John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk

• 1. Introduction

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  John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, rode into the Battle of Bosworth Field on the 22nd of August 1485 knowing something was wrong. The night before, according to a story later recorded, someone had pinned a note to his tent. It read: "Jack of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold." Howard rode anyway. He commanded the vanguard for his friend and king, Richard III, and he died there on the field, killed either by a knight named Sir John Savage in single combat, or by a Lancastrian arrow that struck his face after his visor was torn away.

  His loyalty cost him everything. But his blood had already set in motion a story that would outlast his dukedom, his king, and very nearly his name. From this Suffolk nobleman descended two of Henry VIII's queens, and through one of them, a queen who would define an era. The questions this man raises are not small ones. How did a soldier and landowner from the edges of the Wars of the Roses climb to the pinnacle of English royal service? What drew him so completely to Richard III? And why, when the warning came, did he choose not to turn back?

• 2. Roots in Royal Blood

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  Born around 1425, John Howard came into the world with a lineage that ran in two directions toward the English throne. His father was Sir Robert Howard of Tendring Hall in Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk. His mother, Margaret de Mowbray, was the eldest daughter of Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, who had himself died in 1399. That Mowbray connection placed Howard within one of England's most storied noble families.

  On his father's side, the line traced back to Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, the second son of King John. That descent ran through an illegitimate branch, passing through a woman named Joan of Cornwall and her marriage into the Howard family. On his mother's side, the royal threads were equally dense. Howard descended from Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, who was the elder son of Edward I by his second wife, Margaret of France. He also descended from Edward I's younger brother, Edmund Crouchback.

  Howard was not merely well-born; he was woven into the fabric of English royal descent from multiple directions at once. When he inherited his father's estates in 1436 and then his grandfather's the following year, he stepped into a position of considerable regional standing in Suffolk. His paternal grandparents were Sir John Howard of Wiggenhall in Norfolk and Alice Tendring, daughter of Sir William Tendring, giving the family deep roots across East Anglia that would shape Howard's entire career.

• 3. Service, Conflict, and Norfolk Politics

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  At a tournament in 1467, described by those present as the most splendid of the age, Howard served as deputy for Norfolk as Earl Marshal. The occasion was the joust between Antoine, count of La Roche, the Bastard of Burgundy, and Lord Scales, the Queen's brother. Howard's role that day was ceremonial, but it reflected how far he had traveled since his early years in East Anglian factional politics.

  In his youth, Howard had been in the household of his cousin John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, who died in 1461. That proximity drew him into Norfolk's conflicts with William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. By 1453 Howard was in the courts himself, entangled in a lawsuit with Suffolk's wife, Alice Chaucer. A description from this period, quoted by Crawford, called Howard "wode as a wilde bullok," a phrase that suggests he was not yet the polished royal servant he would become.

  He had been elected to Parliament in 1449 as a Shire knight for Suffolk, and through the 1450s he accumulated local offices in the region. He is said to have accompanied Lord Lisle on his expedition to Guyenne in 1452, which ended in defeat at Castillon on the 17th of July 1453. Two years later, on the 10th of December 1455, he received an official commission from the King, and Henry had also used him to smooth tensions between Lord Moleyns, who was Howard's father-in-law, and a man named John Clopton. Even before he became a Yorkist knight, Howard was already moving in the space between great households, learning the art of managing competing loyalties.

• 4. A Yorkist Made

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  At the Battle of Towton on the 29th of March 1461, King Edward IV knighted John Howard on the field. It was one of the most decisive battles of the Wars of the Roses, and Howard had placed himself unambiguously on the winning side. That same year he was appointed Constable of both Norwich and Colchester castles, and he joined the royal household as one of the King's carvers. One contemporary described this moment as "the start of a service to the house of York which was to last for the rest of his life."

  The years that followed brought steady advancement. In 1461 he served as High Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. During 1462-4, he took part in military campaigns against the Lancastrians. In 1467 he reached the rank of Knight of the Body. By September 1468, he had been appointed Treasurer of the Royal Household, a post he held for roughly two years until Edward lost the throne in 1470.

  When Edward's first reign ended and the King went into exile, Howard followed. He was already, according to Crawford, a wealthy man by that point. Around Stoke-by-Nayland alone he held some sixteen manors, seven of which the King had granted him in 1462. After 1463, he had purchased additional manors, including six that had been forfeited by John de Vere, the 12th Earl of Oxford, who was the son of Howard's cousin Elizabeth Howard. That acquisition points to something characteristic in Howard's career: he advanced not only through loyalty and military service, but through careful accumulation of land during the political convulsions that surrounded him.

• 5. The Road to Norfolk

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  On the 28th of June 1483, John Howard was created Duke of Norfolk in the third creation of that title. The path to that ducal coronet had been tangled in dynastic accident and political maneuvering. The first creation had gone extinct with the death of Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, who died as a child in 1476, the sole heir of John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk. A second creation had been granted to her widower, Richard of York, but that creation was removed from him on the 25th of June 1483, only three days before Howard received the title himself.

  Howard was heir to the duchy through his Mowbray descent on his mother's side. But it was his alliance with Richard III that turned hereditary claim into actual title. In April 1483, he had borne the royal banner at the funeral of King Edward IV. He had supported Richard's accession to the throne. Most significantly, at Richard's personal request, he had taken the nine-year-old Richard of Shrewsbury, Edward IV's younger son, from Westminster Abbey where the boy was in sanctuary with his mother, and delivered him to the Tower of London to join his brother Edward V. Both boys subsequently disappeared.

  At Richard's coronation, Howard served as Lord High Steward and bore the crown before the King. His eldest son, the Earl of Surrey, carried the Sword of State. Along with the dukedom, Howard was also created Earl Marshal and Lord High Admiral of all England, Ireland, and Aquitaine. On the 24th of April 1472, he had been admitted to the Order of the Garter. He had, in a decade, moved from wealthy East Anglian knight to the highest ranks of the English nobility.

• 6. Family, Home, and Legacy

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  Before the 29th of September 1442, Howard married Catherine, the daughter of Sir William Moleyns of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire. She died on the 3rd of November 1465. Together they had six children, including Thomas Howard, who would become 2nd Duke of Norfolk, born in 1443 and dying on the 21st of May 1524. Thomas went on to marry Elizabeth Tilney on the 30th of April 1472, and their children included Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Howard, who became the wife of Sir Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire.

  Howard married a second time, before the 22nd of January 1467, to Margaret Chedworth, born in 1436. She had been widowed twice already: first from Nicholas Wyfold, who had served as Lord Mayor of London, and then from Sir John Norreys, Master of the Wardrobe. By Margaret he had a daughter, Katherine Howard, who died on the 17th of March 1536 and who married John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners.

  Howard's principal seat was at Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk, and later Framlingham Castle. After his second marriage, he often stayed at Ockwells Manor at Cox Green in Bray, which sat conveniently close to the royal residence at Windsor Castle. That detail captures something about his life: always positioned near the center of power, never quite at it, until Richard III placed him there. Through his granddaughter Elizabeth Howard's marriage into the Boleyn family, Howard became the great-grandfather of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second queen, and of Catherine Howard, his fifth. Anne Boleyn's daughter became Elizabeth I, making Howard the great-great-grandfather of England's most celebrated monarch.

• 7. Bosworth and After

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  Howard mustered his forces at Bury St Edmunds as part of his duties as Earl Marshal, gathering lords, knights, and common soldiers to march with Richard III to Redemoor Plain. That plain is better known as Bosworth Field. Howard commanded the vanguard; his son, the Earl of Surrey, served as his lieutenant.

  The Ballad of Lady Bessy names Sir John Savage as the knight who killed Howard in single combat. A different account holds that a Lancastrian arrow struck him in the face after the face guard of his helmet had been torn off in an earlier clash with the Earl of Oxford. Both versions agree that Howard died before Richard did, and that his death had a demoralising effect on the King who had placed so much of his faith in him. Richard was slain later in the same battle.

  After Bosworth, Henry VII declared Howard's titles forfeit. Howard was buried at Thetford Priory, though his body appears 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, survives and can still be seen in Suffolk. His son, the 1st Earl of Surrey, was eventually restored as 2nd Duke of Norfolk, though the Barony of Howard was not restored and remains forfeit to this day. The senior line of Howard descendants, the Dukes of Norfolk, have held the offices of Earl Marshal and Premier Peer of England since the 17th century, with male-line descendants also holding the Earldoms of Carlisle, Suffolk, Berkshire, and Effingham.