Wrong Side of History

Gerald Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster, when asked by a journalist what advice he’d give to a young entrepreneur hoping to become rich, gave the helpful suggestion: ‘make sure they have an ancestor who was a very good friend of William the Conqueror’.

The late duke’s forebear Hugh d’Avranches, nicknamed ‘le gros veneur’ or the ‘fat huntsman’, had been given lands by Duke William in Cheshire, and in the 1170s his descendent Robert le Grosvenor was granted the manor of Budworth in the county. The Grosvenors still have their seat, the Eaton Estate, in Cheshire and when the duke passed away in 2016 he left £8 billion to his son. A very good friend, indeed.

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The Conquest which enriched Hugh and many others had been disastrous for the native aristocracy. As historian Elisabeth van Houts put it, ‘No other event in western European history of the central Middle Ages can be compared for its shocking effects: the carnage on the battlefield, the loss of life and the consequent political upheaval.’

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