Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/174

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Morville
168
Morville


Clarendon describes the surrender as forced upon him by the treachery of a subordinate and by the mutiny of his men ; but there is no mention of this in Waller's own official account of the surrender (see Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1644, p. 219). Morton was sent to the Tower, and was imprisoned for some years. After hostilities were concluded he returned to the bar, though his name does not figure in the 'Reports.' He became a bencher of the Inner Temple on 24 Nov. 1659, and after the Restoration his courage and fidelity were rewarded. He received the degree of serjeant-at-law in 1660, was a commissioner of assize for Carmarthenshire in 1661, was appointed recorder of Gloucester early in 1662, and counsel to the dean and chapter of Worcester. He was made a king's serjeant in July 1663, and on 23 Nov. 1665 succeeded Sir John Kelynge in the king's bench, and ' discharged his office with much gravity andlearning.' He is said to have particularly set his face against highway robbery, and prevented the grant of a pardon to Claude Duval [q. v.] after his conviction by threatening to resign his judgeship if a pardon were granted. He died in the autumn of 1672, and was buried in the Temple Church. He married Anne, daughter and heiress of John Smyth of Kidlington in Oxfordshire, by whom he had several children, of whom one, Sir James, succeeded him. Besides his lodgings in Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street, which were burnt in the great fire, he had, through his wife, a house at Kidlington, and also was lord of the manor (Anthony à Wood, Fasti Oxon. i. 63; cf. Burton, Diary, iv. 262). A portrait of Morton in his robes, by Van-dyck, belonging to Mr. Bulkeley Owen, was No. 963 in the first Loan Exhibition of National Portraits.

[Foss's Lives of the Judges ; Croke's Reports ; Visitations of Worcestershire, 1634 ; Clarendon, iv. 489 ; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661 ; Pope's Memoirs of Duval; Macaulay's Hist. i. 187.]

J. A. H.

MORVILLE, HUGH de (d. 1204), one of the murderers of St. Thomas of Canterbury, was most probably the son of Hugh de Morville, who held the barony of Burgh-by-Sands, Cumberland, and several other estates in the northern shires, in succession to his mother, Ada, daughter of William de Engaine (William of Canterbury in Materials for Life of Becket, i. 128 ; Richard of Hexham, Chron. Stephen, &c., Rolls Ser. iii. 178). He must be distinguished from Hugh de Morville (d. 1162) [see under Morville, Richard de (d. 1189)] and from Hugh de Morville (d. 1200). Hugh's mother was licentious and treacherous (William of Canterbury, ib. ; the story there given does not, as Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, p. 70, stated, refer to Hugh's wife, but to his mother ; Materials, i. xxxii. note 1). He 'was of a viper's brood.' From the beginning of the reign of Henry II he was attached to the court, and is constantly mentioned as witnessing charters. His name occurs also as a witness- to the Constitutions of Clarendon. He married Helwis de Stuteville, and thus became possessor of the castle of Knaresborough. This is denied by a writer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' 1856, ii. 381, but his authority does not outweigh that of the contemporary biographers. He was forester of Cumberland, and itinerant justice for Cumberland and Northumberland in 1170, and he held the manor of Westmereland. He had been one of Becket's men when he was chancellor ; but he had always been of the king's party, and he was easily stirred by the king's bitter words to avenge him on the archbishop. In the verbal contest which preceded the murder he asked St. Thomas 'why, if the king's men had in aught offended him or his, he did not complain to the king before he took the law into his own hands and excommunicated them' (Roger of Pontigny, Materials, iv. 73). While the others were smiting the saint he kept back with his sword the crowd which was pouring into the transept from the nave, 'and so it happened that with his own hand he did not strike him' (ib. p. 77). After all was over he fled with the other knights to Saltwood, thence to South Mailing, later to Scotland ; but he was finally forced to flee to his own castle of Knaresborough, where he sheltered his fellow-criminals (Benedict of Peterborough, Rolls Ser., i. 13). There they remained, though they were accounted vile by all men of that shire. All shunned converse with them, nor would any eat or drink with them (ib. p. 14). Finally a penance of service in the Holy Land was given by the pope, but the murderers soon regained the royal favour. In 1200 Hugh de Morville paid fifteen marks and three good horses to hold his court with the rights of tol and theam, infangenetheof, and the ordeal of iron and of water, so long as his wife, in whose right he held it, should retain the secular habit. He obtained also license to hold a market at Kirkoswald, Cumberland, on Thursdays, and a fair on the feast of St. Oswald (Lysons, Cumberland, p. 127). He died shortly afterwards (1204), leaving two daughters : Ada, married in 1200 to Richard de Lucy, son of Reginald of Egremont (Rot. de Oblatis, p. 68), and afterwards to Thomas de Multon (Excerpta e Rot. Finium, i. 17,