Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/325

 the Royal Irish Academy and of the Anthropological Society, and a member of numerous other learned bodies. He died at Funchal, Madeira, on 14 April 1883. He married, on 9 Aug. 1842, Maria Margaretta (d. 1873), youngest daughter and coheir of Patrick Murray of Simprim, and was succeeded in the peerage by his eldest son, Richard Wogan Talbot.

[Times, 17 April 1883; Men of the Time, 1868; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. vii. 320; Gent. Mag. 1852 i. 197, 1857 ii. 54; Archæological Journal, passim; Dublin Review, September 1875 (with portrait).] 

TALBOT, JOHN, first (1388?–1453), was second son of Richard Talbot of Goodrich Castle in the march of Wales, fourth baron Talbot [see, second ], by Ankaret, sole heir (1383) of the last lord Strange of Blackmere, close to Whitchurch in Shropshire, in whose right he had been summoned to parliament during his father's lifetime as Lord Talbot of Blackmere. A younger brother, Richard [q. v.], who became archbishop of Dublin, is separately noticed. Talbot's elder brother, Gilbert, the fifth baron (b. 1383?), commanded with some success against Glendower, was made justice of Chester and knight of the Garter, and under Henry V captain-general of the marches of Normandy; he died before Rouen in 1419. On the death two years later (13 Dec. 1421) of his only child Ankaret, her uncle John succeeded to the family honours. The year of Talbot's birth seems uncertain, but he cannot, as often stated, have been eighty years old when he fell at Castillon (, v. 264). He is described as thirty years of age on succeeding to the barony in 1421 (, i. 328), but, if so, he held a Welsh command before he was fifteen, and sat in the House of Lords (jure uxoris) before he was twenty (, iii. 111; Complete Peerage, vii. 136). This would point to a date not later than 1388 (cf., Hallamshire, p. 62).

He married apparently before October 1404 (, iii. 111) his mother's stepdaughter, Maud Neville (b. 1391?), only child of Thomas Neville, by his first wife, Joan Furnivall, in whose right he held the barony of Furnivall. Maud brought her husband the great fee of Hallamshire, with its centre at Sheffield, and in her right he was summoned to parliament from 1409 to 1421 as Lord Furnivall or Lord Talbot of Hallamshire. On his niece's death in 1421 he succeeded to the baronies of Talbot (of Goodrich) and Strange of Blackmere, and to the Irish honour of Wexford, inherited through his ancestress Joan de Valence.

Talbot was deputy constable of Montgomery Castle for his father-in-law from December 1404, succeeding to the post on Furnivall's death in March 1407, and taking part in the siege of Aberystwith in the same year (, u.s.). Two years later he helped his elder brother to capture Harlech (ib. iii. 265;, i. 241). During the Lollard panic, shortly after the accession of Henry V, Talbot was imprisoned in the Tower (16 Nov. 1413). But the conjecture that he was a sympathiser with his old companion-in-arms Oldcastle seems hardly consistent with his being commissioned shortly after to inquire into the conduct of the Shropshire Lollards (, i. 328;, iii. 309). Henry soon released him, and made him (February 1414) lieutenant of Ireland. Landing at Dalkey on 10 Nov., Talbot lost no time in invading and overawing Leix, and fortified the bridge of Athenry (, p. 305). He brought some of the septs to submission and captured Donat Macmurrogh. Apparently popular at first with the Anglo-Irish, complaints of the misgovernment of his officers were made to the king in 1417, and he ran heavily into debt (Ord. Privy Council, ii. 219;, p. 28). Janico Dartas, a former squire of Richard II, accused him of withholding certain Irish revenues for which he held a royal grant (Rot. Parl. iv. 161; Gesta Henrici V, p. 126).

Called away to the French war in 1419, leaving his brother Richard as deputy, Talbot was present at the siege of Melun in 1420, and that of Meaux in 1421 (ib. pp. 144, 279). Shortly after Henry VI's accession a long-standing quarrel with his powerful Irish kinsman, the Earl of Ormonde, reached a climax; the English in Ireland were divided into armed Ormonde and Talbot factions; each charged the other with paying blackmail to the Irish. Talbot denounced his adversary to the royal council, but with the consent of parliament the process was stopped (October 1423) on the ground of the consanguinity of both parties to the king and the ‘scandals and inconveniences’ which might result in both countries (, p. 311; Rot. Parl. iv. 199). In the same parliament the commons petitioned the crown for redress of the grievances of certain inhabitants of Herefordshire who had been carried off, with their goods, to Goodrich Castle by Talbot and others and held to ransom. Talbot had to find surety to keep the peace, and a judicial inquiry was promised (ib. iv. 254, cf. p. 275).

Ormonde was not the only peer with whom Talbot had a quarrel. He carried on a fierce dispute for parliamentary precedence with