Catalogue description THE MOWBRAY ESTATE

The Mowbray family benefited from a number of inheritances which fell to it over a period of little more than a century (1311-1415), but then itself failed in 1481, when its lands were divided between the Howards and the Berkeleys. [GEC ix. 367-85.]

Nigel d'Aubigny (d. 1129) was, like his elder brother William (d. 1139) [Henry I's butler; his son William (d. 1176) married in 1138 Adeliza, the king's widow, who had the castle and honour of Arundel in dower, and he was created earl of Arundel: GEC i. 233-5.] in the service of Henry I, who granted him some of the lands of the rebel Robert de Mowbray, earl of Northumberland, and the English lands of Robert de Stuteville. Nigel married Mowbray's widow Maud and, secondly, Gundred de Gournay, mother of his son and heir Roger. Roger, who after a turbulent career died in Palestine in 1188, adopted the surname of Mowbray from the Norman lordship of Montbrai. His son heir Nigel (II) died at Acre in 1191 and was succeeded by his son William (d. 1224), who left sons Nigel (III) (d.s.p. 1230) and Roger (II) (d. 1266). The Norman lands were lost in 1204 and some lands were restored to the Stutevilles by a compromise with the heirs, but the Mowbrays were left with a substantial inheritance in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Their patrimony lay mainly in three well defined groups: the barony of Thirsk included Thirsk with the borough and three other manors in north Yorkshire, Burton-in-Lonsdale in the far west, Kirkby Malzeard near Thirsk and Hovingham in the east; the Isle of Axholme had its caput at Epworth and included the neighbouring manors of Belton, Haxey and Owston Ferry (then two manors, Owston and Ferry), just south of the Humber in Lincolnshire, and the manor of Crick in Northamptonshire; in the 14th century other manors lay in Lincolnshire and the Midlands, notably Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. There was also the manor of Ryarsh in far-off Kent.

To their patrimony the Mowbrays added considerably by several fortunate marriages, although none of the acquisitions was entirely free from trouble or delay. In 1265 Maud, wife of Roger (II), became a coheir with her two sisters to the barony of Beauchamp of Bedford following the death of her brother John de Beauchamp, killed at Evesham in Aug. 1265 [There was another brother Simon; his daughter Joan was in Feb. 1263 in the custody of Roger de Mowbray, who was then ordered to deliver her to Isabel, Simon's widow, but Joan died without issue: GEC ix. 376.] Roger died the following year leaving a son and heir, Roger (III), a minor whose wardship was granted to Richard of Cornwall. Richard regranted it to the widowed Maud at 400 marks a year. She quickly married again, to Roger Lestrange of Ellesmere, a younger brother of John Lestrange of Knockin (d. 1276), and arranged the young heir's marriage to Rose, a daughter of Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, in 1270. Maud had died by April 1273, but unfortunately for the Mowbrays she had issue by Lestrange, who held her lands by the courtesy of England for another 38 years until his death in 1311 [Roger Lestrange, though summoned to parliament in 1295 and 1297, held no lands in fee, and for that reason his later wife, another Maud, was granted an annuity: GEC xii (1), 346-7. He held Ellesmere for life only.] As the eldest sister, Maud had Bedford and the manors of Haynes, Willington, Stotfold, Wootton and Bromham, all in Bedfordshire, and holdings in Barford (Beds.) and Linslade (Bucks.). Those lands, held as a third of the barony of Bedford, eventually came to Maud's grandson John (I) de Mowbray, who had succeeded his father Roger in 1297 aged eleven.

John was evidently ambitious to increase his estate and two events gave him the opportunity. The first was the childless death of William de Vescy at Bannockburn in 1314. [For the Vescys: GEC xii (2), 279-85.] William was an illegitimate son on whom his father William de Vescy (d. 1297) had settled the family's lands in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, with reversion to the father's right heirs. In 1314 there was difficulty in tracing the right heirs, but one was eventually found in Gilbert de Aton, a distant cousin. To add to the confusion, much of the inheritance was in the hands of widows, and various claims were made to portions of the estate. Roger Mortimer of Wigmore claimed the manor of Wintringham, which was held of him, as an escheat for lack of heirs, and Mowbray may have done the same with Malton, held of him, since in 1318 Aton granted it to Mowbray for life. [CIPM v, nos. 534-5. Thomas Wake, whose ancestor had married the Stuteville heiress, claimed the manor of Langton as having been granted by Robert de Stuteville to Eustace de Vescy (d. 1216) in free marriage with Robert's daughter Burge, and a similar claim was made for the manor of Saxlingham (Norf.). Mowbray had been granted custody of the castle and manor of Malton in Sept. 1317: GEC ix. 378.] Not content with that, Mowbray also seems to have struck a deal regarding a valuable group of Vescy manors based on Newsholme, near Howden (Yorks.), including the manors of Thornton, Gribthorpe and Brind with appurtenances in Loftsome, Wressle, Bubwith and Holme upon Spalding Moor. They were held in dower by Clemence, widow of the bastard William's legitimate brother John (d.s.p. 1295). [In Aug. 1290 William de Vescy had confirmed his son John's grant of dower to Clemence at the church door of £200 of land in Newsholme and Sproxton (Roxburghshire): CCR 1288-96, 144. In 1297 William granted the reversion of Sproxton to the king. Clemence was of foreign birth and one of the many kinswomen of Queen Eleanor for whom Edward I provided; after Edward's death she lived mostly abroad.] They lay in south Yorkshire, just over the Humber from the Isle of Axholme, and were thus strategically located between the two parts of the Mowbrays' barony of Thirsk. In 1335 John de Mowbray's son and heir, John (II), agreed to lease those manors from Clemence at £92 a year for her life, and at her death in 1343 it was said that she had a yearly farm of £92 for her life from the manors and that Mowbray held them in fee. [CIPM vii, no. 528.] They remained in Mowbray hands thereafter, a valuable addition to the inheritance acquired in dubious circumstances.

The second event came with the death of John (I)'s brother-in-law, William de Breouse the younger, between April 1315 and May 1316. [GEC ii. 302-3. John had been married to Aline in 1298, the year after his father's death, when he was 12; in March 1299 William de Breouse acknowledged that he owed Roger Mowbray's executors 500 marks for the marriage, which had therefore been arranged before Roger's death.] It left John's wife Aline and her sister Joan as coheirs presumptive of their father, William Lord Breouse of Gower (d. 1326), and John moved fast to secure the bulk of the inheritance. Joan had a son by her first husband, James de Bohun of Midhurst (d. 1306), and by her second, Sir Richard Foliot (d. 1317), a son and two daughters, but John seems to have persuaded his father-in-law to ignore her claims. [Richard Foliot was in a weak position to assert his wife's claims: his mother Margery held six of the ten manors of his inheritance in jointure and dower until her death in 1330: GEC v. 538-41.] On 20 May 1316 John had licence to grant the six Beauchamp manors, along with Ryarsh (Kent), to Breouse for life, and ten days later Breouse had licence to grant the manors which made up the lordship of Bramber, with the reversion of those still held by his father's widow, to feoffees for regrant to himself for life with remainder to Mowbray and Aline and their issue. [CPR 1313-17, 467, 562.] A similar arrangement was made with regard to the Marcher lordship of Gower. Mowbray's manoeuvres to gain Bramber and Gower were not to be as trouble-free as his acquisition of the Vescy lands. Breouse also entertained offers for Gower from the earl of Hereford and from Mortimer of Wigmore, and the younger Despenser entered the negotiations in 1319. [Fryde, Fall of Edward II, 109.] Mowbray's precipitate entering into possession of Gower in 1320 sparked the Despenser war of 1321 and he was hanged in March 1322 after Boroughbridge. Despite the younger Despenser's 'dishonest and cynical' schemes during the next four years, [For Despenser's activities, see Fryde, Fall of Edward II, 109-110] Bramber and Gower eventually passed to John's son and heir, John (II), born in 1310. Aline married again, to Sir Richard de Peasenhall, a former Contrariant, but died before July 1331. Peasenhall complained in Aug. 1331 that the escheator had taken into the king's hands half of the manor of Weston Corbett (Hants.), of Aline's inheritance, which, since Aline had borne him a daughter, he ought to hold by the courtesy. [CIPM vii, no. 398.] In July 1327 John (II) had livery of an inheritance which since 1311 had expanded beyond Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands to include valuable lordships in Bedfordshire, Sussex and the March. The relative value of the new lands can be gauged from Thomas de Mowbray's inquisition post mortem of 1399. [CIPM. xviii, nos. 264-305.] Three of the four Yorkshire manors were together then valued at £92, and three others at £67. By comparison, the Beauchamp lands in Bedfordshire were valued at £56, Bramber at £175 and Gower at £467 (700 marks). The Vescy lands were not mentioned but were presumably worth at least £92 a year. Although one of the Yorkshire manors was not valued and there is no return for the Isle of Axholme manors, it is clear that the value of the family's lands had greatly increased in the period 1311-27. [The usual degree of undervaluation is apparent. Melton Mowbray, valued at £33 in 1399, had in 1343 been said to be worth £90. Thirsk and Hovingham, valued at £65, had in 1341 provided £100 year for Joan de Mowbray's chamber.]

John (II) de Mowbray had an adventurous marital career. Around 1319 he was married to Maud, daughter of the earl of Lancaster's satellite, Robert de Holland, in what was clearly a political alliance. His father's charter granting to John and Maud the Yorkshire manors of Kirkby Malzeard, Burton-in-Lonsdale and Hovingham was witnessed by Thomas of Lancaster: below, BCM/D/1/1/1 [GC 9412]. The marriage was later dissolved and in Oct. 1332 Maud surrendered her rights in the Yorkshire manors in exchange for a life interest in Ryarsh (Kent) and Crick (Northants.) [Below, BCM/D/1/1/2 [GC 2758]. Maud later married Sir Thomas de Swynnerton, younger son and eventual successor of Sir Roger (d. 1338) who was present when Maud made the agreement with Mowbray. Maud was still alive in 1343; Sir Thomas, who succeeded his brother c. 1349, is said to have died in 1361: GEC xii (1), 585-8.] John, whose marriage was granted in Feb. 1327 to Henry of Lancaster, then married Joan, Lancaster's youngest daughter, probably by 1338 when Lancaster released him from a bond of 8,000 marks. Joan (d. 1349) was the mother of his daughters Eleanor and Blanche and his son John (III), born in 1340. By April 1353 he was married to Elizabeth, daughter of John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and widow of Hugh de Courtenay (d. 1349), but the third marriage does not seem to have been happy: in April 1353 Mowbray's brother-in-law, the duke of Lancaster, oversaw the settlement of disputes between Oxford and Mowbray. They agreed that Mowbray would surrender to Oxford all the lands which he and Elizabeth were holding that had been Oxford's, and Mowbray would settle £200 of lands and rents on Elizabeth for her expenses in clothes and other necessities for herself, her children, and the ladies and servants of her chamber, so that he would not be obliged to find food and drink for them. He died in 1361. Elizabeth survived him for 14 years and married Sir William de Cossington.

The arrangements which Mowbray made for the marriages of his children were also complicated, and he seems to have had an eye on the Brotherton inheritance. Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, died in 1338 leaving two daughters; Margaret was married to John de Segrave and Alice to Edward Montague (d. 1361). In March 1343 Edward's elder brother, William earl of Salisbury, was involved in the arrangements for a double marriage between Edward and Alice's children, Edward and Audrey, and Mowbray's children, John and Blanche. [Below, BCM/D/1/1/9, 11 [GC 3049, SC 511]. Mowbray's other daughter, Eleanor, was also involved: below, BCM/D/1/1/10 [GC 3050].] The ceremonies, due to be performed on 25 July that year, did not take place. Edward and Audrey Montague were both still alive and apparently unmarried in June 1349, and by March 1349 Mowbray was negotiating for another double marriage of his children, to John and Elizabeth, the children of John de Segrave by Margaret of Brotherton. The charter by which Segrave was bound to settle £200 of land on Elizabeth for her life (presumably instead of a lump sum portion) was witnessed by Henry of Lancaster, overseeing the affairs of his nephew and niece. [Below, BCM/D/1/1/13-14 [GC 3231-2]. Lancaster had requested the papal dispensations for the marriages to take place.] Young John de Segrave died without issue before his father's death on 1 April 1353. [Blanche de Mowbray (d. 1409) went on to marry Sir Robert Bertram of Bothal (Northumb.) (d. 1363), Thomas de Poynings (d.s.p. 1375), Sir John de Worth (d. 1391) and finally Sir John Wiltshire (fl. 1405): GEC x. 662. Her sister Eleanor (d. 1387) married, as his third wife, Roger Lord de la Warr (d. 1370) and secondly Sir Lewis Clifford: GEC iv. 146-7.] Elizabeth, wife of the thirteen-year-old John de Mowbray, was consequently her father's heir, but her mother held most of the Segrave inheritance in jointure and only six manors, in Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Wiltshire, passed directly to the young couple. [CIPM xii, no. 397.] In 1359 John (II) de Mowbray bound himself in £10,00 to Henry of Lancaster to settle all the lands which he held in fee north of the Trent on himself for life, with remainder to the young John and his male issue, and at the father's death in 1361 the lands in Bedfordshire (the Beauchamp inheritance), Lincolnshire (Isle of Axholme) and Yorkshire (Thirsk and its members), but not the barony of Bramber, were in the hands of feoffees. [Below, BCM/D/1/1/4 [GC 3481; CIPM xi, no. 144.] The lordship of Gower, which had caused his father so much trouble, had been granted to the earl of Warwick in 1356.

John (III) was killed by the Saracens in 1368 and his wife Elizabeth predeceased him. They had two sons, John and Thomas, said to have been born in Aug. 1365 and March 1366, and a daughter Eleanor born shortly before 25 March 1364. [Eleanor married John Lord Welles (d. 1421).] On 16 July 1377, at the coronation of Richard II, John (IV) was created earl of Nottingham, an entirely new title recognising the twelve-year-old's prospects, recently much enhanced by the failure of other lines of descent from Thomas of Brotherton. Of the five children of Thomas's daughter Alice and Edward de Montague, three, Edward, Audrey and Elizabeth, died childless before their parents, Maud became a nun and Joan was married to William de Ufford, a younger son of the earl of Suffolk, who succeeded as earl in 1369. William and Joan had four sons, but Joan and all her sons died in 1375, presumably of plague; Ufford continued to hold her moiety of the Brotherton inheritance until his death in 1382. Brotherton's other daughter and coheir, Thomas de Mowbray's grandmother Margaret, had married again, to Walter de Mauny (d. 1372), and by him had another son, Thomas, and a daughter, Anne. Thomas died young, leaving John (IV) de Mowbray as coheir to the Brotherton inheritance with Anne de Mauny, who in 1368 had married John de Hastings, earl of Pembroke (d. 1375), and borne a son John. When John de Hastings was killed in a tournament in Dec. 1389 John de Mowbray's brother and heir Thomas was sole heir to the whole Brotherton inheritance.

John (IV) de Mowbray had died unmarried on 10 Feb. 1383, and two days later Thomas had been created earl of Nottingham in his place, receiving the further title of Earl Marshal in Jan. 1386 in recognition of his position as senior coheir of his aged grandmother. Margaret lived on until 1399, and meanwhile John held only the original Mowbray lands, less Gower, and the small portion of the Segrave lands which Margaret did not hold in jointure or dower. His position is reflected in indentures of retainer which he made in 1389, promising an increase in the fee after his grandmother's death. [Below, BCM/D/1/14/1 [GC 3829]; BCM/D/1/19/3 [GC 3819]] Before his brother's death he had been contracted to marry Elizabeth, daughter and heir of John Lestrange of Blakemere, but she died in Aug. 1383 before her 10th birthday. In July 1384 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel, and widow of William Montague (d.s.p. Aug. 1382), son and heir apparent of the earl of Salisbury. Salisbury had settled on William and Elizabeth the manor of Kenninghall (Norf.) and in 1392 Arundel granted to Thomas and Elizabeth the manors of Wing (Bucks.) and Prittlewell (Essex), the three manors together being worth 250 marks a year. Also in 1392 Thomas made a settlement of some of his own inheritance, Burton-in-Lonsdale (Yorks.), Cherry Hinton (Cambs.) and some of the Segrave property which his mother had inherited. [Alconbury (Hunts.), rents in Northampton and Rutland, and Kineton (Warws.): CIPM xviii, nos. 264-305.] In 1388 he acted with Arundel as an Appellant but was later wooed by Richard II and became a courtier. One of the results was his decision to sue the earl of Warwick for the recovery of Gower, with sucess in 1397. Shortly after, he was created duke of Norfolk and was granted a few of Arundel's lands when the earl was impeached but, as an Appellant of 1388, he was not wholehearted in his support of the proceedings against Arundel, Warwick and Gloucester, and then fell out with Henry of Lancaster, newly created duke of Hereford. He was exiled for life and left England in Oct. 1398. Five months later his grandmother died at last, but he was never to enjoy the benefits of her lands which he had awaited so long, dying in Sept. 1399 in Venice while returning from Palestine, still only 33.

The inheritance was then in limbo for some time. His widow Elizabeth was granted an annuity of £100 in Nov. 1399 and by Aug. 1401 had married again, to Sir Robert Goushill (d. by July 1414), by whom she had two daughters. By Mowbray she had had two sons, Thomas (born 1385) and John (V) (born 1392 in Calais where his father was Captain), and two daughters, Isabel and Margaret; [Isabel married in 1416 Henry de Ferrers (d.s.p. and v.p.), son and heir apparent of William Lord Ferrers of Groby (d. 1445), and secondly James Lord Berkeley. In July 1416 her brother John granted the manors of Aspley, Alspsath and Flecknoe (Warws.), from the Segrave inheritance, to her and Ferrers, for her life, and she took them to Berkeley, along with the Ferrers manors of Marks and Buttsbury, which she held in jointure: GEC v. 357 n., 358. Her son William de Berkeley was coheir to the Mowbray inheritance in 1481. The other coheir was John Howard, Lord Howard, son of Isabel's sister Margaret and Sir Robert Howard (d. 1436): GEC ix. 610-12.] Thomas and John were granted annuities of 350 marks and £100 respectively in Dec. 1399. By June 1402 Thomas was married to Constance, daughter of John de Holand, duke of Exeter (the couple having been espoused in 1391), but he became involved in the Scrope conspiracy and was executed in June 1405 before reaching full age, leaving his brother John as heir. In Jan. 1412 John was married to Katherine, daughter of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and in Nov. 1413 he had a writ for the livery of his lands. They included the Mowbray patrimony, the Beauchamp of Bedford lands, Bramber and Gower from the Breouse marriage of his great-great-grandfather John (I), and the Segrave and Brotherton inheritances from his grandmother Elizabeth Segrave and great-grandmother Margaret of Brotherton. A hundred years after its first great expansion with the Beauchamp and Breouse lands, the estate was now much more than doubled by the addition of the Segrave lands in the Midlands and the Brotherton lands in East Anglia, Sussex and the March. [The Segrave estate consisted of 8 manors in Leics., 6 in Warws., 6 in Derb., 2 in each of Hunts., Bucks., Yorks. and Northants. and 1 each in Norf., Suff., Worcs. and Salop. The Brotherton estate consisted of 10 manors in Norf. and 13 in Suff., with 3 in Essex, 1 in Herts., 5 in Sussex, and the lordships of Chepstow in the March and Carlow in Ireland.] The inquisition post mortem of 1399 can again be used as a guide to the relative value of the new lands. The Breouse lands, the Beauchamp lands and the original Mowbray lands were valued at over £850, not including Burton-in-Lonsdale, the Vescy lands and the Isle of Axholme manors. The lands brought by Elizabeth FitzAlan were valued at £167, the Segrave lands at around £575, and the Brotherton lands at £1,476. [There was no return in Thomas's inquisition for the lands in Suff., but those lands were listed his grandmother's inquisition of five months earlier; for all other counties Thomas's inquisition repeated the returns in Margaret's.]

A further inheritance came to the Mowbrays when in 1415 John (V)'s mother Elizabeth became coheir with her two sisters to part of the Arundel inheritance on the death without issue of her brother Thomas FitzAlan, earl of Arundel. In 1345 Richard FitzAlan had settled most of the Arundel patrimony in tail male, but two years later he had become heir to his uncle, the last Warenne earl of Surrey. After negotiation with the king, he had been allowed to inherit the barony of Lewes (Sussex), with other lands in Surrey and Middlesex, and the Welsh marcher lordship of Bromfield and Yale with its caput at Holt (Castel Leonis), its castle of Dinas Bran and associated manors in Shropshire. [CIPM ix, no. 54; cf. below, BCM/D/4. FitzAlan's settlement in 1366 of the Warenne lands (except for Tyburn and Medmenham) on himself and his wife with successive remainders to his son Richard and his wife and to his brothers seems not to have been effective in 1415: CPR 1364-7, 198.] When his grandson Thomas died in 1415 the Arundel patrimony passed to his cousin John d'Arundel while the Warenne lands were divided between his three sisters. Lewes was held by Arundel's widow Beatrice until her death in 1439, when it was partitioned between the three coheirs. Soon afterwards one of the three sisters died without issue and her portion was divided eventually between the other two. [The third portion was not divided between the other two until 1476 or later: below, BCM/D/4.] Thomas's sister Elizabeth, wife of Thomas de Mowbray, had died in 1425, shortly after her son John (V) had been restored as duke of Norfolk, releasing to him the Mowbray lands which she held in jointure and dower, the lands of her own inheritance, and the manors granted by her father to her and Thomas in 1392. John died in 1432. His widow Katherine, who married again three times, survived him by at least 50 years. His son John (VI) married Eleanor, daughter of Sir William Bourchier, in 1424, and their son John (VII), born in 1444, was in 1451 created earl of Surrey and Warenne. During the 1440s John (VI) granted many of his manors to feoffees, among whom Eleanor's half-brother, Humphrey Stafford, was prominent. John (VI) died in 1461 and Eleanor lived as his widow until Nov. 1474 so that, with both his mother and grandmother holding dower portions as well as jointures, John (VII) held less than half the inheritance.

With the estate so burdened with dowagers it was as well that there were no younger sons for whom to provide, but nevertheless John (VI) did support others of his family. He seems to have been particularly close to his cousin William de Berkeley, son of his aunt Isabel. In March 1448 he granted to the 22-year-old William all his lands in Ireland to hold for life at a rent of a rose a year, and in Jan. 1453 appointed him supervisor of Gower and steward of Chepstow for life, with the customary fees and an annual rent of £20. In 1467 John's son John (VII) granted timber at Haynes (Beds.) to William's creditors to void William's bond to them of 1,000 marks. The transaction named William as John's coheir apparent; John was then only 23 and his daughter was born five years later. John (VI) was also involved in providing for his half-sister, Joan Strangeways. His mother Katherine had married Sir Thomas Strangeways by Jan. 1442, and by him had daughters Katherine and Joan; she then married thirdly John Viscount Beaumont (killed 1460) [She and Strangeways were pardoned on 27 Jan. 1442 for marrying without licence, and by 1 Oct. 1443 she had married Beaumont; in 1464 she married fourthly, and infamously, Sir John Wydville (beheaded 1469): GEC ix. 607; below, BCM/D/1/23/3 [GMR 47].]. Katherine had no compunction in drawing on the resources of her first and third husbands to provide for the offspring of her penniless second. In Feb. 1452 Beaumont bought the wardship of the 17-year-old Henry Lord Grey of Codnor and in Aug. 1454 Henry was married to Katherine Strangeways [GEC vi. 130-2. Katherine had died without issue by 1474 when Henry was married to his second wife.]. Joan Strangeways was married to Sir William Willoughby by July 1461 when her half-brother, John (VI) de Mowbray, granted to them, for their lives, the reversion of six Yorkshire manors held for life by Katherine. John (VII) confirmed the grant in 1465 but Willoughby had died by Aug. 1468 [When, as his widow, Joan was granted an annuity of 100 marks from the tunnage and poundage of London: CPR 1467-77, 107.] and in the November following she married John's cousin William Lord Berkeley. In June 1475 John (VII) granted to Joan and William the six Yorkshire manors, for Joan's life, and his estate officials were instructed to accept them as occupiers. Joan died in Feb. 1485.

John (VII) died in Jan. 1476, only 14 months after his mother, leaving a three-year-old daughter Anne as his sole heir and yet another widow, Elizabeth, daughter of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, to whom he had been married in 1448. The whole inheritance was at that point in several different hands. Katherine, widow of John (V), had since 1432 held the Bedfordshire manors, the four Mowbray manors in Yorkshire with the Vescy lands, the Isle of Axholme manors, the three Buckinghamshire manors and three Essex manors, Melton Mowbray, Sileby, Mountsorrel and Diseworth (Leics.), Forncett, Suffield, Framingham Parva, Lopham, Hanworth (Norf.) and possibly others. Elizabeth, widow of John (VII), had been provided for in 1467 when the Warenne lands and other manors in the Midlands, with the reversion of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire lands held by Katherine, had been settled on her in jointure [Below, BCM/D/1/1/20-1 [GC 4343, GC 4408].]. As soon as John (VII) died, Edward IV moved to secure the inheritance for his own younger son Richard (born Aug. 1473). On 28 May he prevailed on William de Berkeley to make over his title to all the lands which he might inherit if John's young daughter and heir, Anne, died to Richard and his issue, with remainder to Edward himself and his male issue, and then to William and his right heirs. In return, Edward was to obtain Berkeley's release from bonds totalling £34,000 which he and his brothers had been forced to make to the Talbots [Below, BCM/D/1/1/27 [GC 4433].]. In June, Richard was created earl of Nottingham, one of the Mowbray titles, and in Feb. 1477 duke of Norfolk and earl of Surrey and Warenne [Charles Ross, Edward IV (1974), 248.]. Meanwhile, Anne's mother Elizabeth had agreed to accept a reduced dower in order to enhance the dukedom granted to the duke of Norfolk [GEC ix. 609 n.] and on 5 Dec. 1476 she had granted to the queen and a group of feoffees her life interest in the reversion of manors which the duchess Katherine and others held for life [Below, BCM/D/1/1/21 [GC 4408].]. In return, her life-interest in other manors was confirmed to her on 31 Dec [Below, BCM/D/1/1/22-3 [GC 4409-10].]. Richard and Anne de Mowbray were married in Jan. 1478, aged four and five respectively, but Anne died in Nov. 1481. Edward was determined to hold on to the inheritance for Richard, as his agreement with Berkeley in 1476 had signalled, and in Jan. 1483 an Act of Parliament vested the inheritance in Richard for life, his heirs and the heirs of Edward. Berkeley, who in April 1481 had received the douceur of the title Viscount Berkeley [Above, BCM/A/5/5/1 [SC 637].], confirmed his renunciation in exchange for release in the same parliament from the bonds to the Talbots [Below, BCM/D/1/1/27 [GC4433].]. On 5 March 1483 Berkeley was also granted an annuity of 100 marks for life as a councillor [Above, BCM/A/5/5/9 [SC 639].], and on 9 April Edward died. The previous agreement was held to have been nullified and on 28 June, two days after officially beginning his reign, Richard III created Berkeley earl of Nottingham. [Above, BCM/A/5/5/2 [SC 640].]

On the same day John Howard was created duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal, and his son Thomas earl of Surrey. The Mowbray inheritance was at last divided between the coheirs descended from John (V)'s two sisters Margaret and Isabel, although the Warenne lands were shared also with the descendants of their two half-sisters, the daughters of Elizabeth FitzAlan by her second husband Sir Robert Goushill. They were Thomas (created earl of Derby in 1485), son and heir of Sir Thomas Stanley (d. 1459) and Joan Goushill, and Sir John Wingfield, grandson of Elizabeth Goushill [VCH Sussex, vii. 5. An agreement that the Lewes moiety would be divided between Howard and Stanley and th at Berkeley and Wingfield would have the Welsh lands (Bromfield and Yale) seems to have been abandoned. Berkeley held a quarter of the Lewes manors and other manors in Surrey and Middlesex at his death in 1492.]. In the division of the English lands, Howard had most of the Brotherton lands appropriate to his new title. A document survives which lays out the lands assigned to Howard from part of the inheritance (possibly the English lands only) shortly after the death of the duchess Katherine [Katherine was alive in July 1483 but was evidently dead by March 1484: below, BCM/D/1/1/28 [SC 641].]. Howard's portion included manors in Suffolk, Norfolk and Sussex, with the reversion of others in Suffolk and Norfolk after the death of the duchess Elizabeth [BCM GMR 41 (cf. below, BCM/D/1/1/57). He was assigned lands in Norf. worth a few shillings over £300, in Suff. worth £243 and the barony of Bramber worth £213, with the reversion of lands held by the duchess Elizabeth in Suff. worth £429, in Norf. worth £337 and in Sussex, Essex, London and Calais worth another £66, a total of £730 in possession and £841 in reversion. He was further granted lands in Beds. and Northants. worth £44 and the reversion of a manor in Northants. worth £48, giving a total value of £1,663. The partition includes none of the Warenne lands which, since they seem to have been divided into quarters, is surprising; possibly they were partitioned at a different time.]. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the document is the statement that Howard had been granted five manors and a hundred in Suffolk 'by feoffment of John late duke of Norfolk'. It suggests that John (VII) was not only aware that he might die without issue and that Howard would be coheir, as his acknowledgement of Berkeley as coheir apparent in 1467 reinforces, but that he was actively involved in making plans for the future division of the inheritance. [The inclusion of Framlingham, the caput of the earldom, in Howard's portion also shows that John (VII) believed Howard to be senior coheir as descended from the elder of his two great-aunts.]. No such document survives for Berkeley's purparty, but its components can be deduced from his grant of the reversion to Richard III in March 1484. He had lands in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire, Huntingdonshire, Shropshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Worcestershire of the Mowbray and Segrave inheritances, the Sussex and Essex manors of the Brotherton inheritance and part of the Beauchamp lands in Bedfordshire. He also had a quarter of the Mowbray moiety of Lewes and the other Warenne manors in Surrey and Middlesex, a quarter of Bromfield and Yale, half of Gower, and half of Carlow and the other Irish lands inherited by the Bigods from the Marshals. [Below, BCM/D/1/1/28 [SC 641]; Smyth, ii. 124.]. The death of Richard at Bosworth cancelled the grant, but in 1488 Berkeley carried out a similar settlement on Henry VII, and also granted his portion of Bromfield and Yale to William Stanley, the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire lands and others to Thomas Stanley, and other manors elsewhere. [Below, BCM/D/1/6/4 [SR27]; BCM/D/4/3/1 [GC 4451]; Smyth, ii. 121-3.]. After his childless death in 1492 his brother and heir Maurice was able to recover about 50 of the 70 Mowbray manors.