Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/242

 assistance of Richard. Mr. Wylie, on the other hand, holds that this is a strained interpretation, and is inclined to associate it with Bolingbroke's visit to Venice in 1392-3 (Hist. of England under Henry IV, ii. 29).

Norfolk left lands in most counties of England and Wales, whose mere enumeration, says Mr. Wylie (ii. 29), fills eleven closely printed folio pages in the 'Inquisitiones post Mortem' (cf., i. 130). Mowbray was twice married. His first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Roger le Strange of Blackmere, died almost immediately, and in 1385 he took for his second wife Elizabeth Fitzalan, daughter of Richard, earl of Arundel, who bore him two sons : Thomas and John, who successively inherited his estates, and are separately noticed; and two daughters: Isabel, who married Sir James Berkley, and Margaret, who became wife of Sir Robert Howard, created Duke of Norfolk after the extinction of the male line of the Mowbrays (ib.;, Official Baronage). His widow, who was allowed a large dowry in the eastern and midland counties, afterwards married Sir Gerard de Usfffete and Sir Robert Goushill successively, and survived until 8 July 1425 (, Baronage, i. 130;, Royal Wills, p. 144).

It is not possible to pronounce a final verdict upon Mowbray's character while we have to suspend our judgment as to the part he had played in the mysterious death of the Duke of Gloucester. But at best he was no better than the rest of the little knot of selfish, ambitious nobles, mostly of the blood royal, into which the older baronage had now shrunk, and whose quarrels already preluded their extinction at each other's hands in the Wars of the Roses. Mowbray had some claim to be considered a benefactor of the church; for besides confirming his 'ancestors' grants to various monasteries (Monast. Angl. vi. 374), he founded and handsomely endowed in 1396 a Cistercian priory at Epworth in Axholme, dedicated to St. Mary, St. John the Evangelist, and St. Edward the Confessor, and called Domus Visitationis Beatee Mariae Virginis (ib. vi. 25-6;, Isle of Axholme, p. 135). To the chapel of Our Lady in this Priory-in-the- Wood, as it is sometimes designated (now Melwood Priory), Pope Boniface IX, by a bull dated 1 June 1397, granted the privileges which St. Francis had first procured for the Church of S. Maria de Angelis at Assisi (Monast. Angl. vi. 26).

In Weever's poem, 'The Mirror of Martyrs,' Sir John Oldcastle is said to have been a page of Mowbray, a tradition which Shakespeare transferred to Falstaff.  MOWBRAY, THOMAS (II), and third  (1386–1405), born in 1386, was the elder son of Thomas Mowbray I, first duke of Norfolk [q. v.], by his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Fitzalan, sister of Thomas, earl of Arundel (1381–1415) [q. v.] His younger brother, John, second duke of Norfolk, is separately noticed. At the time of his father's death at Venice in September 1399 he was page of Richard II's child-queen, Isabella (Ord. Privy Council, i. 100). Young Mowbray was not allowed to assume the title of Duke of Norfolk, though it was not expressly revoked (Rot. Parl. iv. 274), and that of earl-marshal, which he was allowed to retain, was dissociated from the office of marshal of England, which was granted for life to the Earl of Westmoreland (Fœdera, viii. 89; Chron. ed. Giles, p. 43;, Richard II, i. 405). A small income was set aside from the revenue of his Gower estates for the support of Thomas and his younger brother John, and he was married towards the close of 1400 to the king's niece, Constance Holland, 