Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/228

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Mowbray
222
Mowbray


In November 1424 Mowbray joined Gloucester in his impolitic invasion of Hainault, and in the last days of the year ravaged Brabant up to the walls of Brussels (Stevenson, Wars of the English in France, ii. 399, 409; Löher, Jakobaa von Bayern, ii. 154, 172). He returned with Gloucester to England in time for the parliament which met on 30 April 1425 (Report on the Dignity of a Peer, iv. 861). Much of his attention was devoted to endeavours to secure a recognition of his precedence over the Earl of Warwick (Rot. Parl. iv. 262-73; Ord. Privy Council, iii. 174). After the proceedings had been protracted over several weeks, a compromise suggested by the commons was accepted, by which parliament decided that the earl-marshal was by right Duke of Norfolk (Rot. Parl. iv. 274); on 14 July, therefore, Mowbray did homage as Duke of Norfolk. On the death of his mother a week later (8 July) her rich jointure estates, mostly lying in Norfolk and Suffolk, reverted to him, and Framlingham Castle in the latter county became his chief seat (Dugdale, Baronage, i. 130; Paston Letters, i. 15-18).

In March 1426, Norfolk, with eight other peers, undertook to arbitrate between Gloucester and Beaufort, and two years later (3 March 1428) helped to repel Gloucester's attempt to assert ' auctorite of governance of the lond ' (Rot. Parl. iv. 297, 327). On the night of 8 Nov. in this latter year he narrowly escaped drowning by the capsizing of his barge in passing under London Bridge (Gregory; Will. Worc. p. 760). He officiated as marshal of England at the coronation of Henry VI on, 6 Nov. 1429, and with many other nobles accompanied him to France in the following April (Gregory, p. 168; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, i. 415; cf. Ord. Privy Council, iv. 36; Rot. Parl. v. 415). The duke accompanied Duke Philip of Burgundy when he received the surrender of Gournay en Aronde, and distinguished himself during the summer in the capture of Dammartin and other places east of Paris (Wavrin, pp. 373, 393; Monstrelet, iv. 398, 405; Chron. London, pp. 170-1).

Norfolk was in London when Gloucester effected a change of ministers at the end of February 1432, and on 7 May he, with other peers, was warned not to bring a greater retinue than usual to the approaching parliament (Ord. Privy Council, iv. 113, vi. 349; Fœdera, x. 501). He attended a council early in June, but died on 19 Oct. following at the ancient seat of his family at Epworth in the isle of Axholme, and was buried by his own direction in the neighbouring Cistercian priory which his father had founded.

The alabaster tomb which Leland saw there may have been his (Itinerary, i. 39). One will (20 May 1429), abstracted by Dugdale, contains an injunction that his father's ashes should be brought from Venice and laid beside his own. By his last will, made on the day of his death, he left all his estates in the isle of Axholme and in Yorkshire, with the castles and honours of Bramber in Sussex and Gower in Wales, to his wife, Catherine Nevill, for her life (Nichols, Royal Wills, p. 226). Dugdale adds a list of nearly thirty manors or portions of manors in Norfolk and six other counties which were also included in her jointure (Baronage, i. 131; cf. Rot. Parl. vi. 168). But their only son, John Mowbray VI [q. v.], who succeeded his father as third Duke Norfolk, only enjoyed a small part of his patrimony, because his mother survived him as well as two more husbands viz. Thomas Strangeways, and John, viscount Beaumont (d. 1460). At the age, it is said, of nearly eighty she was moreover married by Edward IV to a youth of twenty, Sir John Wydeville, brother of the queen, a marriage which William Worcester denounces as a 'diabolic match' (Annals, p. 783). She was still living in January 1478 (Rot. Parl. vi. 169).

A portrait of Norfolk is figured in Doyle's 'Official Baronage,' after an engraving by W. Hollar, from a window in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry.

[Rotuli Parliamentorum; Lords' Report on the Dignity of a Peer; Ordinances and Proceedings of the Privy Council, ed. Palgrave; Rymer's Fœdera, original edition; Walsingham's Historia Anglicana, Wavrin's Chroniques d'Angleterre, aud William Worcester's Annals (printed at the end of Stevenson's Wars of the English in France) in the Rolls Ser.; Elmham's Vita Henrici V, ed. Hearne, 1727; Gesta Henrici V, ed. Williams, for English Historical Society; Monstrelet's Chronique, ed. Douet d'Arcq; Gregory's Chronicle and Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, ed. Camden Soc.; Chronicle of London, ed. Harris Nicolas; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Dugdale's Baronage; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Pauli's Geschichte Englands; Wylie's Henry IV, vol. ii.; other authorities in the text.]

J. T-t.


MOWBRAY, JOHN (VI), third Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl Marshal of England, and fifth Earl of Nottingham (1415–1461), was the only son of John Mowbray V [q. v.] and his wife, Catherine Nevill. He was born on 12 Sept. 1415 (Dugdale, Baronage, i. 131). Before he was eleven years old he figured in a ceremony designed to mark the reconciliation of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Bishop Beaufort. On Whitsunday (19 May) 1426 he was knighted by the infant king, Henry VI (Leland, Col-