HOWARD, John

A successful landowner, businessman and administrator-politician who rose and fell in the service of the Yorkist Kings, Howard was in many respects the forerunner of the Renaissance courtiers of Tudor England.26 Unless otherwise indicated, the sources for this biography are C. Ross, Edw. IV and the introduction and appendices of Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford.Although a grandson of the first Mowbray duke of Norfolk, he was not born into great landed wealth, and prior to Edward IV’s accession he led largely the life of a typical East Anglian gentleman, if one who augmented the limited income from his estates through trade. His father was a cadet member of the Howard family, the son of the prominent East Anglian knight, Sir John Howard, by his second marriage. Robert Howard had inherited his mother’s lands in and around Stoke Nayland on the Suffolk-Essex boundary but the main Howard estates had descended to John, his short-lived elder brother of the half-blood, and then to John’s daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, and her husband, John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford. Robert was found a place in the household of John Mowbray, 2nd duke of Norfolk, and in about 1424 he married Mowbray’s sister Margaret, by whom he fathered the subject of this biography. Margaret comfortably outlived both Sir Robert and her second husband, Sir John Grey of Ruthin. After Grey died in 1439, she returned to Stoke Nayland to live with her son and his family until her own death 20 years later.

The young John Howard was still a minor when he was married to his first wife, Katherine Moleyns, a match which his influential grandfather Sir John Howard could well have helped to arrange, even if he did not live to see it take place. Katherine is not known to have brought any lands to her husband but the marriage was a success in so far as it produced six living children, including two sons. Howard had attained his majority by the spring of 1446 when he enfeoffed his inheritance on a group of trustees.27 CP25(1)/224/118/17. The trustees were headed by the keeper of the privy seal, Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester. Very little is known about Adam’s family (Trans. Lancs. and Cheshire Antiq. Soc. li. 44-50), although it is possible that he was one of Katherine’s relatives. Like his father, Howard entered the service of the Mowbrays. Probably taken into their household immediately after Sir Robert Howard’s death, in due course he became one of their most important advisers. In return for his services, John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, granted him the manor of Kineton, Warwickshire, and an annuity of £20 from the Mowbray estates in Denbighshire, both for life. The 3rd duke’s son and namesake, the 4th and last Mowbray duke, likewise granted him the manors of Moreton and Prittlewell in Essex to hold for life. Howard made himself useful as a major creditor for the financially hard-pressed 4th duke, whose mother and grandmother held much of the Mowbray estates, either in dower or jointure. By 1467 his loans (ranging from a relatively trifling 20s. given to the duke at a London ‘stewe’ in May 1465 to much more significant sums) totalled some £1,000 and his annuity from the Denbighshire lands had fallen several years into arrears.28 L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 178, 427, 428, 443, 444. Although the Mowbrays came to rely on him for his counsel and financial support, it is likely that Howard depended upon the 3rd duke for his advancement in his early adult career. Mowbray’s patronage could have helped him to gain entry into the royal household (of which he had become an esquire by Michaelmas 1449),29 E101/410/3. and to stand for Parliament while still a relatively young man.

The Parliament of 1449-50 was a dramatic assembly, since it impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, who was murdered on his way into exile just days before it dissolved. Although the fortunes of de la Pole, Mowbray’s main rival in East Anglia, were already waning when the Parliament was summoned, the election in Suffolk did not pass without controversy. No fewer than 159 electors attested the return of Howard and Thomas Cornwallis* as the county’s knights of the shire, itself an indication of a contested election. Further evidence that this was the case is a suit that a disappointed candidate, Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe‡, afterwards brought against the sheriff, Giles St. Loe, in the court of common pleas. In pleadings of Michaelmas term 1450 he accused St. Loe of having breached the statutes of 1429 and 1445 regulating the sheriffs’ conduct of parliamentary elections, asserting that a majority of the electorate had selected him as Howard’s fellow MP.30 CP40/759, rot. 433.

It is unlikely that the dispute arose out of factional differences between the Mowbray and de la Pole followings. Like Howard, Radcliffe was associated with the duke of Norfolk, while Cornwallis may have had an attachment with the duke of York. Furthermore, in this period Cornwallis engaged in a dispute with Alice de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk, a lady with whom Howard himself fell into a quarrel, perhaps before the Parliament dissolved, over the estates of the late Sir Thomas Kerdiston*. Inquisitions held in 1451, several years after Kerdiston’s death, found that Howard and Alice were the coheirs to his lands in Norfolk and Suffolk,31 C139/143/31. but neither was willing to acknowledge the claims of the other. During the dispute, which she eventually won, she sued Howard and his supporters from the Mowbray affinity for making forcible entries on to several of the properties in question. In August 1452, for example, he raided her manors at Bulcamp and Henham in Suffolk, both former Kerdiston properties, with other Mowbray followers, among them Thomas Daniell*, who had recently married his sister Margaret. On the other side, Alice enjoyed the support of Thomas, Lord Roos, and John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, both of whom were ordered to provide securities that they would keep the peace towards Howard in early 1453. The quarrel was one of a series of disorderly incidents between members of the Mowbray and de la Pole affinities in East Anglia in which Howard, sometimes known as ‘of Framlingham castle’, the duke of Norfolk’s residence in Suffolk, played a full part.32 KB27/766, rot. 71d; 767, rots. 30d, 65, 66; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 145; KB9/118/2/17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 57, 58, 194, 350, 351. In the same period, Mowbray made a determined effort to exert authority in East Anglia by controlling the return of the knights of the shire for Suffolk to the Parliament of 1453. The sheriff, Thomas Sharneburne*, afterwards complained that prior to the election Sir William Ashton, Howard and many other servants of the duke had threatened his under sheriff, Thomas Grys, and abducted William Peyntour, the sheriff’s clerk. He further alleged that on election day itself (12 Feb.) several of Mowbray’s leading retainers had brought a force of 600 armed men to the county court at Ipswich, where they had elected Howard’s brother-in-law, Thomas Daniell, who held no lands in Suffolk, and John Wingfield†, who did not reside there. In spite of Sharneburne’s partisan interests as a member of the de la Pole affinity, the election was clearly irregular since it had taken place when neither he nor Grys was present. It was therefore declared invalid and (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, a de Pole follower, and Gilbert Debenham I*, were returned at a new election held at the following county court.33 R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 54-57; KB27/775, rex rot. 20d; PPC, vi. 183.

It appears that Howard gained temporary control of at least part of the Kerdiston estate in Norfolk during his quarrel with Alice de la Pole. In one of the suits she bought against him, Alice alleged that he and other Mowbray men had forcibly entered Claxton and other manors that were part of the Kerdiston inheritance in Norfolk.34 KB27/767, rot. 30d. He was described as ‘late of Claxton’ on one occasion in this period,35 CP40/771, rot. 475d. suggesting that he had managed to occupy that manor for an appreciable length of time. His possession of Claxton might explain why he became a j.p. in Norfolk in March 1452, his sole appointment during the early 1450s to local office under the Crown, save for a single ad hoc commission in Essex. Although he was still relatively young and inexperienced, his exclusion from nearly all county commissions in this period may have had political connotations, since his patron, the duke of Norfolk, had associated himself with Richard, duke of York, the leading opponent of the court. On the other hand, he was absent overseas for at least part of the early 1450s, taking part in the ultimately futile campaign to save Gascony. In July 1453 he fought at Castillon, the final defeat for the English in France. According to one account, he was severely wounded in the battle and even taken prisoner.36 G. Brenan and E.P. Statham, House of Howard, 21.

If captured, Howard had secured his freedom and returned home by the early summer of 1455, when he sought election to the Parliament summoned in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans.37 It is possible that he had accompanied the duke of Norfolk to St. Albans, although the battle was over by the time Mowbray and his retinue arrived there: G.H. Ryan and L.J. Redstone, Timperley of Hintlesham, 8n. Thanks to his association with the victorious duke of York, the duke of Norfolk was in a position to exert his influence on the electorate in East Anglia and it was agreed that his retainers, Robert Wingfield* and William Jenney*, should stand in Suffolk. Obliged to look outside his native county for a seat, Howard decided to stand as one of the knights of the shire for Norfolk. In spite of enjoying the backing of his patron, his candidature proved highly controversial. A few weeks before the election, the duchess of Norfolk wrote to John Paston* to urge that he and others should give their ‘voices’ to Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain*, and the Mowbray servant John Jenney* busied himself canvassing the electorate on behalf of the two men. Jenney did not meet the response he hoped for, since he was informed that Howard was not an acceptable candidate because he had neither livelihood nor ‘conversement’ in Norfolk (suggesting that he had lost his claim to the Kerdiston manors in the county by that date). It was said that Howard, evidently a quick tempered man, was as ‘wode as a wilde bullok’ on hearing this news, but in the end he need not have worried. Having demonstrated that the duke should not take them for granted, the electors returned both Mowbray candidates when the election was held on 23 June.38 Virgoe, 53-54; K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 5-6; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 51, 53, 117, 119-21. In spite of the controversy surrounding Howard’s candidature, there is no evidence that the election did not pass off peaceably, although it is generally assumed that its outcome caused the subsequent hostility between him and Paston, who himself had hoped to become one of the county’s knights of the shire.39 C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: Fastolf’s Will, 123n. Richmond highlights another possible cause of enmity between the two men by pointing out that Howard’s first wife was related by marriage to the Pastons’ opponent, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns. The Parliament sat for 114 days but a surviving writ of expenses shows that Howard and Chamberlain, each of whom was allowed the standard daily rate of 4s., were awarded wages for 121, since it included their costs in travelling to and from Westminster at the beginning and end of the assembly and between its three sessions.40 C219/16/4. Howard was appointed a j.p. in Suffolk during the second session, in which the duke of York assumed the role of Protector of England. Some three years later a government dominated by the court removed him from the bench, but he was far from fully committed to the Yorkist cause, and in November 1459 he attested the election of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the partisan Parliament which attainted the Yorkist lords. During the following year he probably lived quietly at home in Stoke Nayland, but in January and February 1461 he was appointed to anti-Lancastrian commissions of arrest in Norfolk and Suffolk.

In the following month Howard fought for Edward IV at the battle of Towton, at which he commanded a contingent of Mowbray’s men and was knighted on the field.41 According to Brenan and Statham, 24, he also fought for the Yorkists at the 2nd battle of St. Albans in Feb. 1461. Just two days after Edward IV took the throne, he had been pricked as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, and in April 1461 he was among those commissioned to arrest two recalcitrant Lancastrians, Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and Robert Halyday, and bring them to London. Having joined Edward’s household, Howard attended his coronation in June,42 E361/6, rot. 54d. and in the following month he was appointed a King’s carver, an office with a substantial annual salary of £40, during pleasure. Edward also made him constable for life of the royal castles at Norwich and Colchester. Paid £20 p.a. as constable of Norwich, he is likely to have received a similar fee for the Colchester office. In February 1462 the King awarded Howard and his male heirs six manors in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Dorset forfeited by several attainted Lancastrians, among them the earl of Wiltshire, (Sir) Nicholas Latimer* and his own maverick brother-in-law, Thomas Daniell,43 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 111, 200. In June 1465 the Crown re-granted these properties to him and his heirs general: ibid. 458. and in the following May he received a grant for life of two tenements in London.44 CPR, 1461-7, p. 187. In 1463, having made his peace with Edward IV, Latimer entered costly negotiations with Howard for the return of his estates. Initially it was agreed that he should pay Sir John 1,000 marks in instalments (two of 250 marks each, then five yearly payments of 100 marks apiece), and that Sir John would allow him to farm the principal Latimer manors of Duntish and Dewlish in Dorset for £40 p.a. By means of a second agreement of 12 Mar. 1465, Latimer undertook to pay £40 immediately and a further sum of 240 marks 13 days later, before paying £50 every year until Howard had received the agreed sum of 1,000 marks.45 Howard Household Bks. i. 176-7, 468; J.R. Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, Historical Jnl. iv. 139-40. In spite of her husband’s disgrace, Howard remained close to his sister Margaret Daniell, finding places in his household for her sons, the eldest of whom, another Thomas Daniell, became one of his most trusted lieutenants.

It was also early in Edward IV’s reign that Howard acquired half a dozen manors formerly held by the earl of Oxford, whom the government had executed for high treason at the beginning of 1462. These included East Winch and Fersfield near Bishop’s Lynn, both of which had once belonged to the main line of the Howard family. It appears that Howard had coveted East Winch in the earl’s lifetime, for shortly after Edward’s accession Oxford had asked John Paston to warn John Keche, his keeper there, of ‘any aray’ that Howard was planning to make on the property. The complaints voiced by de Vere’s servant, Thomas Denys, about Howard’s behaviour towards him are a further indication of strained relations between the MP and the earl at this date. In spite of these tensions, Howard was on good terms with the de Veres just a few years after the earl’s death, even though he retained East Winch and Fersfield. By the mid 1460s he had lodged his daughter Jane in the household of his cousin, the widowed countess of Oxford, and he was friendly with her son, the 13th earl (a hunting companion of his in the summer of 1465), until de Vere rebelled against the King at the end of the same decade. Following de Vere’s rebellion, the Crown granted many of his forfeited estates to Richard, duke of Gloucester, who subsequently browbeat de Vere’s mother into surrendering to him the lands she held in her own right as the heir to the senior branch of the Howard family. Already linked with Gloucester, who had appointed him his vice-admiral in Norfolk and Suffolk in the early 1460s, Howard appears to have played a part in this shoddy episode. It is said that he used ‘great wordes of manasse’ against Piers Baxter, the countess’s feoffee and confessor, to secure his assent to the forced surrender. A few years later he bought the former de Vere manor and lordship of Wivenhoe from Gloucester for 1,100 marks.46 M.A. Hicks, ‘Last Days of Elizabeth Countess of Oxford’, EHR, ciii. 76-95; CCR, 1476-85, no. 735.

The de Vere properties and the other grants of lands and offices Howard received from Edward IV significantly boosted his landed income, an income further increased by the stewardships that individuals (including the King’s mother, Cecily, duchess of York) and institutions felt politic to bestow on an increasingly prominent member of the Yorkist Household. He held at least nine such stewardships by the early 1460s, when he also acquired the reversion of the office of constable of the Mowbray castle at Bramber in Sussex, to vest after the death of its then holder, Robert Langton*.47 Howard Household Bks. i. 184, 456; Moye, 439. Bramber is incorrectly identified in the index of the Household Bks. as Bamburgh, Northumb. Langton was still constable in 1474-5. According to a valor from this period, his total net income from lands and fees amounted to some £588 p.a., although £32 p.a. of this sum was derived from three manors which he had settled on his eldest son, Thomas. By now he was also enjoying a substantial, if incalculable, income from his mercantile interests. He kept an eye on these interests from the houses he purchased at Stepney on the outskirts of London, Harwich, Colchester and Ipswich, and he also employed a local merchant, Richard Felawe*, as his factotum or agent in the latter port. One of the greatest shipowners of his day, Howard possessed at least ten ships (although not simultaneously) during the last 20 years or so of his life. The largest of these was the Mary Howard, a very substantial vessel of about 500 tons which he sold to the King (for either 500 or 1,000 marks) in 1480.48 C76/163, mm. 4-6; E405/69, rot. 1. Not 1481, as mistakenly stated in Howard Household Bks. p. xxii. Although usually profitable, his trading ventures occasionally ran into trouble. In the late 1460s the king of Denmark ordered the seizure of ships belonging to him and other Englishmen, and in 1479 two of his vessels, the Edward (a carvel which he had built at Dunwich) and the George, were plundered of their goods off the coast of Normandy. Maritime affairs occupied much of Howard’s time by the late 1460s, when he received contracts from the Crown to construct, victual and crew vessels for English fleets.49 W.I. Haward, ‘Econ. Aspects of Wars of Roses’, EHR, xli. 181; Howard Household Bks. i. 154, 161, 162, 185, 186, 191-4, 198, 225, 270, 274, 280, 286, 301, 337, 348, 396; C76/163, mm. 4-6; E405/48, rot. 1d; 49, rot. 1d.

Earlier that decade, when Edward IV was still striving to secure his newly won throne, Howard was of as much service to the Crown on land as at sea. In the spring of 1461 he accompanied the King on his campaign against the Lancastrians active in northern England. Shortly before setting off for the north he was pricked as the first Yorkist sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, meaning that he was responsible for holding the elections of those counties’ knights of the shire to the Parliament of that year. For lack of evidence to the contrary, it appears that the proceedings in Suffolk passed off uneventfully but the election in Norfolk proved a highly controversial affair. Howard was absent when the shire court met at Norwich on 15 June, probably because he was still in northern England, 50 He was certainly with Edw. IV at York in May: Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 234. so his under sheriff, William Prys, presided. At the election the ‘grettyst voyse’ was for John Paston, John Berney† and Henry Gray (son and heir of Henry Gray*) and three days later Prys wrote to Paston to inform him that he intended to return him and Gray, although ‘[n]euir the latyr I haue a master’. As it happened, the election was for nothing because the difficult situation in the north obliged the King to postpone the Parliament to November. Following the postponement, there was a fresh election in Norfolk on 10 Aug., this time in the presence of Howard. Paston and Berney were again returned, an outcome the sheriff refused to accept because he wished to return Gray and Sir William Chamberlain. A violent altercation ensued, during which one of his servants struck Paston with a dagger, but the latter must have come to the shire-house prepared for trouble, for the ‘good dobelet’ he was wearing saved him from serious injury. Howard’s version of events has survived in a petition he afterwards submitted to the Crown. According to his exaggerated and extremely partisan account, Paston, Berney and their supporters had disrupted several shire courts. Howard claimed that in June Berney and a mob of armed men had so threatened Prys that the under sheriff had fled the shire-house before any election was held, and that similar threats of violence had likewise prevented Prys from holding the next shire court on 13 July. As for the August election, Howard alleged that Paston had arrived at the court with some 1,000 men, many of them heavily armed and disqualified from taking part in the proceedings, and had forced him to seal an election indenture confirming Paston and Berney as knights of the shire. Reacting to the quarrel, the King ordered both Howard and Paston to appear before him but the latter, no doubt fearing his opponent’s influence at Court, delayed obeying the summons. He is also likely to have had very real concerns for his own safety, since Howard’s wife, Katherine, was said to have boasted that his life ‘yulde goe no penny’ if he encountered any of her husband’s men. Upon eventually arriving in London in mid October, he spent about a fortnight in the Fleet prison as a punishment for his recalcitrance. In spite of Howard’s status as a Household man, the authorities were sufficiently even-handed not to take his petition at face value. It appears that he went to prison as well, since in early November Margaret Paston heard that the authorities had taken him into custody. Later that month Margaret informed her husband that Howard’s complaint against him and his supporters had caused uproar among the people of Norfolk. While allowing for exaggeration on her part, it seems clear that Paston and Berney were the candidates most favoured by the electorate although it is not certain that they were able to take up their seats.51 C.H. Williams, ‘A Norf. Parlty. Election, 1461’, EHR, xl. 79-86; McFarlane, 7-9; Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 201-2, 392, 270-1; ii. 238, 242-3, 246-7, 261-2; H. Kleineke, ‘East-Anglian Elections’, in The Fifteenth Cent. X ed. Kleineke, 168, 171-4, 179, 181-2, 185-7. After the Parliament finally opened, Howard acquired two exemptions from the Act of Resumption it passed, the first with regard to his office of constable of Colchester castle and the second to all the other grants he had received from the Crown.52 PROME, xiii. 33-34. Howard subsequently obtained like exemptions from the Acts of Resumption passed by the Parls. of 1463 and 1472: ibid. xiii. 156-7; xiv. 158, 165.

A few months after completing his term as sheriff, Howard was again in northern England campaigning against the Lancastrian diehards still at large there, and he was one of the captains who received the surrender of Alnwick castle in July 1462. Immediately after the castle fell, he was summoned south to join a fleet raised to prevent Margaret of Anjou sailing to Scotland with a French army. The fleet was also intended to discourage the French from supporting the Lancastrians, and in August it launched attacks on Brittany and the Ile de Rhé. By the end of the year Howard was again back in the north, where Margaret had retaken Alnwick and other fortresses, and during the winter of 1462-3 he helped to supply the Yorkist forces besieging the castles, a task for which he was nominally under the command of the 4th duke of Norfolk. In reality, it is likely that the young and inexperienced Mowbray, who had only recently succeeded his father, depended heavily on him for guidance. In the summer of 1463, Howard was engaged in fitting out another royal fleet (given the dual task of protecting the east coast of England and preventing French assistance to the Lancastrians in northern England and Scotland), and in the following winter he was based at Holt, the Mowbray castle in Denbighshire, campaigning with Mowbray against the King’s enemies in North Wales and the north-west of England. While in Wales in early 1464, he was said to have received letters from Thomas Daniell, then at large in Cheshire as a rebel against the Yorkist Crown.53 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 525-6. If so, it is possible that Daniell was seeking to make his peace with the Yorkists through the medium of his brother-in-law. In the following spring, accompanied by his own retinue of 21 men, Howard returned to northern England with the King himself, but upon arriving at York the royal expedition learnt that John Neville, Lord Montagu, had already crushed the rebels at the battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham.

A year later, in 1465, Howard attended the coronation of the new queen, Elizabeth Wydeville. He supplied the plate used on her coronation day and was one of the Household men who served at the banquet held in her honour. Prior to the coronation he delivered cloth to Thomas Vaughan* and other Household men for the gowns they wore at the ceremonies, probably after receiving an official commission to supply the material. Howard’s household books contain the draft of a letter he apparently wrote at the time of Elizabeth’s controversial marriage to the King. In the letter the writer informed the addressee (perhaps her father, Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers) that he had sounded out the people in many different parts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex and found all but one of them well disposed to ‘thes marygge’.54 Coronation Elizabeth Wydeville ed. G. Smith, 19, 23; Scofield, i. 375; Howard Household Bks. i. 165, 168, 196-7. A few months after Elizabeth’s coronation, Howard’s own marriage to Katherine Moleyns came to an end. Katherine had fallen ill by the autumn of 1465 when he bought her medicines, ‘suger candy’, ‘water of honysocles’ and wine and made payments to the physicians attending her. Her illness proved terminal, since she died on 3 Nov. and was buried at Stoke Nayland on the same day. Howard spent over £20 on her funeral and the services held a week after her death, and spared no expense at her trental or month’s mind. On the day of the trental, he distributed £22 5s. in alms to 5,300 ‘pore folke’ and assigned further sums to 129 priests and clerks and 68 children in the choir (‘quere’). He also spent £21 on black cloth for his servants’ gowns, over eight marks on torches and tapers and 52s. on gowns for an unspecified number of poor men. Furthermore, he provided vast quantities of food and drink to the many attending, including 12 oxen, 40 sheep, 70 pigs, 30 does, hundreds of poultry and game birds, 800 eggs, 32 barrels of beer and three pipes (over 300 gallons) of wine.55 Howard Household Bks. i. 303-4, 309; CP, ix. 612; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 211-13.

Within two years of Katherine’s death Howard married Margaret, the widow and executrix of the Berkshire careerist, John Norris, a respectable rather than ambitious match given the wealth and status he enjoyed at that date. Shortly after marrying Margaret, he bought a place for his new brother-in-law, William Chedworth, on the commission of the peace in Middlesex for 12s. 6d., the only known example of a direct approach to the authorities for an appointment to the bench in that county.56 J.L. Freeman, ‘Political Community in 15th-Cent. Mdx.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2002), 75. As with his own second match, the marriages Howard contracted for his children were respectable rather than spectacular. His heir Thomas married Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of Frederick Tilney of Ashwellthorpe and widow of Humphrey Bourgchier, the son and heir of Lord Berners, although not until 1472 when he was nearly 30 years of age. Thomas gained no more than a life interest in Elizabeth’s lands but John, her son and heir by Bourgchier, was married to Katherine, the MP’s only child by Margaret. By bearing Thomas three sons in quick succession, Elizabeth ensured the survival of the Howards in the male line since the MP’s second son Nicholas (who probably never married) had died childless in about 1470. Katherine’s match with the young Lord Berners was the most prestigious of the marriages Howard contracted for his daughters. Isabel, the eldest of her half-sisters, was married to the relatively obscure Robert Mortimer of Essex, Anne to his ward, Edmund Gorges (grandson and heir of Sir Theobald*), Margaret to John Wymondham and Jane to John Timperley†. Wymondham was the son of the onetime Mowbray retainer, John Wymondham*. A member of Howard’s household like Gorges, he was probably the ‘Wendame’ who accompanied the MP on campaign against the Lancastrians in northern England in 1464.57 Howard Household Bks. i. 197. Still some years short of his majority,58 C140/55/24. he was married to Margaret in about 1467. In the negotiations preceding this match, the groom’s father agreed to put his name to a bond for £1,000, as a security that the marriage would take place, while Howard agreed to maintain the young couple and their servants in his household for two years and to bestow the manor of Colby, Norfolk, on them. For some unknown reason, the elder John Wymondham failed to retrieve the bond after the marriage had occurred, a matter of considerable anxiety for him when he made his will in April 1475. In the will he directed his executors to sell three of his manors and other lands, rather than allow them to pass to his son and daughter-in-law, should Howard fail to return the bond to them or used it to trouble them in their duties. Furthermore, a codicil he added to the will a few weeks later testified that his son had promised to try to recover the document from his father-in-law. Despite these concerns, there is no evidence that Howard tried to take advantage of the obligation after the testator’s death in June the same year.59 Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Gelour, ff. 116-18. The Timperley match was contracted in the autumn of 1472, shortly after the groom’s father, John Timperley II*, a longstanding servant of the Mowbrays, had arrived at Westminster to attend the recently convened Parliament. The negotiations took place at Howard’s town house by the river Thames at Stepney, and he and the elder John strolled down to the river, where Howard’s ship the Margaret Howard lay, while they talked about the match. Initially Timperley rejected the marriage portion of £100 which Howard offered to provide for Jane, possibly an illegitimate child, as insufficient, and at one stage Howard called over his legal adviser and fellow Mowbray man, Richard Southwell*, who was waiting a little to one side, to brief him on their discussions. In spite of the hard bargaining which took place, Howard and Timperley reached an agreement on the same day. The terms of the marriage settlement were recorded in an indenture dated 14 Oct. Much more was expected of Timperley, but this was the price he had to pay for securing such a prominent match for his son. Howard, who got his way over Jane’s portion, agreed to pay for the garments that his daughter would wear on her wedding day and (apparently) for a wedding dinner. For his part, Timperley agreed to assign Jane a jointure estate in lands in Hintlesham and the neighbouring parish of Hadleigh worth 40 marks p.a. and to convey to his son lands with an annual income of £30 on the day of the marriage. He also undertook to pay for his son’s wedding clothes and the couple’s board and lodging for three years, and agreed that the younger John and his male heirs by Jane should succeed to an estate worth £100 p.a. in Hintlesham and Hadleigh after his death.60 C1/110/104; Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 309; Ryan and Redstone, 16n.

In contrast to these arranged marriages, love may have influenced Howard to choose Margaret Norris, whom he married before she had proved her previous husband’s will, for his second wife. He certainly bestowed on her many very valuable bridal presents, including a golden collar decorated with the Yorkist suns and roses. It is possible that Howard first met her through Norris, who had also served as an esquire of Henry VI’s household, or through his own mercantile connexions, since her first husband was the wealthy London grocer, Nicholas Wyfold, and her Norris stepsons (the sons of Norris by his first marriage) were among his business associates. As a result of her marriage to Norris, Margaret enjoyed an interest for life in Bray and several other manors in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Howard adopted Bray, conveniently close to Windsor castle, where his Household duties frequently took him, as one of his main residences.61 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 262-4; C140/22/45; E326/7078; CP25(1)/294/74/8; C67/44, m. 2. After Margaret became his wife, the Crown gave him a role in the administration of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, as a j.p. in Berkshire and as sheriff of both counties in 1467-8.

The appointment to the shrievalty came while Howard was a Member of the Parliament of 1467, although the assembly was in recess when he was pricked. Representing his native Suffolk, he was one of only 14 Household men returned to the Commons in 1467, probably because the King did not attempt to influence the composition of the Lower House. He and his fellow candidate (Sir) Thomas Brewes* spent over £40 entertaining the electors at Ipswich on 20 Apr., the day of the election. Their purchases included eight oxen, 24 calves, 24 sheep, 20 lambs, 30 pigs, 32 gallons of milk, 800 eggs, 36 barrels of beer and a large quantity of wine. They also bought or hired numerous pots, cups and other items of tableware and employed four cooks, assisted by 22 helpers, to prepare the feast.62 Howard Household Bks. i. 398-400. During the Parliament, Howard served on a committee which investigated Hugh Brice, a governor of the mint in the Tower of London, for corruption, but he did not spend all his time in the Commons chamber. A few weeks before the assembly opened, he was asked to deputize for the duke of Norfolk at a tournament between Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales, and the Bastard of Burgundy. It was Mowbray’s duty as Earl Marshal to preside over the event, but ill health had made it impossible for him to attend. The tournament, which cost Howard 300 marks of his own money and took place at Smithfield on 11 and 12 June, shortly after the opening of Parliament, was brought to an abrupt end by the death of Duke Philip of Burgundy, the Bastard’s father. Scales’s opponent was obliged to return home, and Howard conveyed him as far as Calais in his new carvel, the Edward. In the following October, while Parliament was in recess, Howard again crossed the Channel, this time as a member of an embassy which Edward IV sent to Louis XI of France. Although prestigious, the mission was of little real importance at a time when the main focus of Edward’s diplomacy was an alliance with Burgundy, a goal achieved in July 1468 when Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, married the King’s sister, Margaret of York. Margaret travelled to the continent in a small fleet of seven ships, including two contributed by the Howard. Even if the embassy to France was of no great significance, the choice of Howard as an ambassador indicated his growing importance as a royal counsellor. Another demonstration of his increasing status was his appointment to the important office of treasurer of the Household. In December 1468, shortly after becoming treasurer, he was associated with the earls of Warwick and Northumberland and George Willerby in obtaining a grant for 40 years of mining rights over all gold and silver mines discovered north of the Trent.63 CPR, 1467-77, p. 132.

In the early summer of 1469 Howard and other leading members of the Household left London with the King for a tour of East Anglia and its shrines. On 18 June the royal entourage arrived at Norwich, where John Paston† took the opportunity to entertain the queen’s brothers, Lord Scales and Sir John Wydeville, and other important men to dinner at his mother’s house in the city. In spite of having quarrelled with Paston’s now dead father, Howard was among the guests, but by now the Pastons were struggling to make good their claim to the estates of the late Sir John Fastolf and anxious to secure the goodwill of anybody close to the King. While at Norwich, Edward IV received news of the rebellion of ‘Robin of Redesdale’ in the north of England. In response, he cancelled a pilgrimage to Walsingham and marched north at the head of a hurriedly raised army. Howard took part in this ill-fated expedition, which ended in the King’s capture by the earl of Warwick and George, duke of Clarence.64 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 543-5; A. Crawford, ‘John Howard, Duke of Norfolk’, Ricardian, v. 233. In spite of recently co-operating with Warwick in obtaining mining rights and taking Clarence’s livery earlier in the decade,65 Howard Household Bks. i. 175, 299. Howard’s primary loyalty was always to the King. After Edward regained his liberty in the following autumn, he gave Howard command of a fleet,66 E405/51, rots. 1, 2. and raised him to the peerage as Lord Howard. In March 1470 the newly ennobled Howard was commissioned to keep the seas in substantial force, and he was at sea when Clarence and Warwick, having rebelled unsuccessfully for a second time, sailed for the continent. The garrison at Calais refused to allow them to land there, but while they waited offshore they were joined by Howard’s second in command, the Bastard of Fauconberg, who had deserted with part of the fleet. Pursuing Warwick and Fauconberg along the Normandy coast, Howard managed to free several Burgundian ships they had captured but was unable to prevent them from landing at Harfleur.67 CPR, 1467-77, p. 204; E404/74/2/111. In July 1470 he was appointed lieutenant of Calais castle although he was certainly with the King, at either Doncaster or Nottingham, when the next political crisis came to a head in September. Unlike other leading Yorkists, he did not accompany Edward into exile in the Low Countries but following Henry VI’s restoration he was removed from every commission of the peace on which he was then serving, and both he and his son Thomas took the precaution of obtaining pardons from the Crown.68 C67/44, m. 2. It is also likely that Howard lost custody of the royal castles at Norwich and Colchester during the Readeption. Nevertheless summoned to the Readeption Parliament, it is unlikely he attended that assembly, since he took sanctuary at Colchester some time before Edward IV returned to England. Reunited with Edward at London on Good Friday 1471, he probably fought for him at Barnet, where Thomas Howard was badly wounded, and possibly at Tewkesbury as well.69 Scofield, i. 577; CP, ix. 612.

In the following summer, shortly after he and other lords spiritual and temporal in the Parliament chamber at Westminster swore an oath of allegiance to the restored King’s son, the prince of Wales,70 CCR, 1468-76, no. 858; RP, vi. 234. Howard returned to Calais with its newly appointed lieutenant, William, Lord Hastings, to secure that strategically vital town for the Yorkist Crown. Hastings and Howard had also to ensure that members of the garrisons at Calais and Guînes were paid the arrears of their wages, a not unfamiliar task for the MP, who was one of a group of royal servants which had crossed the Channel to settle the wages of both garrisons in 1466. Howard’s appointment as Hastings’s deputy was ratified by the King, who granted that he should take over as lieutenant if Hastings surrendered his letters patent or died in office.71 C76/150, m. 6; 155, mm. 18, 26; E403/835, m. 2; 836, m. 3. As deputy lieutenant, he had to contend with raids that his cousin, the rebel 13th earl of Oxford led against the marches of Calais. In early 1474, the earl was captured at St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, and imprisoned in Hammes castle, meaning that technically Howard was his gaoler.72 A. Crawford, ‘Victims of Attainder’, Reading Med. Studies, xv. 67, 70. In spite of his earlier embassy to France in the autumn of 1467, Howard’s appointment as Hastings’s deputy marked the true beginning of his diplomatic service to the Yorkist Crown. In June 1472, shortly after his admission to the Order of the Garter, he was appointed to negotiate with his fellow Garter knight, Duke Charles of Burgundy, about the boundaries of the Calais Pale,73 C76/156, m. 19. and in May 1473 he, Lord Hastings and other royal councillors were given the far more significant task of meeting the duke to discuss the King’s plan to invade France.

When the invasion finally took place in the summer of 1475, Howard was a member of the army which crossed the Channel. His retinue was to have included his son-in-law, Robert Mortimer, but, for whatever reason, Mortimer failed to make the crossing and his letters of protection were withdrawn.74 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 548-9. During the expedition Howard played a crucial role in the negotiations leading to the Anglo-French treaty of Picquigny. In accordance with the treaty, sealed on 29 Aug. 1475, he and John Cheyne† were left as hostages with Louis XI of France to guarantee that Edward IV and his army would return home swiftly. Louis, whom the pair accompanied to the signing of a Franco-Burgundian truce at Vervins, treated his hostages generously although they had to endure his subjects’ taunts about the inglorious way the English expedition had ended. In spite of its inglorious outcome, the expedition proved extremely profitable for Howard. One of the English councillors and captains to whom Louis awarded a pension, in his case an annuity of 1,200 crowns, he was also said to have received an additional payment of 24,000 crowns in cash and plate from the French king.75 CPR, 1467-77, p. 583. At the same time Howard continued to profit from the largesse of his own King. A few weeks before the invasion began, Edward bestowed half a dozen former de Vere manors in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire on him and his male heirs, and three days before the signing of the treaty of Picquigny he made Howard steward for life of the de Vere estates in those two counties which were still in the Crown’s hands.76 CPR, 1467-77, p. 538. Between 1475 and the signing of the Franco-Burgundian treaty of Arras in 1482, Howard’s diplomatic role was principally that of Edward IV’s chief envoy to Louis XI. Following the death of Charles of Burgundy in January 1477, the Burgundian succession crisis loomed large in the negotiations in which he was involved, and he and other ambassadors were sent to France shortly before Louis and Charles’s son-in-law, Maximilian of Austria, came to terms at Arras. Powerless to prevent the treaty, he gave Edward IV a full account of this complete defeat for English foreign policy upon his return home in early 1483.

Frequently absent abroad in this period, Howard was not appointed to a single ad hoc commission at home in 1482. He had certainly been out of the country when the elections were held for the Parliament of 1478.77 A point worth emphasizing, since Ross’s suggestion that Howard may have used his influence to secure the returns of his son, Thomas, his son-in-law, John Timperley, and his chief factotum, James Hobart†, to the Parl. seems not to take his absence into account. The Parliament was the assembly that brought down the duke of Clarence, and in August that year the King granted Clarence’s lordships of Whimple, Devon, and Westley, Suffolk, to Howard and his male heirs. The grant was in recompense for Dullingham, a former de Vere manor in Cambridgeshire which Howard had agreed to return to the Crown. In the following February the King granted Howard a reversionary right in the important office of constable of the Tower of London, then held by John Sutton, Lord Dudley. In the event, he never became constable since Sutton retained the office until Robert Brackenbury was awarded it for life in 1483.78 CPR, 1467-77, p. 538; 1476-85, pp. 120, 137, 364; VCH Cambs. vi. 160; CP, iv. 9, 479-80. Although diplomacy occupied much of his time during the latter years of Edward IV’s reign, Howard also played an active part in the English invasion of Scotland in 1481. Appointed captain of the main English fleet, he had 3,000 men under his command and used the Mary Howard, the vessel he had recently sold to the Crown, as his flagship. In the spring of that year the fleet raided the Firth of Forth, captured several enemy ships, destroyed others and burnt the township of Blackness. Howard led a second raid on the Forth in late July or early August but this achieved little and the expedition returned to Sandwich soon afterwards.

Within months of Howard’s return from Scotland, the nine-year old heiress of the Mowbray inheritance died. The only surviving child of the last Mowbray duke of Norfolk, whom she had succeeded in January 1476, Anne Mowbray’s heirs at law were Howard and William, Lord Berkeley, but their rights were set aside in favour of her young husband, the King’s second son Richard, duke of York. Berkeley, heavily indebted to the King and the Talbot family, had already surrendered his title to the Crown when Anne died. He was rewarded for his acquiescence with a release of his debts and a viscountcy, but Howard received nothing. The arrangements made for York were formalised by an Act passed in the Parliament of January 1483. This awarded him and his heirs Berkeley’s moiety of the Mowbray inheritance and gave him possession of Howard’s share for life.79 RP, vi. 205-7. Already a very rich man at this stage in his career, Howard is not known to have displayed any open resentment about the granting of the Mowbray lands to York and he played a prominent role at the ceremonies following Edward IV’s death in April 1483. He bore Edward’s banner as the royal bier was carried into Westminster Abbey and attended the King’s funeral at Windsor, having kept vigil over his body the night before.80 LP Ric. III and Hen. VII, i. 5, 8, 10. The day after the funeral he became steward of the duchy of Lancaster lands in southern England and Wales, an appointment for life.

At the end of April the duke of Gloucester, who had assumed the role of Protector of the kingdom, seized the person of the young Edward V, prompting the widowed Elizabeth Wydeville to take sanctuary at Westminster with the young duke of York and other members of her family. On the following 16 June Howard accompanied the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Buckingham and ‘sundry other grave men’ to the sanctuary, where they persuaded Elizabeth to release York into their custody. The queen evidently trusted in their integrity, and there is no reason to believe that they themselves believed that the boy would come to any harm.81 Polydore Vergil’s English Hist. (Cam. Soc. xxix), 178. Immediately after usurping the throne as Richard III later that month, Gloucester restored the Mowbray inheritance to its rightful coheirs. Howard received the Mowbrays’ estates in East Anglia, Surrey and Sussex and Berkeley their lands in the Midlands. Neither had a claim to the Mowbray titles, now in abeyance, but nevertheless Richard made Howard duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal of England and Berkeley earl of Nottingham. He also provided for Thomas Howard, by creating him earl of Surrey and subsequently granting him an extremely generous annuity of £1,100.82 CPR, 1476-85, p. 479. Given the rapidity with which he acted in Howard’s favour, it would appear that Richard had struck some sort of agreement with him prior to taking the Crown, but the suggestion that the new duke was the murderer of the princes in the Tower remains not proven. In any case, it was not necessary for York to die for Howard to succeed to his share of the Mowbray inheritance, since an Act of Parliament was all that was required to reverse the arrangements Edward IV had made for his second son.83 M. Bennett, Battle of Bosworth, 61; Crawford, ‘John Howard’, 230-4. Although substantial, a half share of the Mowbray lands was insufficient to support a dukedom, and in due course Richard bestowed on Howard estates which had belonged to the exiled earl of Oxford, the late Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers and Lord Scales, and others and made him many other generous grants.84 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 359, 365, 411, 497-8, 501, 541; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1071. Howard’s income from the former Mowbray, de Vere and Scales lands situated in East Anglia alone came to more than £1,000, to which he could add the receipts from his new holdings outside that region and the annual landed income of over £800 which he derived from those estates which were already in his hands when Richard seized the throne.

On the previous 6 July Howard performed the office of steward of England at Richard’s coronation. Ten days later he was granted wide military powers as surveyor of array in East Anglia and other south-eastern counties and on 25 July he was made admiral of England for life. Totally identified with the new regime, he repaid the usurper with his complete loyalty and rallied support for Richard when the duke of Buckingham rebelled in the following autumn. Probably after hearing rumours that a rising was imminent while he was touring his new ducal estates in Sussex and Surrey, Howard returned to London in late September. The King was then away in northern England, placing the onus on his councillors and other supporters to react to events while he made his way back south. On 11 Oct. Howard sent his nephew, Thomas Daniell, and other reliable men to seize the vital Thames crossing at Gravesend. He was also able to call upon the services of his nephew and retainer, John Brooke, Lord Cobham, whom he ordered to secure Rochester,85 Cobham had married Margaret, da. of the MP’s sis. Katherine by Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny. and as a further precaution, he sent to East Anglia for reinforcements. Among those from whom he sought help was John Paston, although how Paston responded to his summons is unknown. The defensive measures Howard adopted meant that the rebels in southern England were neither able to encircle London nor join Buckingham in the Midlands. In Berkshire the rebels included (Sir) William Norris* and his brother, John†, two of Margaret Howard’s stepsons. Sir William was attainted for his part in the rebellion, but John, whom Howard brought before the King in February 1484, was able to win a pardon.86 Paston Letters ed. Davies, ii. 443; RP, vi. 245; L. Gill, Ric. III and Buckingham’s Rebellion, 97, 107. Buckingham’s rebellion caused the cancellation of the Parliament which was to have met in November 1483, and as a result Howard sat as duke of Norfolk in only one such assembly, that of 1484.

The rebellion had broken out while Howard was still establishing himself as duke. Prominent among the rebels were several former Mowbray retainers, a clear sign that the old Mowbray connexion in East Anglia had disintegrated. Those East Anglians who obeyed Howard’s summons during the crisis were largely his tenants and servants, as were the 1,000 men he raised for the King’s service in the following year. Given his time as duke was so short, it is not surprising that he seems never to have achieved hegemony in the region, over which Richard III sought to maintain control by appointing Household men to the office of sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk.87 This assessment of Howard’s relative lack of regional influence relies on R. Horrox, Ric. III, 219-20, and Virgoe, 222, rather than C.D. Ross, Ric. III, 164-5. The latter argues that the new duke was able to inherit and even surpass the local influence of his Mowbray predecessors. It appears that Howard spent most of Richard’s reign away from court overseeing his new estates from Framlingham, the seat of his Mowbray predecessors, although he was with the King at Nottingham in September 1484, when Richard received the ambassadors of James III of Scotland. At Nottingham he took part in the negotiations which led to a truce between England and Scotland and an agreement that the King’s niece, Anne de la Pole, should marry James’s son and heir.

Less than a year later, Henry Tudor landed in Wales and Howard busied himself raising men for the Crown. Just as he had in the autumn of 1483, he sought help from John Paston and other East Anglian gentry, but it is impossible to tell how many responded to his summons. Legend has it that a warning note bearing the rhyme ‘Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold’ was attached to Howard’s tent on the eve of the battle of Bosworth. Yet he remained loyal to Richard’s cause and, in spite of his age, played an active part in the battle, commanding the archers in the front line of the royal army. Among those fighting for Tudor was his cousin, the earl of Oxford. One account, probably apocryphal, has the two men coming face to face and trading blows. According to this account, Howard was killed by an arrow in the eye after the earl split his helmet open, leaving his face exposed. In the immediate aftermath of Bosworth Howard was, like his royal master, buried at Leicester but he was afterwards reinterred in Thetford priory with the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk. His tomb, situated near the high altar in the priory church, was destroyed at the dissolution of the monasteries.88 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 444; Polydore Vergil’s English Hist. 222; CP, ix. 612; R. Marks, ‘Howard Tombs’, Arch. Jnl. cxli. 254.

Posthumously attainted by an Act of Henry VII’s first Parliament, Howard also featured in a petition which Sir William Brandon† presented to that assembly. No friend of Richard III’s regime, as he had demonstrated by joining Buckingham’s rebellion in 1483, Brandon had taken sanctuary in Gloucester some time between September 1484 and Henry VII’s accession. The purpose of his petition was to regain the position of marshal of the Marshalsea prison, an office of which Howard, acting in his capacity as Earl Marshal, had stripped him after he had entered sanctuary.89 RP, vi. 276-8, 291-2. Howard’s widow was permitted to live out her days on her jointure lands at Stoke Nayland. The dower rights she enjoyed as a result of her first two marriages further cushioned her financial situation. After her death in 1494, she was buried at Stoke Nayland rather than with Howard at Thetford.90 Crawford, ‘Victims of Attainder’, 70; PCC 16 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 127); CP, ix. 612. The earl of Surrey, who had survived Bosworth, succeeded in obtaining the reversal of his father’s attainder by means of a petition he brought to the Parliament of 1489,91 RP, vi. 410-11, 426-8. but it took him many years of dedicated service to the first two Tudor kings to recover all of his father’s estates and honours.92 Virgoe, 219-34.