before long to have recovered their position. Within the first two years of the murder, they were living at court on familiar terms with the King, and constantly joined him in the pleasures of tne chase.” Hugh de Morville, Forester of Cumberland, a man of high rank and great power, who was Justice Itinerant of the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland at the very time of the murder, suffered no punishment beyond that of being discontinued in his office the following year. Yet, if free from the guilt of actual bloodshed, he was none the less an acknowledged accessory to the crime. His position in his native county was obviously never damaged. In the first year of King John’s reign, he is recorded as paying twenty-five marks and three good palfreys for holding his court as long as Helewise his wife should continue in a secular habit About the same period, he procured a charter for a fair and market at Kirkoswald, and died shortly after, leaving two daughters: Ada, the eldest, who inherited Kirkoswald, married first Richard de Lucy of Egremont, and secondly Thomas de Multon; and Joan was the wife of Richard Gemun. The sword he had worn on the day of the Archbishop’s murder was long preserved in Kirkoswald Castle; afterwards transferred to Isell (a manor that belonged to the Morvilles, as heirs of Engaine), and is now said to be attached to his statue at Brayton Castle.

His younger brother had likewise no male heir, and with him the baronial line terminated. Yet it is clear that some of his kin remained. “Of this family doubtless was Eudo de Morville, who left issue two daughters, his heirs; of whom Maud married Matthew de Columbers, which Matthew, 22 & 23 Hen. III., paid a fine for the livery of the lands of Isabel, mother of the said Maud.”—Banks.

The family had been of even greater account North of the Tweed. Hugo de Morville, the contemporary of his English namesake, was the first Constable of Scotland, and, according to the Chronica de Mailros, founded Dryburgh, one of the earliest Praemonstratentian Abbeys, in 1150. But David I., in his foundation charter (printed in the Liber de Dryburgh) to which Hugh’s own name is affixed as a witness, distinctly states that he was himself the founder, having imported from Alnwick a colony of Praemonstratents for this purpose. It is, however, certain that Hugh and his successors were the chief benefactors of the Abbey; and “in those times when,” in Chalmers’ phrase, “the monks had much to ask, and the knights and barons much to give,” few among them had ampler means of liberality. The Morvilles ranked among the most powerful Scottish barons, and held nearly the whole of Lauderdale, one of the three great divisions of Berwickshire.

Hugh died in 1162, and was followed by his son Richard, who was Constable of Scotland for twenty-seven years, and the father of William de Morville, with whom he witnesses King Malcolm’s confirmation charter to Kelso. William died s. p. in 1196, the last heir male of his house. His only sister Elena was the wife of Uchtred, Lord of Galloway; and their son, the famous Alan of Galloway, was made Constable of Scotland in right of his grandfather by William the Lion.

Yet, as in England, the name appears to have survived; for, about the middle of the next century, Sir Ingram de Morville married the widow of Sir Thomas Bruce, one of the brothers of Robert I.