Another Scottish force under Malcolm Canmore attacked the north of England again. Roger de Mowbray was made Earl of Northumberland. He built New Castle as a defence against invasion.

1095

Robert de Mowbray rebelled in Northumberland in 1095 and was replaced.

Following the Norman conquest of England, Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, was granted some 280 English manors. His heir, his brother Roger's son, Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, was forfeited and imprisoned for life on rebelling in 1095. His lands were confiscated and he was forced to divorce his wife, Matilda de L'Aigle, daughter of Richer, Lord of L'Aigle. His Mowbray lands would be granted to her new husband, a royal favourite, Nigel d'Aubigny.

1106

Henry I defeated his elder brother and rival Robert Curthose at the Battle of Tinchebrai.

After his victory he visited York and Pickering. Henry I redistributed land from Robert Curtose’s supporters, including Robert de Stuteville to his new men, including Nigel d’Albini, ancestor of the Mowbray family and Robert de Brus.

The de Stutevilles were deprived of the Kirkbymoorside estate in 1106 when it was granted to Nigel d’Aubigny, one of Henry I’s “new men”

The relevant estate including Kirkbymoorside passed to Nigel d'Aubigny (Neel d'Aubigny or Nigel de Albini, died 1129), who was a Norman Lord and English baron who was the son of Roger d'Aubigny and Amice or Avice de Mowbray. His paternal uncle William was lord of Aubigny, while his father was an avid supporter of Henry I of England. His brother William d'Aubigny Pincerna was the king's Butler and father of the 1st Earl of Arundel. He was the founder of the noble House of Mowbray.

Nigel d'Aubigny was son of Roger d'Aubigny (of Saint-Martin-d'Aubigny) and with his brother William was an ardent supporter of Henry I. The brothers were rewarded with great estates in England. William was made king's butler, and was father of William d'Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel; Nigel was rewarded with marriage to the former wife of the imprisoned Robert de Mowbray, and with the escheated Norman fief of her former husband, also being give a number of lands in England. After a decade of childless marriage, he would divorce Matilda and remarry in 1118 to Gundred de Gournay (died 1155), daughter of Gerard de Gournay, lord of Gournay. They had one son by that marriage, Roger, who would inherit from his father the Mowbray lands in Normandy and take the Mowbray surname.

He is described as "one of the most favoured of Henry's 'new men'". While he entered the king's service as a household knight and brother of the king's butler, William d'Aubigny, in the years following the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106 Nigel was rewarded by Henry with marriage to an heiress to the Mowbray estates who brought him lordship in Normandy and with the lands of several men, primarily that of Robert de Stuteville. The Mowbray honour became one of the wealthiest estates in Norman England.

He had a castle at Thirsk.

1107

From 1107 to about 1118, Nigel served as a royal official in Yorkshire and Northumberland. In the last decade of his life he was frequently traveling with Henry I, most likely as one of the king's trusted military and administrative advisors.

Nigel's first marriage, after 1107, was to Matilda de L'Aigle, whose prior marriage to the disgraced and imprisoned Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, had been annulled based on consanguinity. She brought to the marriage with Nigel her ex-husband's lordship of Montbray (Mowbray).

Following a decade of childless marriage and the death of her powerful brother, Nigel in turn repudiated Matilda based on his consanguinity with her former husband, and in June 1118 Nigel married to Gundred de Gournay (died 1155), daughter of Gerard de Gournay and his wife Edith de Warenne, and hence granddaughter of William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey.

Nigel and Gundred had son who would be known as Roger de Mowbray after the former Mowbray lands he would inherit from his father, and he was progenitor of the later noble Mowbray family.

1129

Nigel died in Normandy, possibly at the abbey of Bec in 1129.

Gundreda administered the estate on behalf of her under aged son Roger de Mowbray.

It was she who granted the whole of Welburn and Skiplam together with the western side of Bransdale to Rievaulx Abbey, who developed the whole area as a series of granges and cotes, including Colt House and Stirk House in Bransdale.

1138

Sir Roger de Mowbray (c. 1120–1188) was an Anglo-Norman magnate. He had substantial English landholdings. A supporter of King Stephen, with whom he was captured at Lincoln in 1141, he rebelled against Henry II. He made multiple religious foundations in Yorkshire. He took part in the Second Crusade and later returned to the Holy Land, where he was captured and died in 1187.

Roger was the son of Nigel d'Aubigny by his second wife, Gundreda de Gournay. On his father's death in 1129 he became a ward of the crown. Based at Thirsk with his mother, on reaching his majority in 1138, he took title to the lands awarded to his father by Henry I both in Normandy including Montbray, from which he would adopt his surname, as well as the substantial holdings in Yorkshire and around Melton.

Soon after, in 1138, he participated in the Battle of the Standard against the Scots and, according to Aelred of Rievaulx, acquitted himself honourably. Thereafter, Roger's military fortunes were mixed. Whilst acknowledged as a competent and prodigious fighter, he generally found himself on the losing side in his subsequent engagements.

1141

During the anarchic reign of King Stephen Roger de Mowbray was captured with Stephen at the battle of Lincoln in 1141. Soon after his release, Roger married Alice de Gant (d. c. 1181), widow of Ilbert de Lacy and daughter of Walter de Gant. Roger and Alice had two sons, Nigel and Robert. Roger also had at least one daughter, donating his lands at Granville to the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen when she became a nun there.

1147

In 1147, he was one of the few English nobles to join Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade. He gained further acclaim, according to John of Hexham, defeating a Muslim leader in single combat.

1154

The first reference to Farndale, the place

It was only to be expected that the monks would seek to extend their properties into the Mowbray territories further east and at some time before 1154, Roger, granted them a wood in Farndale called Midelhoved, ie middle head, and another word called Duvanesthuat, probably near Duffin Stone Farm at the northwestern end of the dale, together with common pasture rights and permission to take building timber and wood for those who stay there. Duvanesthuat embodies an Irish Norse personal name, but there is nothing to suggest that it was a functioning settlement by the mid 12th century. The whole area was regarded as a private forest of the Mowbrays. The grant was made “saving Roger’s wild beasts”, and it seems to have been anticipated that the monks would want to build a new dwelling there, probably to use as a grange or cote.

Two clearings in the valley of Farndale (Midelhovet and Duvansesthuat) were granted by Roger de Mowbray to the Abbey and monks of Rievaulx Abbey. By it Roger bestowed upon the Monastery, ‘….Midelhovet, that clearing in Farndale where the hermit Edmund used to dwell; and another clearing which is called ‘Duvanesthuat’ and common of pasture in the same valley of Farndale….

Roger de Mowbray, son of Niel Daubeney, grantee of the Stuteville lands, was holding Kirkby Moorside.

Robert de Stuteville, grandson of the first Robert, laid claim to the barony.

Roger gave him Kirkby Moorside for 10 knights’ fees in satisfaction of his claim. This arrangement however was not ratified in the King’s courts.

1173

The murder of Thomas Becket.

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 Magna Carta, as was his brother Roger, and was captured fighting against Henry III at the rout of Lincoln.

Roger supported the Revolt of 1173–74 against Henry II and fought with his sons, Nigel and Robert, but they were defeated at Kinardferry, Kirkby Malzeard and Thirsk.

Henry the Young King allied himself with the King of Scotland in 1172 and rebelled. Some of the sokemen of Pickering were fined for their involvement.

Bernard de Balliol and Robert de Stuteville captured the Scottish King at Alnwick and imprisoned him at Richmond Castle.

Roger de Mowbray of Thirsk joined the rebels and he was attacked by royal forces. He was defeated on two occasions around Northallerton.

There was peace by 1175, when Robert de Stuteville supervised the building of castles in Edinburgh and Scarborough.

Roger de Mowbray was compelled to hand back Kirkbymoorside to the de Stutevilles along with many other fees.

The rising Stuteville family recovered much of the old estate forfeited by their ancestors, including Kirkbymoorside.

1186 to 1187

Roger left for the Holy Land again in 1186, but encountered further misfortune being captured at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. His ransom was met by the Templars, but he died soon after and, according to some accounts, was buried at Tyre in Palestine. There is, however, some controversy surrounding his death and burial and final resting-place.

1191

The House of Mowbray, the senior line of which would become Barons Mowbray, descended from Roger's son Nigel, who died on crusade at Acre in 1191.

1200

A dispute broke out again between William de Stuteville, son of Robert and William de Mowbray, grandson of Roger.

William de Mowbray’s 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 2,000 marks (over £1,300) 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 Jewish moneylenders. 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.

Finally William de Mowbray confirmed the previous agreement and gave 9 knights’ fees in augmentum.

Henceforward Kirkby Moorside was held of the Mowbrays by the heirs of the Stutevilles until the end of the 14th century.

The Mowbrays after their interest in Kirkbymoorside ceased

1214

Some of the Yorkshire barons held no continental lands, and had little interest in Johnm’s overseas interests. William de Mowbray and Peter de Brus refused to join the overseas adventure to Poitou or to pay war taxes in 1214.

These barons were prominent amongst the northern barons who forced the Magna Carta on John in 1215.

1215

John’s unpopular methods of raising taxation came to a head by the barons insistence that King John signed Magna Carta at Runnymede in June 1215. It included a resolution of countless grievances of the day, but it also embraced some fundamental legal principles which have passed through to contemporary legal doctrine, including that No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned … but by lawful judgment of his peers.

Magna Carta:

· Imposed restraints on monarchy;

· Might be taken as the first example of a written constitution, which was unusual across Europe at that time;

· Represented a contract between monarchy and the community of the realm, which started to emerge as a distinct legal entity.

William de Mowbray was on the council of 25 barons set up under Magna Carta.

William's grandson Roger de Mowbray (1266–1298), was summoned to parliament by Edward I, by which act he is held to have become the first Lord Mowbray.

He 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. His wife, a Braose heiress, added Gower in South Wales and the Bramber lordship in Sussex to the great possessions of his house.

Their son John de Mowbray, 3rd Baron Mowbray (d. 1361) was father, by Joan of Lancaster, a daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, of John, Lord Mowbray (c. 1328–1368), whose marriage with the heiress of John de Segrave, 4th Baron Segrave, by the heiress of Edward I's son Thomas, earl of Norfolk and marshal of England, further increased the family's wealth and property. In addition to a vast accession to their lands, the earldom of Nottingham and the marshalship of England were bestowed on them by Richard II, and the dukedom of Norfolk followed.

The 1st duke left two sons, of whom Thomas the elder was only recognized as earl marshal. Beheaded for joining in Scrope's conspiracy against Henry IV (1405), he was succeeded by his brother John, who was restored to the dukedom of Norfolk in 1424. His son John, the third duke, was father of John, 4th and last duke, who was created earl of Warenne and Surrey in his father's lifetime (1451). At his death (1481) his vast inheritance devolved on his only child Anne, who was married as an infant to Edward IV's younger son Richard (created duke of Norfolk and earl of Nottingham and Warenne), but died in 1481.

The next heirs of the Mowbrays were then the Howards and the Berkeleys, representing the two daughters of the first duke. Between them were divided the estates of the house, the Mowbray dukedom of Norfolk and earldom of Surrey being also revived for the Howards (1483), and the earldom of Nottingham (1483) and earl marshalship (1485) for the Berkeleys. Both families assumed the baronies of Mowbray and Segrave, but Henry Howard was summoned in his father's lifetime (1640) as Lord Mowbray, which was deemed a recognition of the Howards' right; their co-heirs, from 1777, were the Lords Stourton and the Lords Petre, and in 1878 Lord Stourton was summoned as Lord Mowbray and Segrave. The former dignity is claimed as the premier barony, though De Ros ranks before it. Lord Stourton's son claimed, but unsuccessfully, in 1901–1906 the earldom of Norfolk (1312), also through the Mowbrays. Of the Mowbray estates the castle and lordship of Bramber is still vested in the dukes of Norfolk.

Individuals of the Mowbray Family

Nigel d'Aubigny, lord of Mowbray (d.1129)

Roger de Mowbray, lord of Mowbray (d.1188)

William de Mowbray, lord of Mowbray (d.ca.1224)

Roger de Mowbray, 1st Baron Mowbray (d.1298)

John de Mowbray, 2nd Baron Mowbray (d.1322)

John de Mowbray, 3rd Baron Mowbray (d.1361)

John de Mowbray, 4th Baron Mowbray (d.1368)

John Mowbray, 1st Earl of Nottingham, 5th Baron Mowbray (d.1383)

Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham and Norfolk, Baron Segrave and 6th Baron Mowbray (d.1399)

Thomas Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham, Baron Segrave and 7th Baron Mowbray (d.1405)

John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Norfolk, Baron Segrave and 8th Baron Mowbray (d.1432)

John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham and Norfolk, Baron Segrave and 9th Baron Mowbray (d.1461)

John Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham, Norfolk, Surrey and Warenne, Baron Segrave and 10th Baron Mowbray (d.1476)

Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, Baroness Segrave and 11th Baroness Mowbray (d.1481)