Hugh de Bocland
anglo-Norman nobleman
Hugh de Bocland or Hugh of Buckland (died 1119?), was sheriff of Berkshire and several other counties.
Origins
Bocland received his surname from the manor of Buckland, near Faringdon, in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), of which he was tenant under the monastery of Abingdon.
Career
Before the death of William Rufus, he was already High Sheriff of Berkshire and he is stated in the Abingdon Chronicle to have been one of the persons who profited by the unjust transactions of Modbert, whom the king appointed to administer the affairs of the monastery in the interest of the royal revenues, during the period when the office of abbot was vacant. He was ordered by Henry I to restore to the abbey the possessions which he had in this manner wrongfully obtained. Notwithstanding this, the Abingdon historian gives Hugh a high character for uprightness and wisdom. The same authority states that he was held in great esteem by Henry I, and that he was sheriff of eight counties. Six of these, the evidence of charters enables us to identify, viz. Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, and Middlesex. It is sometimes stated that Hugh de Bocland was Justiciar of England, but this assertion is extremely questionable. It is true that he is so described in the copy of Henry I's charter of liberties, which Matthew Paris quotes as having been read to the barons in 1213; but in the obviously more accurate copy of this charter, given by the same historian under the date 1100, the designation of justiciar is wanting.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q11800350. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1119, 1213 and 1100.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hugh de Bocland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.