Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/346

 shire and Cornwall (, p. 551, ed. 1570, and, p. 393, ed. 1809, erroneously call Edward the bishop's brother). On their failure they escaped to Brittany to share the exile of Henry of Richmond. Spared his life with Bishops Morton and Wydville out of consideration for their office, Courtenay was condemned in Richard III's parliament to lose his temporalities and estates (Rot. Parl. vi. 250). He returned to England with Henry VII, and received from that monarch great favours to compensate for his sufferings in his cause. Edward Courtenay was made Earl of Devon. Peter was put on the commission which was to perform the duties of seneschal at Henry's coronation (Fœdera, xii. 277); received the custody of the temporalities and the disposal of the preferment of the Yorkist bishop of Salisbury (, i. 81), and on 8 Sept. was appointed keeper of the privy seal with a salary of twenty shillings a day (ib. i. 151). He was present at the first parliament of Henry VII, where the sentences of Richard's time against him and his confederates were reversed (Rot. Parl. vi. 273), and where he served as a trier of petitions of Gascony and other places beyond sea (ib. 268 a). In 1486 he was appointed a commissioner of the royal mines and placed with the Earl of Devon and others on a commission to inquire into the seizure of certain Hanse ships by the men of Fowey, contrary to the existing amity (, i. 315, 316). On the death of William of Waynfleet he received the grant of the temporalities of Winchester (Fœdera, xii. 322), and on 29 Jan. 1487 was translated to that important see by papal bull (, iii. 15–16). He now ceased to be privy seal, but was still a good deal engaged on state affairs. In 1488 he was one of the commissioners appointed to muster archers in Hampshire for the expedition to Brittany (, ii. 385), and in 1489 was put on a special commission of the peace for Surrey (ib. ii. 478). He received as a gift from the king ‘a robe made of sanguine cloth in grain, furred with pure menever, gross menever, and byse’ (ib. ii. 497). He was a witness to the creation of Arthur as prince of Wales in 1490 (ib. ii. 542), and was present at the ratification of the treaty with Spain in the same year (Fœdera, xii. 428). An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1487 to appoint him chancellor of Oxford, against John Russell, bishop of Lincoln (, Fasti Oxonienses, ed. Gutch, p. 65). He died on 23 Sept. 1492, and was probably buried at Winchester, though the exact spot is uncertain, and local writers have conjectured his tomb to be at Powderham. 

COURTENAY, RICHARD (d. 1415), bishop of Norwich, was the son of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham Castle, Devonshire, where, it is said, he was born. His mother was Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Wake of Bisworth. He was the grandson, therefore, of Hugh Courtenay, second earl of Devon, and of Margaret Bohun, the granddaughter of Edward I, and connected by marriage with Henry of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV. His uncle was William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury [q. v.], who superintended his education, and speaks of him in his will as ‘filius et alumnus meus.’ On his death in 1397 the archbishop left Richard a hundred marks, a number of books in case he should become a clerk, and his best mitre if he should become a bishop (Anglia Sacra, i. 416). Though apparently the eldest son, such patronage may well have inclined him for a clerical career. He became a member of the new western foundation of Exeter College, Oxford, a doctor of civil and canon law, and, though mostly resident at Oxford, obtained a large number of ecclesiastical preferments elsewhere. In 1394 he received the prebend of Sneating in St. Paul's, and also a prebend in Lincoln. In 1400 he became precentor of Chichester (ib. i. 265). In 1401 he was made prebendary of Tame in the cathedral of Lincoln (ib. ii. 221). Between 1402 and 1404 he was dean of St. Asaph (ib. i. 82). In 1403 has was chosen prebendary of North Newbald in York Minster (ib. iii. 203). In 1410 he became archdeacon of Northampton, and in the same year dean of Wells (ib. i. 152, ii. 57; Anglia Sacra, i. 589). In 1406 he succeeded, on his father's death, to the family possessions (, Peerage, vi. 254, ed. 1779, from Inq. post mortem 7 Henry IV). Courtenay soon obtained a great position at Oxford. But even when chancellor of that university—an office he first attained in 1407—he was employed elsewhere, also on very different business. He early won, and preserved till his death, the close confidence and friendship of Henry of Monmouth. In 1407 he accompanied the Prince of Wales in his