John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk

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John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk bigraphy, stories - English noble and admiral

John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk : biography

1421 – 22 August 1485

John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, KG, Earl Marshal (c.1425 – 22 August 1485) was an English nobleman and soldier, and the first Howard Duke of Norfolk. He was a close friend and loyal supporter of King Richard III, with whom he was slain at the Battle of Bosworth.

Marriages and issue

Before 29 September 1401 Howard married Katherine Moleyns (d. 3 November 1465), the daughter of Sir William Moleyns (7 January 1378 – 8 June 1425), styled Lord Moleyns, of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, and his wife, Margery Whalesborough (d. 26 March 1439).Richardson says her surname is unknown. There is confusion in some sources between the wives of Sir William Moleyns (d. 8 June 1425) and his eldest son and heir, Sir William Moleyns, who was slain at the siege of Orleans on 8 May 1429, and who married, on 1 May 1423, as his second wife, Anne Whalesborough (died c. 1487), the daughter and co-heir of John Whalesborough, esquire, of Whalesborough, Cornwall; ; ; .

By Katherine Moleyns Howard had two sons and four daughters:; .

  • Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Surrey (1443–21 May 1524), who married firstly, on 30 April 1472, as her second husband, Elizabeth Tilney, by whom he had ten children including Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Howard, wife of Sir Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire; he married secondly, in 1497, Agnes Tilney, by whom he had eleven children.
  • Nicholas Howard (died c.1468).
  • Isabel Howard, who married Robert Mortimer, esquire,According to Crawford, he was Sir Robert Mortimer. by whom she had issue.
  • Anne Howard, who married Sir Edmund Gorges (d.1512) of Wraxall, by whom she had issue including Sir Thomas Gorges.
  • Jane Howard (d. 1508), who in 1481 married Sir John Timperley of Hintlesham, Suffolk.
  • Margaret Howard, who married Sir John Wyndham of Crownthorpe and Felbrigg, Norfolk, by whom she had issue.

Howard married secondly, before 22 January 1467, Margaret (1436–1494), the daughter of Sir John Chedworth and his wife, Margaret Bowett,In some sources Margaret Bowett’s maiden name is said to have been Wyfold, but this is an error; it was her daughter, Margaret Chedworth, who married Nicholas Wyfold in 1455. Margaret Bowett’s parents were Nicholas Bowett of Rippingale, Lincolnshire, and Elizabeth La Zouche of Harringworth, Northamptonshire. and widow, firstly of Nicholas Wyfold (1420-1456), Lord Mayor of London, and secondly of Sir John Norreys (1400 – 1 September 1466), Master of the Wardrobe..

By his second wife, Margaret Chedworth, he had one daughter:; .

  • Katherine Howard (died 17 March 1536), who married John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners, by whom she had issue.

Death

John Howard was slain at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 along with his friend and patron King Richard.Paul Murray Kendall, Richard The Third, pp. 193-6, 365. Howard was the commander of the vanguard, and his son, the Earl of Surrey, his lieutenant. Howard was killed when a Lancastrian arrow struck him in the face after the face guard had been torn off his helmet during an earlier altercation with the Earl of Oxford.Neil Grant, The Howards of Norfolk’,p.16 He was slain prior to King Richard, which had a demoralising effect on the king. The night before, someone had left John Howard a note attached to his tent warning him that King Richard III, his "master," was going to be double-crossed (which he was):

“Jack of Norfolk, be not too bold,
For Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold.” Neil Grant, The Howards of Norfolk, p.15

He was buried in Thetford Priory, but his body seems to have been moved at the Reformation, possibly to the tomb of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk at Framlingham Church. The monumental brass of his first wife Katherine Moleyns can, however, still be seen in Suffolk.

Howard was the great-grandfather of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the second and fifth Queens consort, respectively, of King Henry VIII. Thus, through Anne Boleyn, he was the great-great-grandfather of Elizabeth I. His titles were declared forfeit after his death by King Henry VII, but his son, the 1st Earl of Surrey, was later restored as 2nd Duke (the Barony of Howard, however, remains forfeit). His senior descendants, the Dukes of Norfolk, have been Earls Marshal and Premier Peers of England since the 17th century, and male-line descendants hold the Earldoms of Carlisle, Suffolk, Berkshire and Effingham.