Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/239

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Mowbray
233
Mowbray

house, and permission to bear a golden truncheon, enamelled in black at each end, and bearing the royal arms on the upper, and his own on the lower (Rot. Parl. iii. 344 ; Wallon, Richard II, i. 404-5). At the same time Nottingham secured a victory in a personal quarrel with one of Gloucester's associates, the Earl of Warwick. Warwick's father in 1352 had obtained legal recognition of his claim to the lordship of Grower, a part of the Mowbray inheritance. This judgment was now reversed in Is ottingham's favour (Dugdale, pp. 236-7 ; Ann. Ricardi II, p. 201).

Nottingham was out of England from the end of February till the latter part of June on a foreign mission : his colleagues were the Earl of Eutland and Bishop Thomas Merke [q.v.], and as late as 16 June they were at Bacharach on the Rhine (Fœdera, vii. 850, 858). But the earl returned in time to serve as one of the instruments of Richard's revenge upon Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, his fellow-appellants of 1388. How far his conduct was justifiable is matter of opinion, but it was not unnatural. He was the last to join the appellants and probably the first to be reconciled to the king, and now for eight years he had been loaded by Richard with exceptional favours. He had long drifted apart from his old associates, and with one of them he was at open enmity. It must be confessed too that he was a considerable gainer by the destruction of his old friends. According to the king's story, Nottingham and seven other young courtiers, of whom all but one were related to the royal house, advised Richard to arrest Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick on 8 and 9 July. At Nottingham on 5 Aug. they agreed to appeal them of treason in the parliament which had been summoned to meet at Westminster on 21 Sept. (Rot. Parl. iii. 374; Fœdera, viii. 7; Ann. Ricardi II, p. 206). Nottingham was present when Richard in person arrested Gloucester at his castle of Pleshy in Essex, and it was to his care as captain of Calais that the duke was consigned (ib. p. 201 ; Monk of Evesham, p. 130). He may have himself conducted his prisoner to Calais, though we have only Froissart's authority for this ; but his presence at Nottingham on 5 Aug. proves that he did not mount guard personally over him throughout his imprisonment. He had for some time in fact been performing his duties at Calais by deputy (cf. Rot. Parl. iii. 377).

On Friday, 21 Sept., Nottingham and his fellow-appellants 'in red silk robes, banded with white silk, and powdered with letters of gold,' renewed in parliament the appeal they had made at Nottingham (ib. ; {sc|Adam of Usk}}, p. 12 ; Monk of Evesham, p. 136). Arundel was forthwith tried, condemned, and beheaded on Tower Hill. A strongly Lancastrian writer asserts that Nottingham, along with Arundel's nephew, the Earl of Kent, led his brother-in-law to execution, and makes Arundel taunt them with ingratitude and prophesy time's speedy revenge (Ann. Ricardi II, pp. 216-17). Froissart adds that the earl-marshal bandaged Arundel's eyes and performed the execution himself.

This seems to have been the popular belief as early as 1399 (Langland, Richard the Redeles, Early Engl. Text Soc., 1873, Pass. iii. 105-6) ; but the official record states that the execution was carried out by Lord Morley, the lieutenant of the earl-marshal (Rot. Parl. iii. 377). Adam of Usk (p. 14) mentions the presence of Kent and others who coveted the condemned earl's lands. Nottingham was at once granted the castle and lordship of Lewes, of which he had been given the custody as early as 26 July, and all the forfeited lands of Arundel in Sussex and Surrey, except Reigate (Dugdale, i. 129). On the day of Arundel's death the king issued a writ, addressed to Nottingham as captain of Calais, or his deputy, to bring up the Duke of Gloucester before parliament to answer the charges of the appellants (Rot. Parl. iii. 377 ; Fcedera, viii. 15). Parliament seems to have adjourned to Monday the 24th, when Nottingham's answer was read, curtly intimating that he could not produce the duke, as he had died in his custody at Calais (Rot. Parl. iii. 377 ; Adam of Usk, E. 15). Next day a confession, purporting to ave been made by Gloucester to Sir William Rickhill [q. v.], justice of the common pleas, on 8 Sept., was read in parliament, and the dead man was found guilty of treason. The whole affair is involved in mystery, and there is a strong suspicion that Richard and Nottingham were responsible for Gloucester's death. [For a full discussion of the death see art. Thomas of Woodstock], After the accession of Henry IV a certain John Hall, a servant of Nottingham, who was by that time dead, being arrested as an accomplice in the murder of Gloucester, deposed in writing to parliament that he had been called from his bed by Nottingham one night in September 1397, had been informed that the king had ordered Gloucester to be murdered, and had been enjoined to be present with other esquires and servants of Nottingham and of the Earl of Rutland. Hall at first refused, but Nottingham struck him on the head, and said he should obey or die. He then took an oath of secrecy with eight other esquires and yeomen, whose names he gave,