Person:John de Mowbray (6)

John was born 29 Nov 1310 in Hovington, Yorkshire, and, still a minor at the death of his father in 1322, was imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years. In January 1327, on the deposition of Edward II, he was released and given livery of his father's lands, and was summoned to parliament from10 December 1327 to 20 November 1360. Henry Plantagenet., Earl of Lancaster, for services to Queen Isabella, was granted rights over the marriage of John, and married him to his fifth daughter Joan , 28 Feb 1326/27. She pre-deceased him in 1349 and he married secondly Elizabeth de Vere

John was involved in protracted litigation from 1338 to 1347 with his cousin Thomas de Braose concerning the great estates in Wales and Sussex which had come to him through his mother, Alice (nee deBraose). He also had a dispute, prior to his mother's death in 1322, with her second husband Sir Richard Peshall, regarding certain manors in Bedfordshire which he and his mother had granted Peshall for life, and in 1329 he forcibly entered them.

Edward III came to the throne in 1327 following the barbarous murder of Edward II in Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. John de Mowbray was a member of the new king's council from 1328. In 1327, 1333,1335 and again in 1337, he served in the north against the Scots. The year 1333 saw the seizure of Berwick by the English. In 1337, with war against France impending, John was ordered to arm his tenants in his lordship of Gower. In 1338 he had to provide ships for the king's passage to the continent and was sent down to his Sussex estates to counter the threat of a French landing. In view of continuing Scottish troubles, 1340 saw him appointed justiciar of Lothian and governor of Berwick-on-Tweed, and in September 1341 he was commanded to furnish Balliol with men from his Yorkshire estates.

At Neville's Cross, Durham in 1346 there was a great battle where King David II was captured, and also John's Scottish cousin William de Moubray. At this battle John fought in the third line, and one of the chroniclers of the times loudly sang his praises: "He was full of grace and kindness - the conduct both of himself and his men was such as to resound to their perpetual honour."

A truce had begun in 1347, but at its expiry in 1352, John was appointed chief of the commissioners charged with the defence of the Yorkshire coast against the French, and had to furnish thirty men from Wales. In 1354 the Earl of Warwick challenged John for the lordship of Gower, and succeeded, The Black Prince stepped in on John's behalf, but Edward III ruled in favour of Warwick. In 1335 the king sent John again to the Scottish border.

In December 1359 he was made a justice of the peace in the Holland district of Lincolnshire and in February of the next year, he became a commissioner of array at Leicester for the counties of Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Rutland. His last recorded duty as the king's servant was his summons to parliament in May 1360. On the 4th. October 1361 he died at Hoveringham, York in the second plague outbreak, having lived through the first in 1348. He was buried in the Franciscan church at Bedford.

An insight into his character is given by a deed he granted in 1359. The North West of Lincolnshire is known as the Isle of Axholme and was a swampy low-lying area. In order to put an end to the disputes between his steward and tenants in the area, he reserved a small part of his extensive holdings for himself, and grated the remainder to his tenants 'in prepetuum'. This deed was jealously preserved in Haxey church "in a chest bound with iron, whose key was kept by some of the chiefest freeholders, under a window wherein was a portraiture of Mowbray, set in an ancient stained glass, holding in his hand a writing, commonly reported to be an emblem of the deed". The window was broken down in the "rebellious times", when the rights of the commoners under the deed were in large measures overridden, despite their protests, by the drainage scheme begun by Cornelius Vermuyden in 1626.

John was succeeded by his son, also John.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 John de Mowbray, 3rd Baron Mowbray, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

   the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

   John (II) de Mowbray, 3rd Baron Mowbray (29 November 1310 – 4 October 1361) was the only son of John de Mowbray, 2nd Baron Mowbray, by his first wife, Aline de Brewes, daughter of William de Braose, 2nd Baron Braose. He was born in Hovingham, Yorkshire.

2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 John de Mowbray, 3rd Lord Mowbray, in Lundy, Darryl. The Peerage: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe.
3.   JOHN Mowbray, son of JOHN de Mowbray Lord Mowbray & his wife Aline de Briouse (Hovingham, Yorkshire 29 Nov 1310-4 Oct 1361, bur Bedford), in Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families.