Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/118

 His brother William died on 17 Sept. 1265, and was buried in Newenham Abbey.  MOHUN or MOION, WILLIAM (fl. 1066), baron and sheriff of Somerset, took his designation from the lordship of Moyun, near St. Lo in Normandy, which remained in his family until 1204 (, Dunster and its Lords, p. 2 ; Somerset Archæological Society's Proceedings, xix. ii. 96). He followed Duke William when he invaded England in 1066 (, Roman de Rou, 1. 13620 ; by a curious error he is stated to have had in his following forty-seven or fifty-seven of the greatest lords in the army,, Collectanea, i. 202 ; , Baronage, i. 497 ; , Hist. of Somerset, ii. 7; for the correction of this misstatement, see , The Conqueror and his Companions, ii. 120, and , u.s.) In calling him 'le viel,' Wace merely distinguishes him from his son ; for as William de Moion the elder was alive in and perhaps after 1090 he can scarcely have been old in 1066. He received as many as sixty-eight manors in the west of England, one being in Devonshire, one in Wiltshire, eleven in Dorset, one of them Ham, which fell to a younger branch of his descendants, and was called Ham-Mohun, or as now Hammoon (, Key to Domesday, Dorset, p. 12), and fifty-five in Somerset. In the ' Domesday Survey ' it is noted that he himself held 'Torre, and there is his castle.' Torre is Dunster, where on the conical hill, or tor as it is still called, William no doubt found a fortress of older days, which he probably to some extent remodelled, though no remains of Norman work have been found on the tor ( ap., Dunster, u.s. p. xiv). His home estate consisted of the an- cient hundreds of Cutcomb and Minehead, in the parishes of Minehead, Cutcomb, and Dunster, with some additions, being in all 19,726 acres. He evidently paid some attention to the breeding of horses, for both at Cutcomb and Nunney, near Frome, where he had a tenant, there were kept large numbers of unbroken brood-mares (, Domesday Studies, Somerset, i. 129, ii. 19, 25). Either in his lifetime or shortly afterwards his estates were formed into an 'honour,' Dunstan being the 'caput honoris.' He was sheriff of Somerset, whence his estate at Brompton-Ralph is in a coeval index called 'Brunetone Vicecomitis' (ib. i. 110). William de Moion is usually spoken of as the founder of Dunster priory (Monasticon, iv. 200). What exactly he did in this matter was that at some date between 1090 and 1100 he granted the church of St. George, at Dunster, where some Norman work still remains (Somerset Archceological Society's Proceedings, vi. ii. 6), together with certain land and tithes and a tenth of his mares, to the abbey of St. Peter at Bath and John de Villula (d. 1122) [q. v.], the bishop, that they might ' build and exalt ' the said church. The convent of Bath accordingly made at Dunster a cell of their own abbey under the rule of a prior (, u. s. pp. 4 and 27, where William's charter is given from a manuscript at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge). William in this charter declared his wish to be buried in Bath Abbey (he was therefore not buried at Dunster as Leland, u. s., records). His wife's name was Adelisa, and he had three sons, William de Mohun, earl of Somerset [q. v.], who succeeded him, Geoffrey, and Robert, all living at the date of his grant to Bath.  MOHUN, MOION, or MOYNE, WILLIAM (fl. 1141), eldest son of William de Mohun (fl. 1066) [q. v.], by his wife Adelisa, was possessed of forty-four knights' fees, and in 1131 was present at the council held by Henry I at Northampton, and one of the witnesses of the charter there granted by the king to the church of Salisbury. He rose against Stephen in 1138, and, relying on the strength of his castle of Dunster, committed many deeds of violence and 