♀Isabel Mowbray

Isabel Mowbray (died 27 September 1452) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of the first Duke of Norfolk and the wife of James, Lord Berkeley, and died a prisoner during his long quarrel over Berkeley Castle. She was the seventeenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506).

First marriage

Isabel was a daughter of Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk^W, and Elizabeth de Arundel, a daughter of Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel. Shortly before 13 July 1416 she married Sir Henry Ferrers, of Buttsbury and Marks, in Dunmow, Essex, the son and heir apparent of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby. By 1424 Isabel was his widow.

Lady Berkeley

In 1424 Isabel married James Berkeley. In 1425 the couple received a papal indult^W allowing them a portable altar, and they traveled together to Rome, where they stayed at the English Hospice. They had four sons, William, Maurice, James and Thomas, and four daughters, Isabel, Margaret, Elizabeth and Alice.

Her husband had won Berkeley Castle^W from his cousin Elizabeth, Countess of Warwick, after years of dispute, and the quarrel outlived the countess. Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury^W, a granddaughter and co-heir of the last Lord Berkeley, took it up, and Isabel is said to have been arrested on her order while about to appeal to the king’s council on her husband’s behalf. She was imprisoned at Gloucester and died there on 27 September 1452, and was buried in the church of the Grey Friars at Gloucester. James married again in 1457 and died in November 1463.

The family

Their eldest son, William^W, was born at Berkeley Castle in 1426 and as a boy was in the retinue of Cardinal Henry Beaufort^W at Calais about 1438. He succeeded his father as Lord Berkeley and was later made Marquess of Berkeley. He had no surviving children and settled the castle and most of the family lands on King Henry VII, so that his brother Maurice was cut out of the inheritance.

Notes

Sources

Isabel’s parentage, her marriage to James Berkeley, the papal indult of 1425, the stay in Rome, her children, her arrest, imprisonment, death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, pp. 256–258, and Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 74 and 604. Her first marriage, shortly before 13 July 1416, is from Magna Carta Ancestry, p. 389. The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (1912), p. 132, gives the same account of her arrest and death and adds that she was taken “while about to appeal to the King in Council on behalf of her husband.” William’s early career is from Magna Carta Ancestry, p. 74; his settlement of the family lands on the king is from the Complete Peerage, 1st edition, vol. 1 (1887), pp. 331–332. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility.

Dates and places

No source gives her birth. Richardson gives the marriage to James as “in 1423/4,” a year that ran across the old New Year of 25 March. Richardson places her death at Gloucester Castle; the Complete Peerage says only that she was imprisoned “at Gloucester.” Magna Carta Ancestry, p. 389, gives the day of her death as 23 September 1452. The Complete Peerage calls her the first daughter of the duke, whose descendants became his co-heirs; Magna Carta Ancestry lists her fourth among his children.