William de Mowbray, Baron of Thirsk, Surety of the Magna Carta

House of Mowbray on Wikipedia It has been said that the Mowbrays governing center in the North was a small castle in Burton-in-Lonsdale.

William DE MOWBRAY

   * Father: Nigel DE MONTBRAY

* Mother: Mabel DE CLARE
* Birth: 1170, Axholme, Lincolnshire, England
* Death: 1222
* Partnership with: Agnes of ARUNDEL
o Child: Nigel DE MOWBRAY Birth: 1200
o Child: Roger DE MOWBRAY Birth: 1210, Lincoln, England
Ancestors of William DE MOWBRAY

                           /-Nigel DE AUBIGNY

/-Roger DE MONTBRAY
| \-Gundred DE GOURNAY
/-Nigel DE MONTBRAY
| | /-Walter DE GAUNT
| \-Alice DE GAUNT
| \-Maude of BRITTANY
William DE MOWBRAY

       |                   /-Gilbert FitzRichard DE CLARE

| /-Roger FitzGilbert DE CLARE
| | \-Adeliza DE CLERMONT
\-Mabel DE CLARE
| /-James de ST HILARY
\-Maude ST HILARY

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▼References ↑ Weis, Frederick Lewis; William R. Beall; and Walter Lee Sheppard. The Magna Charta Sureties, 1215: the barons named in the Magna Charta, 1215, and some of their descendants who settled in America during the early colonial years. (Baltimore [Maryland]: Genealogical Pub. Co., c1999), pp. 81-82 line 63. William de Mowbray (158-6), Magna Charta Surety, 1215, of Thirske and Slingsby, crusader, 1193, Baron of Axholme, d. Axholme, 1222; m. Avice (or Agnes), "dau. of the Earl of Arundel." (Clay, 139; CP IX, 373-4).

 Mowbray, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. (Online: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.). Roger, a great lord with a hundred knight's fees, was captured with King Stephen at the battle of Lincoln, joined the rebellion against Henry II (1173), founded abbeys, and went on crusade. His grandson William, a leader in the rising against King John, was one of the 25 barons of the Great Charter, as was his brother Roger, and was captured fighting against Henry III at the rout of Lincoln (1217). William's grandson Roger (1266–1298), who was summoned to parliament by Edward I, was father of John (1286–1322), a warrior and warden of the Scottish March, who, joining in Thomas of Lancaster's revolt, was captured at Boroughbridge and hanged.

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William de Mowbray (c. 1173-c. 1224), a landowner with Yorkshire estates centring on Thirsk and Lincolnshire lands in the Isle of Axholme, was son of Nigel de Mowbray and his wife Mabel, probably the daughter of William de Patri. In the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie he is described as being as small as a dwarf, but very generous and valiant. There was much in William’s background and personal circumstances that can be seen, with hindsight, as pointing the way to his involvement in the rebellion against King John. His forebear, Roger de Mowbray, had taken part in the great uprising against Henry II in 1173-4, which had convulsed the whole Angevin world. He himself had become entangled in financial dealings with King John which were to cost him dearly. His problems lay in his family’s early rise to power, specifically in their acquisition from Henry I a century before of the lands of Robert de Stuteville, a supporter of Henry’s brother Robert Curthose in his failed bid for the English crown, and who had forfeited his property to Henry. In 1200 Robert’s descendant, William, reactivated his family’s claim against the Mowbrays, and in that year William offered the sum of 2000 marks (over £1300) to John to secure a judgement in the matter. When the case was brought before the king’s justices, however, it ended in a compromise, and one highly favourable to Stuteville. William was nonetheless still under obligation to pay and, like others before him, had little alternative but to borrow from the Jews. William had gambled everything on the favourable outcome of a risky legal action and had failed. It is clear that, when he embarked on rebellion against John, he had nothing to lose. Mowbray was taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln in May 1217, and had to surrender the manor of Banstead in Surrey, which had formed his mother’s marriage portion, to Hubert de Burgh as the price of redemption. His family never succeeded in recovering the estate. Mowbray founded the chapel of St Nicholas at Thirsk, and was a benefactor of his father’s foundation, Newburgh priory, where, on his death at Axholme around 1224, he was buried. Mowbray was typical those lords, particularly in northern England, who had suffered at the hands of John, felt a burning sense of grievance, and were longing for the opportunity to get their own back.

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Nigel and Roger his sons

Avice daughter of William d'Aubigny, 3rd Earl of Arundel,

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Surety of Magna carta