John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk

Henry V, while Prince of Wales, presenting Thomas Hoccleve's, Regement of Princes to John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, 1411-1413, British Library

Arms of Sir John Mowbray, 5th Earl of Norfolk, at the time of his installation into the Most Noble Order of the Garter. ^[1]

Sir John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, 9th Baron Segrave, 8th Baron Mowbray KG, Earl Marshal (1392 – 19 October 1432) was an English nobleman.

Youth and early career

John Mowbray was born in Calais in 1392. He was the younger of two sons to Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk and his second wife Elizabeth Fitzalan.Thomas Mowbray had died in 1399, and in 1405 John Mowbray's elder brother, Thomas, rebelled against King Henry IV. The rebellion failed, Thomas was beheaded for treason, and John succeeded to his father's earldoms of Norfolk and Nottingham as 5th and 3rd earl respectively. Whilst still only about sixteen in 1407, he was made a ward of his great-aunt Joan, Countess of Hereford (who was also the king's aunt). She received an annuity to pay for his upkeep which increased from £100 to £300 per annum by 1410, in which year he left her wardship and became a ward of the king.^[2]

John Mowbray entered the king's royal household the same year, and almost immediately, although still in his minority, began receiving his patrimonal estates. The following year, Henry IV re-granted Mowbray's wardship to Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, a major northern magnate who had by this time repeatedly supported Henry against various rebellions in the region. Westmorland paid £2000 for both the custody and marriage of Mowbray; on 12 January the following year, John married Neville's eldest daughter, Katherine. By this time he also received the return of his family's hereditary office of Earl Marshal, which had been granted to Westmorland in 1399 on the death of John's father.^[2]

King Henry IV died in March 1413, and was succeeded by his eldest son, who became Henry V. It was probably at his coronation, on 9 April that year, that Mowbray first exercised his office of Earl Marshal, and as a fee he was paid with a silver dish, worth, approximately, twenty-five marks. Furthermore, one of the old King's last acts, in early March, had been to restore Mowbray to full seisin of his estates, and to confirm him as earl of Nottingham. Two days after the king's death, the earl was summoned to the parliament for the first time.^[2]

Military service in France

Under Henry V

By the Spring of 1414 the new king was publicly reiterating the claim to the French throne that English Kings had traditionally upheld.^[3] By April the next year Mowbray indentured with the King for military service in France, contracting to supply four knights, forty-five men at arms, and 150 archers.^[2] Providing this contingent and other preparations cost him £2,500, of which, eventually, only £1,450 was returned to him in capaign wages.^[4] The expedition was du to leave from Southampton in August 1415; just before it did, however, a treasonous plot against Henry V was uncovered, which involved his cousin, Richard, Earl of Cambridge. Due to his position as Earl Marshal, Mowbray led the investigation into the plot on 1 August; four days later he sat in judgement upon them in a trial which ultimately condemned the conspiritors to death.^[2]

Henry V's expeditionary force landed in France on 14 August, and Mowbray took part in the first major engagement, the Siege of Harfleur. It was also his last engagement of the campaign- having caught the dysentery that was ravaging the English army, he (and around a quarter of his force) returned to England in October to recover. As a result, John Mowbray was unable to take part in what became the most famous battle of the campaign, at Agincourt, soon after he left France. He recouperated at his family seat at Epworth, Lincolnshire, although he had recovered sufficiently by November to travel to London to welcome the victorious Henry V home.^[2] Early the following year he also took part in the welcoming committee that greeted the Emperor Sigismund at Dover on his visit to England, which resulted in the Treaty of Canterbury of 1416.^[5]

The following year Mowbray again contracted to go to France, this time with a bigger force than before, at 100 mem-at-arms and 300 archers; he would not return to England for another five years. During this period of the war he took part in some of the major sieges of the campaign, for example, those of Caen, Louviers, and Rouen. In February 1419 he was appointed to the captaincy of two French towns, but it appears that Henry V- realising that these appointments would keep Mowbray occupied there, and "being apparently unwilling to proceed without his marshal"- cancelled them soon after. It was as a consequence of this that Mowbray took part in the Sieges of Évreux Vernon, Ivry, Gisors and Melun later that year, the latter of which he played a major role, receiving its surrender in October that year.^[2]

The following year, 1420, saw continued military successes for Mowbray, and the extent of his activity is indicated by the fact that he had to allow duties in England to pass by. He passed Christmas 1419 with the king at his Rouen base, until March, when he captured the town of Fresnay-le-Vicomte (with John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon), which was swiftly followed by the Battle of Le Mans the same month, in which the Dauphin, Charles Valois, was routed. That Chrstmas he indentured again with the king, this time accepting the captaincy of Pontoise and contracting to provide 60 men-at-arms and 180 archers for the purpose. This appointment- Rowena Archer described it as an 'onerous' one- was sufficient to prevent Mowbray from accompanyng the King to England. Mowbray was only able to travel with Henry as far as Amiens; the king had just married Katherine of Valois and they were travelling to England for her coronation. Mowbray should have attended per his office of Earl Marshal; the earl of Worcester deputised for him. Similarly, when Mowbray was elected to the Order of the Garter, his installation had to be received for him by Rowland Lenthal, later High Sheriff of Hertfordshire.^[2]

With the duke of Gloucester

What has been described a 'curious' episode in Mowbrays career occurred in 1424. Already friends with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, when the duke decided to invade the Flemish province of Hainaut in November that year, Mowbray journeyed with him. Little is known of this expedition except that, having raided Brabant, it was probably profitable for Mowbray.^[2]

Under henry VI

Mowbray was still in France when King Henry returned in 1421, and was only when the king died unexpectedly at the end of August 1422 that the earl returned to England accompanying the corpse. He attended parliament that year, although he was summoned under the name 'Thomas,' and Archer posits that that clerical error is indicative of how little, due to his French service, he was known in England. However, within a year he had contracted again to serve abroad, on this occasion bringing 115 men-at-arms and 300 archers with Lords Willoughby, Hungerford, and the duke of Exeter. Although Mowbray did not participate in the Battle of Cravant, which took place on 31 July 1423, he was not inactive; having taken part in so many sieges in his career, he was assistingJean de Luxembourg in his efforts to relieve Bohain, and later the Lyonnais catle of La Folleye.^[2] Rowena Archer suggests, however, that it was around this time that his martial enthusiam for royal service began to pale; "It had owed much to his personal service to Henry V and to his office as marshal." But the new King was a baby, and with no further major campaigns taking place during the young king's minority, Mowbray's office of Earl Marshal was effectively unused.^[2]

Later career and death

John Mowbray nearly drowned in the River Thames in November 1428 after his barge capsized after hitting a pier beneath London Bridge; he lost a number of his household in this accident. ^[6]By May 1429 he had written his first surviving Will. In fact, the first major occasion on which he performed the office again was the king's coronation at Westminster. Mowbray also took part in the frst major campaign of Henry VI's reign which was a direct follow-on from the London coronation. In 1430 it was decided by the King's Council to crown Henry in both England, at Westminster Abbey, and then in France, hopefully in Paris. Mowbray contracted to bring a large force of 120 men-at-arms and 360 archers and led the army that accompanied the royal entourage. In an attempt to aid the duke of Burgundy, Norfolk launched an assault on Gournay-sur-Aronde with 1,000 men, and likewise took part in other attacks on Dammartin and La Chasse in the Île-de-France. However, he had returned to England before the Rouen coronation of Henry in December 1431.^[2]

John Mowbray died on 19 October 1432 at Epworth, Lincolnshire, where his father had founded a monastery. He had written his second Will that same day, and like the first one it requested that his father's bones be returned from Venice^[2] (where he had died of plague returning from Crusade),^[6] and buried on the Isle of Axholme. Mowbray too requested interment there.

Estates and income

John Mowbray's wealth was adversely affected by his service in France. The Agincourt campaign, for example, cost him £2,000 (and he paid even down to the cost of his personal privy seat). In spite of his years of fighting there, however, he had never received any lands or titles based on conquest.^[2] Equally affecting his English estates was the fact that substantial dowers were stuill in the hands of his mother and sister-in-law, Constance Holland (1387–1437) (his brother's widow, and daughter of John Holland, Duke of Exeter). On his mother's death, however, in 1425, Mowbray received her dower estates, concentrated in East Anglia, centred around Framlingham Castle, which he took over.^[2] Although he seems never to have been a particularly active councillor to the King, he nevertheless received 300 marks payment a year for the office, and, indeed, even on his death bed, he was still owed a portion of £1,300 arrears from the governement.^[2] He had, however, been the first Mowbray to gain possession of the Brotherton and Seagrave estates that had been in possession of his grandmother Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk, who had died in 1399.^[2]

Precedence and the dukedom of Norfolk

Throughout his life Mowbray was obsessed with his 'rigts and privileges,' even arguing with Henry V over the powers and extent of his office Earl Marshal. His concern for establishing- and aygmenting- his own authority was such that he was drawn in dispute with Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick after claiming that hiis own earldom of Norfolk had precedence in the English peerage, and outranked that of Warwick. Mowbray first climed precedence in 1414; the situation was not resolved until 1425, when the question was put to parliament. The House of Commons, as Archer puts it, was able to 'neatly side-step' the issue by recommending that Mowbray be returned to his family dukedom. A month later, on 14 July, John Mowbray paid homage to Henry VI as the second Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. ^[2]

Family

He married Lady Katherine Neville, daughter of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and had only one son, John, born just before his father returned ill from France in 1415.^[2] Seventeen-year old John Mowbray succeeded his father to the dukedom of Norfolk in October 1432, while Katherine lived for over fifty years more, and married three more times.

Character

Mowbray's most recent biographer has not overemphasised his positive qualities. She has decsribed his contributions to the political weal as "at best routine, at worst half-hearted," and notes generally how little he went out of his way to actively particuipate in domestic politics. Even councils he attended were mostly focussed on organising his foreign expeditions; in fact, he "did the minimum amount expected"of him in terms of the running of the country during the king's minority. She does however note that, being on friendly relations with both the duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort as he was throughout the king's minority, he was active in keeping the peace and arbitrating between them on occasions during their periodic feud.^[2] Yet, if he kept the peace between those two men, he was perfectly capable of entering into his own feuds as he showed in November 1428, when he was in a violent dispute with the earl of Huntingdon.^[2]

References

See also

• Dukes of Norfolk family tree