Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/192

 the streets, and seems to have allied himself to the anti-court party among the nobles; for the dispute in the city had a strong bearing on the affairs of the kingdom. In February 1384 Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, dined with him, and after dinner asked him to walk with him to the Greyfriars' church, for that day was the anniversary of his brother, the late earl, who was buried there. Northampton went with the earl, and was, it is said, accompanied by four hundred men. The lord mayor met him, and asked why he went so attended. On his answering that the men came with him because it pleased them, Brembre arrested him, and he was sent down to Corfe Castle, and there imprisoned on a charge of sedition. One of his most active adherents, a member of the Shoemakers' Company, was beheaded for insurrection. His clerk, Thomas Usk, was arrested by the sheriffs in July, and accused him of many crimes, but it was thought that he was suborned by Brembre (Chronicon Angliæ, p. 360; Polychronicon, App. ix. 45). He was brought before King Richard and the council at Reading, and denied all Usk's accusations. When Richard was about to sentence him to the forfeiture of his goods, leaving him one hundred marks a year for his maintenance, he said that the king should not condemn him in the absence of his lord the Duke of Lancaster. On this the king fell into a rage, and declared that he would have him hanged forthwith. He was appeased by the queen, and Northampton was sent back to Corfe, whence in September he was brought up to London and imprisoned in the Tower. He was tried there, and sentenced either to the wager of battle, or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The sentence was commuted; he was to be imprisoned for life, his goods were to be confiscated, and he was not to come within a hundred miles of London (WALSINGHAM, ii. 116). He was imprisoned in Tintagel Castle. John of Gaunt interceded for him in 1386, but his enemies in London opposed his release, and he was kept in prison. In April 1387 he was released, and his goods were restored to him at the instance, it was believed, of the Duke of Ireland [see, (1362–1393)], who probably desired to conciliate Northampton's party in the city.

A petition presented in the parliament of this year by the cordwainers and other companies complaining that the then Lord Mayor Exton had caused a book of good customs, called the ‘Jubilee,’ to be burnt, marks the revival of the party in the city (Rolls of Parliament, iii. 227). A John de Northampton, probably the late lord mayor, was returned as member for Southwark to the ‘Merciless parliament’ which met on 3 Feb. 1388. Northampton's friends were in the ascendant. Brembre was executed the same month, and in March Usk was beheaded, persisting in his charges against his former master. Richard allowed Northampton to enter London, though for a while he would not consent to his residing there. In 1390, however, this too was granted, on a petition of the citizens. A proclamation was made by the lord mayor and aldermen in 1391 that no one should thenceforward utter his opinion concerning Sir Nicholas Brembre, or John of Northampton, formerly mayor, men of great power and estate (Memorials, p. 526). Northampton was buried in St. Alphage's Church, Cripplegate. His arms are given by Stow (u.s.p. 556). 

NORTHBROOK,. [See, 1796–1866.]

NORTHBROOKE, JOHN (fl. 1570), preacher and writer against plays, born in Devonshire (Poore Man's Garden, Epistle), was one of the first ministers ordained by Gilbert Berkeley, Queen Elizabeth's bishop of Bath and Wells. He is stated by Tanner, who refers to Lewis Evans's translation of the ‘Tabulæ Hæreseon’ of the Bishop of Roermund (Antwerp, 1565), to have been for some time in the prison of the Bishop of Exeter. In 1568 he was ‘minister and preacher of the word of God’ at St. Mary de Redcliffe, Bristol. In the epistle dedicatory of his first book he gives as his third reason for publishing it that one John Blackeall, born in Exeter, while doing penance at Paul's Cross for various offences detected by Northbrooke's instrumentality, uttered ‘against me many foule and sclaunderous reportes.’ Northbrooke had in consequence been summoned to town by the queen's commissioners, but before he could arrive Blackeall ‘stole awaie’ from the Marshalsea, in which he was confined. In 1571 Northbrooke was procurator for the Bristol clergy in the synod at London. Tanner thinks he was the John Northbrock presented by Queen Elizabeth