Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/237

 (II), d. 1361], by Elizabeth, only daughter and heiress of John, sixth lord Segrave (, Official Baronage). Mowbray was of the blood royal through his mother, who was daughter of Margaret, the elder daughter of the second surviving son of Edward I, Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk and earl marshal (1300-1338). Margaret married Lord Segrave before 1338, and succeeded her father as Countess of Norfolk and countess marshal in December of that year.

Mowbray's mother is said to have had him baptised Thomas, a name not previously affected by the family, to mark her special reverence for St. Thomas of Canterbury (, Baronage, i. 128). The abbots of Fountains and Sawley were his sponsors. On the death without issue at the early age of nineteen, on 10 Feb. 1383, of his elder brother, John (IV) de Mowbray, eleventh baron, Thomas succeeded as twelfth Baron Mowbray of Axholme. He inherited, in addition to the great Mowbray barony, in which were merged those of Braose (Brewes) and Segrave, the expectation of the still more splendid heritage of the old Bigods, earls of Norfolk, at present enjoyed by Margaret, his grandmother. Richard at once (12 Feb.) revived, in favour of his young cousin, the title of Earl of Nottingham, which his brother had borne. Before October he was given the garter vacant by the death of Sir John Burley (, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, p. 259). As Earl of Nottingham he was summoned to the parliament which met on 26 Oct. of that year (Rep. on the Dignity of a Peer, App. p. 705). Froissart substitutes the Earls of Northumberland and Nottingham for the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl of Buckingham as leaders of the Scottish expedition of March 1384 (cf., p. 51 ; , ii. 111). There is no doubt, however, that Nottingham was present in the expedition which Richard in person conducted against the Scots in the summer of the next year. On the eve of their departure (30 June) the king invested the earl for life with the office of earl marshal of England, which had been enjoyed by his great-grandfather, Thomas of Brotherton (, i. 128). On the march through Yorkshire he confirmed, on 21 July, with many of the knights of the army as witnesses, his ancestor Roger's charter to Byland Abbey [see under (I) ].

Nottingham, who was barely twenty years of age, does not appear by name among the nobles who carried out the revolution at court against the king of October to December 1386 (cf. Continuatio Eulogii Historiarum, iii. 361). Of nearly the same age as the king, he had been much in his company (, ii. 156). But he had married in 1385 a sister of Arundel, who was, next to Gloucester, the chief author of the revolution, and shared with his brother-in-law the glory of his naval victory of 24 March 1387 over the French, Flemings, and Spaniards (, ii. 153-6; Chron. Anglic, pp. 374-5). He did not, however, accompany Arundel in the further expedition which he undertook for the relief of Brest (, col. 2693). Richard received Nottingham very coldly when he presented himself to report his success, and his favourite, the Duke of Ireland, refused even to speak to the two earls. They therefore retired to their estates, 'where they could live more at their ease than with the king' (, ii. 156). Nottingham was one of those whose destruction the king and the Duke of Ireland plotted after Easter (ib. p. 161 ;, p. 84). Yet he does not seem to have taken any open part in the armed demonstration in November by which Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, with whom the Earl of Derby, eldest son of John of Gaunt [see ], had now ranged himself, extorted from Richard a promise that his advisers should be brought to account before parliament. It was not until after the lords in revolt had fled from court, and the Duke of Ireland was approaching with an army raised in Cheshire to relieve the king from the constraint in which he was held, that Nottingham followed Derby's example, and appeared in arms with Derby and the other three lords at Huntingdon on 12 Dec. (Rot. Parl. iii. 376;, p. 137). Even now, if we may trust the story which Derby and Nottingham told ten years after, when they were assisting Richard in bringing their old associates to account for these proceedings, they showed themselves more moderate than their elders. They claimed to have secured the rejection of Arundel's plan to capture and depose the king (ib.) The five confederates marched instead into Oxfordshire, to intercept the Duke of Ireland before he could pass the Thames. They divided their forces for the purpose on 20 Dec., and Nottingham, like some of the ot hers, seemingly did not come up in time to take part with Derby and Gloucester in the actual fighting at Radcot Bridge, near Burford, from which the Duke of Ireland only escaped by swimming (, p. 95 ;, ii. 168 ; , col. 2703). The victors returned through Oxford, where the chronicler Adam of Usk (p. 5) saw their army pass, with Arun-