General Notes

Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 9GWB-7M
[janet skelton.FTW]

From David Mowbray's website, www.mowfam.freeserve.co.uk:
John was still a minor at the death of his father in 1322 and wasimprisoned in the Tower of London for five years. In January 1327, on thedeposition of Edward II, he was released and given livery of his father'slands, and was summoned to parliament from10 December 1327 to 20 November1360.
Henry Plantagenet., Earl of Lancaster, for services to Queen Isabella,was granted rights over the marriage of John, and married him to hisfifth daughter Joan.
John was involved in protracted litigation from 1338 to 1347 with hiscousin Thomas de Braose concerning the great estates in Wales and Sussexwhich had come to him through his mother, Alice (nee deBraose). He alsohad a dispute, prior to his mother's death in 1322, with her secondhusband Sir Richard Peshall, regarding certain manors in Bedfordshirewhich he and his mother had granted Peshall for life, and in 1329 heforcibly entered them.
Edward III came to the throne in 1327 following the barbarous murder ofEdward II in Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. John de Mowbray was amember of the new king's council from 1328. In 1327, 1333,1335 and againin 1337, he served in the north against the Scots. The year 1333 saw theseizure of Berwick by the English. In 1337, with war against Franceimpending, 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 continentand was sent down to his Sussex estates to counter the threat of a Frenchlanding. In view of continuing Scottish troubles, 1340 saw him appointedjusticiar of Lothian and governor of Berwick-on-Tweed, and in September1341 he was commanded to furnish Ballol with men from his Yorkshireestates.
At Neville's Cross, Durham in 1346 there was a great battle where KingDavid II was captured, and also John's Scottish cousin William deMoubray. At this battle John fought in the third line, and Lanercost (oneof the chroniclers of the times) loudly sang his praises: "He was full ofgrace and kindness - the conduct both of himself and his men was such asto resound to their perpetual honour."
A truce had begun in 1347, but at its expiry in 1352, John was appointedchief of the commissioners charged with the defence of the Yorkshirecoast against the French, and had to furnish thirty men from Wales. In1354 the Earl of Warwick challenged John for the lordship of Gower, andsucceeded. The Black Prince stepped in on John's behalf, but Edward IIIruled in favour of Warwick. In 1335 the king sent John again to theScottish border.
In December 1359 he was made a justice of the peace in the Hollanddistrict of Lincolnshire and in February of the next year, he became acommisssioner of array at Leicester for the counties of Lancashire,Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Rutland. His lastrecorded duty as the king's servant was his summons to parliament in May1360. On the 4th. October 1361 he died at York in the second plagueoutbreak, having lived through the first in 1348. He was buried in theFranciscan church at Bedford.
An insight into his character is given by a deed he granted in 1359. TheNorth West of Lincolnshire is known as the Isle of Axholme and was aswampy low-lying area. In order to put an end to the disputes between hissteward and tenants in the area, he reserved a small part of hisextensive holdings for himself, and granted the remainder to his tenants'in prepetuum'. This deed was jealously preserved in Haxey church "in achest bound with iron, whose key was kept by some of the chiefestfreeholders, under a window wherein was a portraiture of Mowbray, set inan ancient stained glass, holding in his hand a writing, commonlyreported 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 werein large measures overridden, despite their protests, by the drainagescheme begun by Cornelius Verm