John Howard and Catherine Moleyns

John Howard and Catherine Moleyns



John Howard was born 1420 in Tendring, Suffolk, England. He was the son of Robert Howard and Margaret De Mowbray. He married Baroness Catherine Moleyns, daughter of Sir William De Moleyns and MargeryWhalesborough. She was born about 1425 in Stoke Pogis, Buckinghamshire, England and died 3 November 1465 in Stoke by Nayland, Suffolk, England.

They had the following children:

Thomas Howard (1443-1524)Earl of Surrey and Duke of Norfolk
Isabel, m. Sir Robert Mortimer
Jane, m.Sir John Timperley
Anne, m. Sir Edward Gorges
Margaret,m. Sir John Syndam
Nicholas

John Howard married 2nd, Margaret Chedworth, widow of John Norreys .

Child of John and Margaret was:
Catherine, m. John Bourchier, Lord Berners, and 2nd John Norreys.

John served in Parliament in 1455 and was sheriff of Norfolk in 1461. He was a Yorkist and was knighted for his service at the battle of Towton in 1461. He was a gentleman server fro Elizabeth Woodville, Edwad IV's queen, in 1465. He was one of Edward IV's favorites. He was granted land in four counties and in London for military service in France, England and Wales. He was made Constable of Norwich castle, and he was treasurer of the king's household in 1467.

John's eldest son Thomas was severely wounded at Barnet 14 April 1471 and in gratitute to the Howard's Edward IV appointed John deputy governor of Calais and made Thomas one of the four esuires of the king's body. Thomas was also given a wealthy widow as bride in reward. He married Elizabeth Tilney, who was the widow of Humphrey Bourchier, killed at Barnet.

Sometime before 1467, John was made a baron and summoned to Parliament as lord Howard. He was appointed Admiral of the fleet that was sent to fight the Scots in 1479. He was often at court witnessing royal acts and being given royal commissions of various purpose. He was also made constable of the Tower of London in 1479.

When Edward IV died in 1483, John Howard carried the king's banner in front of the hearse in the funeral procession. He was also one of the ten knights who watched over the corpse the night before its burial.

Edward V was to be his father's successor, but Richard, Duke of Gloucester seized the throne. Melvin Duke wrote a biography of the Howards and indicated that John Howard was the actual murderer of the princes in the Tower. Other writers deny that he had any part in it. They appear to have been close to Richard of Gloucester before he took the throne, but that does not necessarily implicate them.

John Howard became hereditary earl marshal under King Richard, and with the honor there was a fee of twenty pounds a year. He was also soon thereafter made Duke of Norfolk, with an annuity of forty pounds. Thomas was made earl of Surrey and given an annuity of twenty pounds. King Richard then gave the Howards the Mowbray lands that they had been denied by his brother Edward IV.

Richard III had fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury with John Howard, and needed loyal soldiers around him in order to retain the crown he had seized. John and Thomas Howard put down a revold by Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham in 1483.

Thomas Howard was given an annuity of 1100 pounds in 1484 from lands in Cornwall, during his father's lifetime. The Howard's were given the wardship of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex. This meant that they had custody of him and the right to choose his marriage, and they basically controlled all of his inheritance until he did marry.

Thomas was made steward of Richard III's household and the duchy of Lancaster. John and Thomas were given commissions of the peace, array and jail delivery, and were frequently in royal service.

When Henry Tudor landed in Wales and became a problem to Richard III, John Howard raised troops in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. John Howard commanded the vanguard and his son Thomas was his lieutenant under Richard III, when he met Henry's forces close to Market Bosworth, 22 August 1485.

John Howard was killed and his son Thomas was wounded and taken prisoner. John was buried at a chuch in Thetford. Thomas was placed in the Tower.

Henry became, Henry VII. His steward John Radcliff, went to Ashwelthorpe and intended to seize it, but he was unable to because it was part of Thomas' wife Elizabeth Tilney's inheritance. In order to make a point though, he dismissed most of her servants.All of the rest of the Howard property was forfeited to the crown.

When Henry VII held his first parliament in 1485, it upheld his seizure of Howard lands, and passed an act of attainer for John and Thomas Howard as well as more than twenty others who had supported Richard III.

Henry pardoned Thomas Howard in 1486, but he was stripped of his title of earl and left in prison until 1489. He was allowed to keep forty shillings a week for board, and three servants. In 1489, Thomas was restored as earl of Surrey and released, but he was not allowed to take his father's title of Duke of Norfolk. The only lands he was allowed to hold were those that he had inherited from relatives other than his father and those of his wife.

Thomas Howard was then sent to Yorkshire to put down a revolt. He was successful and as a reward, he was restored to the rest of his father's lands.

Thomas' older sons, Thomas and Edward were made pages in Henry VII's household, while this was an honor of sorts, they were also a sort of hostage to ensure their father's good behavior.

In 1503, Thomas Howrard, Earl of Surrey and his wife escorted Henry VII's daughter Margaret to Scotland to meet her husband James IV.

When the king died in 1509, both Thomas the elder and the younger as well as Edward were issued black velvet livery of mourning and Edward carried the king's banner in the funeral procession. Thomas Howard, Earl Surrey, was one of the executors of the king's will. At the king's burial he and other king's officials and household members broke their staves and threw them down.







His first recorded service is dated 1452, when he followed Lord L'Isle to Guienne, and was present at the battle of Chastillon on 17 July 1453. He entered the service of his kinsman John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk (d. 1461), and on 8 July 1455 the duchess wrote to John Paston desiring him that, as it was 'right necessarie that my lord have at this tyme in the parliament suche persons as longe unto him and be of his menyall servaunts,' he would forward the election of Howard as knight of the shire for Norfolk. The Duke of York also wrote on his behalf. Some at least of the Norfolk gentry were indignant at having 'a straunge man' forced on them, and the duke was reported to have promised that there should be a free election, which made Howard 'as wode as a bullock,' but in the end he was elected (Paston Letters, i. 337, 340, 341).

It is evident that he was of service to the Yorkist cause, for on the accession of Edward IV in 1461 he was knighted, was appointed constable of Colchester Castle, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, and one of the king's carvers, and was known to have 'great fellowship' with the king. He took an active part in the Duke of Norfolk's quarrel with John Paston; he had a violent brawl with Paston in the shire-house at Norwich in August, and used his influence with the king against him, while Howard's wife declared that if any of her husband's men met with Paston he should 'go no penny for his life' (ibid., ii. 42, 53, 54). As sheriff Howard had given offence at the election of Paston and Berney, and in consequence of the many complaints preferred against him was, in November, it is said, committed to prison. His favour with the king was not diminished, for in 1462 he was appointed constable of Norwich Castle, and received grants of several manors forfeited by the Earl of Wiltshire and others. He was joined in a commission with Lords Fauconberg and Clinton to keep the seas; and they made a descent on Brittany, and took Croquet and the Isle of Rhé. Towards the end of the year he served under Norfolk against the Lancastrians in the north, and was sent by the duke from Newcastle to help the Earl of Warwick at Warkworth, and in the spring of 1464 was with Norfolk in Wales when the duke was securing the country for the king.

Howard returned home on 8 June (1464), and bought the reversion of the constableship of Bamborough Castle, worth ten marks a year, for £20 and a bay courser. During the last weeks of the year he was with the king at Heading, and presented him with a courser worth £40 and the queen with another worth £8 as New-year's gifts. On 3 Nov. 1465 he lost his wife Catharine, daughter of William, lord Moleyns, who died at his house at Stoke Nayland, Suffolk. In 1466 he was appointed vice-admiral for Norfolk and Suffolk, was building a ship called the Mary Grace, and being charged with the conveyance of envoys to France and the Duke of Burgundy remained at Calais from 15 May to 17 Sept. In the following January he married his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Chedworth, and in April was elected knight of the shire for Suffolk, spending 40l. 17s. 8d. in feasting the electors at Ipswich. Although a member of the commons he is styled Lord Howard (dominus de Haward) in a commission issued in November appointing him an envoy to France. He was in this year made treasurer of the household, and held that office until 1474. He was employed in June 1468 in attending the king's sister Elizabeth to Flanders on her marriage with Charles, duke of Burgundy .

When Henry VI was restored he created Howard a baron by a writ of summons dated 15 Oct. 1470, and styling him Baron de Howard. Nevertheless, he appears to have remained faithful to the Yorkist cause, for not only was he commanding a fleet sent to oppose the Lancastrians, but on Edward's landing in March 1471 proclaimed him king in Suffolk. A list of his retainers is extant for that year, and it may therefore be concluded that he was present at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. In June he was appointed deputy-governor of Calais, and after having sworn to maintain the succession of the Prince of Wales, crossed over thither on 3 June, and was engaged in negotiations with France, and in the May following with the Duke of Burgundy.

When Edward invaded France in July 1475 he was accompanied by Howard, who appears to have been one of the king's most trusted councillors during the expedition; he was one of the commissioners who made the truce at Amiens, received a pension from Louis XI, and met Philip de Commines to arrange the conference between the two kings at Picquigny. He remained in France as a hostage for a short time after Edward's departure, and on his return to England received from the king as a reward for his fidelity and prudence grants of several manors in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire forfeited by the Earl of Oxford. On being sent to treat with France in July 1477 for a prolongation of the truce, he and his fellow envoys negotiated with the envoys of Louis at Cambray, and in the following March and in January 1479 he was again employed in the same way. In that year also he was sent to Scotland in command of a fleet. In May 1480 he and other envoys were sent to remind Louis of his engagement that his son Charles should marry Edward's daughter Elizabeth, but their mission was fruitless. At the funeral of Edward in April 1483, Howard, who is styled the king's bannerer, bore the late king's banner.

He attached himself to Richard of Gloucester, and became privy to all his plans and doings. He was appointed high steward of the duchy of Lancaster on 13 May, and a privy councillor, and on 28 June was created Duke of Norfolk and earl marshal with remainder to the heirs male of his body, the patent thus reviving the dignities held by the Mowbrays and Thomas of Brotherton, son of Edward I, from whom he was descended on the mother's side through females. He was concerned in persuading the widowed queen [Elizabeth Woodville] to deliver up her younger son the Duke of York, that he might be lodged with his brother in the Tower. At the coronation of Richard III on 6 July he acted as high steward, bore the crown, and as marshal rode into Westminster Hall after the ceremony, and 'voyded the hall'; a few days later he was appointed admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine.

On 10 Oct. he heard that the Kentish men had risen and were threatening to sack London, and ordered Paston to come to the defence of the city. He probably accompanied Richard on his visit to the north, for he was with him at Nottingham on 12 Sept. 1484 when he was nominated chief of the commissioners to treat with the ambassadors of James III of Scotland. A story that he was solicited in February 1485 by the Lady Elizabeth to promote her marriage with the king is doubtful. When in August it was known that the Earl of Richmond had landed, Norfolk summoned his retainers to meet him at Bury St. Edmunds to fight for the king. The night before he marched to join Richard, several of his friends tried to persuade him to remain inactive, and one wrote on his gate
Jack of Norfolke be not to bolde,
For Dykon thy maister is bought and solde ;
but for the sake of his oath and his honour he would not desert the king. At Bosworth he commanded the vanguard, which was largely composed of archers, and he was slain in the battle on 22 Aug. Ho was buried in the conventual church of Thetford. He was attainted by act of the first parliament of Henry VII.

Norfolk was a wise and experienced politician, and an expert and valiant soldier, careful in the management of his own affairs, and a faithful adherent of the house of York; but his memory is stained by his desertion of the interests of the son of his old master and by his intimate relations with the usurper. By his first wife, Catharine, he had Thomas, earl of Surrey and second duke of Norfolk, and four daughters: Anne, married to Sir Edward Gorges of Wraxall, Somerset; Isabel, married to Sir Robert Mortimer of Essex; Jane, married to John Timperley; and Margaret, married to Sir John Wyndham of Crownthorpe and Felbrigg, Norfolk, ancestor of the Wyndhams, earls of Egremont. His second wife, who bore him one daughter, Catharine, married to John Bourchier, second lord Berners, survived him, married John Norreys, and died in 1494.
Rev. William Hunt.
Source:
Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. X. Sidney Lee, Ed.
New York: Macmillan and Co., 1908. 42-44.



A General and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the ...‎ - Page 232
by John Burke - 1832

Sir John espoused, secondly, Alice, daughter and heir of Sir William Tendring, of Tendring, and had two sons,
Robert (Sir), his successor.
Henry, who had by gift of his father, the manors of Teringhampton, East Walton, Bockenham, Wigenhall, and other lands in Norfolk. He m. Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Hussey...

Sir John d. in 1436, and was s. by his elder surviving son,
Sir Robert Howard, knt, who m. Margaret, eldest daughter of Thomas de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, by Elizabeth, his wife, daughter and co-heiress of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and cousin and co-heiress of Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, and cousin and co-heiress of John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. By this marriage, the inheritance of those great families became, eventually, in part vested in the house of Howard; and, by Isabel, the other co-heiress, partly in the house of Berkeley. (The above mentioned Thomas de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, was son and heir of John, Lord Mowbray, by Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John, Lord Segrave, and Margaret Plantagenet, his wife, daughter and heiress of Thomas Plantagenet, surnamed de Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, and marshal of England, the eldest son of King Edward I, by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Philip the Hardy, King of France. This Thomas de Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, was invested with the office of earl-marshal, 12th February, 1385-6, being the first so designated, his predecessors having been simply styled marshals.) Sir Robert Howard had, by this illustrious alliance, two daughters,
Margaret, m. William Daniel, Baron of Rathwire, in Ireland
Catherine, m.(second wife) to Edward Nevil, Lord Abergavenny.

And an only son,
Sir John Howad, an eminent Yorkist, not only on account of his princely birth and magnificent fortune, but from the stations of high-trust which at different periods he had filled. After distinguishing himself very early in life, in the French wars of Henry VI, Sir John was constituted, by Edward IV, in 1461, constable of the Castle of Norwich; appointed sheriff of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;and granted some of the forfeited manors of James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire in England, and of Ormonde, in Ireland. In 1408, being treasurer of the king's household, Sir John Howard obtained a grant of the whole benefit that should accrue to the king by coinage of money in the city and Tower of London, or elsewhere, in the realm of England, so long as he should continue in that office. In 1470, when he was summoned to parliament under the title of Lord Howard, he was made captain-general of all the king's forces at sea for resisting the attempts of the Lancastrians, then rallying under Nevil, Earl of Warwick, the Duke of Clarence, and others. In 1471, his lordship was constituted deputy-governor of Calais and the marches adjacent: and his summons to parliament, as a baron, continued until he was created Earl Marshal of England and Duke of Norfolk 28th June, 1483; when his son and heir, Thomas Howard, was created Earl of Surry. The duke had been previously invested with the insignia of the Garter. As earl-marshal, his grace was empowered (in the king's presence or absence) to bear a golden, staff, tipped at each end with black, the upper part thereof to be adorned with the royal arms, and the lower with those of his own family; and for the better support of the dignity of the said office, he obtained a grant to himself and his heirs forever, of L20 annually, payable half-yearly, out of the fee-farm rent of the town of Ipswich, in Suffolk. His grace was subsequently constituted lord-admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine, for life, and obtained grants of divers manors and lordships in the counties of Suffolk, Kent, Cambridge,Cornwall, Somerset, and Wilts. But he did not long enjoy these great possessions; for, the next year, being with Richard, at Bosworth Field, he fell in leading the van of that prince's army. His grace was warned by some of his friends to refrain from attending his sovereign to the field; and, the night previous to the battle, the following distich was set upon his gate:
“Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold,
For Dickon, thy master is bought and sold.”

Yet he would not desert his royal manster; but as he had faithfully lived under him, so he manfully died by his side. His grace m. first, Cathering, daughter of William, Lord Molines, by whom he had issue,

Thomas, Lord Surry
Anne, m. to Sir Edmund Gorges, of Wraxhall, Somersetshire, K.B.
Isabel, m. to Sir Robert Mortimer
Jane, m. to John Timperky, esq. Of Hintlesham, in Suffolk
Margaret, m. to Sir John Windham, of Crounthorpe and Felbrig, in Norfolk.

His grace espoused secondly, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Chedworth, knight, by whom he had one daughter,
Catherine, m. to John Bourchier, Lord Berners.

The duke was attainted by parliament, 7th November, 1485, when all his honors became forfeited: while his only son,
Thomas, Earl of Surry, being also attainted, lost his earldom. His lordship was, however, after suffering an imprisonment of three years in the Tower, restored in 1489; and created Duke of Norfolk and earl-marshal, 1st February, 114, installed a knight of the Garter, and nominated lord-treasurer. This noblemand was a distinguished military commander, and celebrated as Lord Surry, for the victory he had achieved over the Scottish monarch at Flodden, in which that prince (James IV) fell, 9th September, 1513. His grace m. first, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Frederick Tilney, knt. Of Ashwell Thorpe, in the county of Norfolk, and widow of Sir Henry Bourchier, K.B., son of John, Lord Berners, by whom he had, with other issue,
Thomas, created Earl of Surry, in the Duke's lifetime
Edward, K.G., who acquired great eminence in arms, temp. Henry VII and Henry VIII, and was made king's standard bearer for life, and admiral of his fleets, by the latter monarch; in which capacity he lost his lie in boarding a French vessel of Brest, in action, 25th April, 1513.

Edmund, marshal of the horse in the battle of Flodden Field 5th Henry VIII; m. first, Joyce, daughter, and co-heir of Sir Richard Culpepper, and had issue

John (Sir) d.s.p.
Elizabeth, m. to Thomas, Viscount Rochford, by whom she was the mother of Anne Boleyn.
Muriel, m. first to John Grey, Viscount Lisle, and afterwards to Sir Thomas Knevet, of Bokenham, Castle.

His grace espoused secondly, Agnes, daughter of Hugh Tilney, esq., by whom he had
William, ancestor of the Lords Howard, of Effingham
Thomas, who, aspiring to the hand of Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and niece of King Henry VIII, was attainted of treason, and died a prisoner in the Tower of London, in 1536.
Anne, m. to John Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Dorothy, m. to Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby
Elizabeth, m. To Henry Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex
Catherine, m. first to Sir Rhese ap Thomas, K.G., and secondly, to Sir Henry Daubeney, Earl of Bridgwater.

The duke d. 21st May, 1524, and was s. by his eldest son, Thomas

The ebbs and flows of fortune: the life of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk‎ - Page 13
by David M. Head -1995