♂Richard FitzAlan

Richard FitzAlan^W (1346 – 21 September 1397) was an English nobleman, Earl of Arundel and Surrey and Admiral of England, one of the five Lords Appellant^W who stood against Richard II^W and was beheaded in London in 1397. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth de Arundel.

Early life and marriage

As the peerage histories tell it, Richard was born in 1346, the son and heir of Richard, Earl of Arundel, by his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster. A marriage contract between Richard and Elizabeth de Bohun, a daughter of William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton^W, was dated 28 September 1359, and a papal dispensation^W was granted the same month, because the two were related in the fourth degree of kindred. Richard succeeded his father as Earl of Arundel in 1376.

At court and at sea

At the coronation of Richard II on 16 July 1377, Richard carried the crown. He sat on the king’s council, was made Admiral of the West and South in 1377 and, in 1386, admiral of all England, and became a Knight of the Garter the same year. He made his name in the French wars: on 24 March 1387, in the Battle of Margate^W, he defeated the allied French, Spanish and Flemish fleets off the coast of Kent. In 1388 he was made Governor of Brest. The editors of the Complete Peerage called him “a gallant, hot tempered, popular man” and “one of the best sea-captains of the time.”

Against the king

Richard was one of the five Lords Appellant in the Merciless Parliament^W of 1388, and with Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester^W, he took an active part against Richard II, who that year was entirely in Gloucester’s power. The Complete Peerage calls him “the persistent political opponent and bitter personal enemy of Richard II.”

Elizabeth had died on 3 April 1385 and was buried at Lewes. On 15 August 1390 Richard married Philippe Mortimer, the widow of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, and a daughter of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March; he married her without the king’s license and was fined 500 marks for it. They had no children.

In 1394 he obtained a pardon for all his political offenses, but on 12 July 1397 he was seized, tried at Westminster, and beheaded in Cheapside on 21 September 1397. The chronicler Walsingham wrote that he showed “No more shrinking or changing colour than if he were going to a banquet.” He was buried in the church of the Augustin Friars, in Bread Street, London, and because he was attainted, all his honors were forfeited.

The family

Richard and Elizabeth had three sons, Richard, Thomas and William, and five daughters, Eleanor, Elizabeth, Alice, Joan and Margaret. Their eldest son, Richard, died before his father. Thomas^W, born on 13 October 1381, was for a time the ward of John Holand, Duke of Exeter, who treated him very harshly; he escaped to the Continent and lived in great poverty at Utrecht with his uncle Thomas Arundel^W, the deposed Archbishop. About 4 July 1399 he landed in England with Henry, Duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV, and in 1400 he became Earl of Arundel.

Notes

Sources

Richard’s birth, parentage, offices, naval victory, part among the Lords Appellant, pardon, arrest, trial, execution and burial, both of his marriages and his son Thomas’s wardship, escape and return are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 1 (1910), pp. 244–245. The same account, with the names of the eight children and the death of the eldest son before his father, is in Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 336–337; Richardson’s MOWBRAY section (p. 602) names his daughter Elizabeth as the wife of Thomas Mowbray. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility. His mother’s name is from the papal letters quoted in the Complete Peerage, p. 244, and from Richardson’s descent charts.

Dates

The Complete Peerage gives a marriage contract dated 28 September 1359 with a papal dispensation the same month; Richardson gives a license dated 17 October 1359 and a dispensation dated 9 September 1359. Fabyan’s Chronicle, quoted in the Complete Peerage, puts his death on 22 September; the Complete Peerage and Richardson give 21 September 1397. His will is dated 4 March 1382/3 in the Complete Peerage and 4 March 1392/3 in Richardson.

Numbering

The Complete Peerage counts him as the eleventh or the fourth Earl of Arundel, depending on how the early holders of the title are reckoned, which is why he appears under both numbers.