Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/233

 authorities state or imply that he was kept in prison until his death, or at least far into the next reign (, iii. 199, 410;, ii. 372; Cont. of , viii. 8; Hist. Translationis S. Cuthberti, p. 181). Orderic says in one place that he was imprisoned for nearly thirty years, in another for nearly thirty-four years. The story that Henry allowed him to spend his last years as a monk at Saint Albans appears in only one contemporary authority, the Magdalen manuscript of the Durham 'Libel lus de Regibus Saxonicis,' printed with Simeon in the Surtees Society edition (p. 213), and deemed by its editor to have been written in 1138-9 either at Saint Albans itself or at Tynemouth. It is also found with additional details in later Saint Albans accounts of the foundation of Tynemouth priory, one of which, apparently by Matthew Paris, adds that Mowbray was blind for some years before his death, and was buried near the chapter-house where Abbot Simon afterwards built the chapel of Saint Simeon (, vi. 372, ed. Luard; Hist. Angl. iii. 175; Monasticon, iii. 312-13;, ii. 612). Mr. Doyle, accepting this version, seeks to reconcile the contradictory statements of Orderic by supposing that Mowbray became a monk in 1125 and died in 1129 (Official Baronage).

Mowbray had only been married three months before his capture. His wife was Mathilda, a daughter of Richer de Laigle (de Aquila) by Judith, sister of Hugh, earl of Chester (. iii. 406). Pope Paschal II afterwards allowed her as a widow in all but name to marry Nigel de Albini [see under ], a relative, probably a cousin of her husband, who founded the second house of Mowbray (ib. iii. 410;, viii. 8; , ii. 612). She apparently survived both husbands, as she was still living in 1130 (Pipe Roll, 31 Henry I, pp. 16, 76, ed. Hunter).

Orderic has left a graphic portrait of Mowbray: 'Powerful, rich, bold, fierce in war, haughty, he despised his equals, and, swollen with vanity, disdained to obey his superiors. He was of great stature, strong, swarthy, and hairy. Daring and crafty, stern and grim of mien, he was more given to meditation than to speech, and in conversation scarce ever smiled ' (, iii. 406; cf. Monasticon, iii. 311). If he is not maligned by the Durham historians, his motives in founding Tynemouth priory scarcely entitled him to Matthew Paris's praise as 'vir quidem Deo devotus.'  MOWBRAY, ROGER (I), second (d. 1188?), was son of Nigel de Albini, a younger brother of that William de Albini, 'Pincerna,' whose descendants were styled ' Earls of Arundel ' , Histonc Peerage, ed. Courthope, pp. 21, 27). Nigel, who at the date of Doomsday had considerable estates in Leicestershire and some manors in Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire, greatly increased them by the steady support he gave to William Rufus and Henry I, and by his marriage with Mathilde de Laigle, wife of Robert de Mowbray, earl of Northumberland [q. v.], founded the second house of Mowbray, which lasted in the direct male line for four centuries, until the death, in 1476, of the sixteenth holder of the barony. Nigel, however, subsequently put away his wife Mathilde on the ground that Mowbray, her former husband, was his relative later pedigree makers doubtfully represent his mother as her first husband's sister—and he married Gundreda, daughter of Gerald de Gournay, who became the mother of Roger de Mowbray (, ed. Le Prevost; cf. ib. iii. 410 n.) Henry I, according to a brief history of the Mowbrays written not earlier than the end of the thirteenth century (''Monast. Angl.'' v. 346), had bestowed upon Nigel de Albini the whole of the vast estates of Robert de Mowbray in England and Normandy. The same authority asserts that at the time of his death, between 1127 and 1130, Nigel was on the point of taking seisin of the earldom of Northumberland. But not a single manor of the 280 which the elder Mowbrays held in England can be traced in the possession of the second house. Nigel's great acquisitions, which were not much added to until the fourteenth century, were in the midlands, where his own holding lay, or in Yorkshire. The chief of the two groups consisted of practically the whole of the lands held at the date of Doomsday by Geoffrey de Wirce in War- 