English Royal Ancestry through John Howard, Duke of Norfolk

In a previous article, I showed how one of Rebecca Luther’s ancestors was John Howard, the first Howard Duke of Norfolk. John was descended from both Edward I¹ and his younger brother Edmund Crouchback². In this article I will describe that ancestry.

Not surprisingly, as John’s mother was the daughter of English Nobility, it is through his mother Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas de Mowbray³, the 1^st Duke of Norfolk, that John is a royal descendant. Margaret was descended from King Edward I through both of her parents (see figure below).

Margaret’s father, Sir Thomas Mowbray was the 1^st Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir Thomas inherited the title from his maternal grandmother, Margaret⁴, who was Duchess of Norfolk in her own right as the daughter of Thomas of Brotherton⁵, a son of King Edward I by his second wife Margaret Capet, the daughter of King Philip III of France. Thomas Brotherton had been created the 1^st Earl of Norfolk in 1312 by his older brother, King Edward II.

Margaret’s mother was descended from Elizabeth of Rhuddlan⁶, the youngest daughter of King Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of Castille. Margaret’s mother Elizabeth FitzAlan was a daughter of Richard Fitzalan⁷, 4^th Earl of Arundel, and Elizabeth de Bohun, the daughter of Sir William de Bohun⁸, 1^st Earl of Northampton. William’s mother was Elizabeth of Rhuddlan,.

So Margaret was descended from king Edward I through each of her grandmothers, Elizabeth de Segrave and Elizabeth de Bohun. But each of her grandfathers also had royal ancestors as both John de Mowbray and Richard FitzAlan were descended from Edmund Crouchback, Edward I’s younger brother and the 1^st Earl of Leicester and Lancaster (see figure below).

John de Mowbray, 4^th Baron Mowbray, was the son of John de Mowbray, 3^rd Baron Mowbray and Joan Plantagenet. Joan was the daughter of Henry Plantagenet⁹, 3^rd Earl of Lancaster and the son of Edmund Crouchback, so Joan was the great granddaughter of King Henry III of England the father of both Edward I and Edmund Crouchback.

Richard FitzAlan, 4^th Earl of Arundel, was the son Richard FitzAlan, 3^rd Earl of Arundel and Eleanor Plantagenet, who was a younger daughter of Henry Plantagenet, so Richard FitzAlan, the 4^th Earl, and John de Mowbray, the 4^th Baron Mowbray were cousins.

It’s a convoluted and fascinating story, but I shouldn’t be surprised that I can prove royal ancestry. During the Middle Ages, the children of nobles regularly married the younger children of royalty, so it’s not surprising that once I was able to trace my ancestry to a noble family, that it is fairly easy to prove royal ancestry.

Ironically, whenever I read about the Wars of the Roses or watched a documentary or drama about the Wars of the Roses, I found myself rooting for the Yorkists, but this research shows that while I have ancestors in the Lancastrian camp, like Joan Beaufort, John of Gaunt and the earlier Lancastrian descendants of Edmund Crouchback, I actually do not appear to have any Yorkist ancestors.

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