Joan’s daughter Katherine married John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk when she was about twelve. He died in 1432. Katherine then remarried to Thomas Strangeways of Castle in Yorkshire. It can be supposed that Katherine’s second marriage which seems a bit of an odd one for a duchess to make says more about the Nevilles’ political aspirations in the north than anything else. The Strangeways family was an important one within the Yorkshire and Durham gentry. The name features as justice of the peace during the period- clearly the Neville family sought to create a powerful political affinity through a series of marital alliances.
Katherine (the dowager duchess of Norfolk) and Thomas had two daughters: Joan and Katherine. I am pleased to report that there is not a great deal I wish to write about Joan. She married Sir William Willoughby of Lincolnshire – which if nothing else identifies the way in which the network of gentry and aristocratic families spread beyond county boundaries forming affiliations.
Katherine, Joan Beaufort’s grand-daughter, on the other hand was married off to Henry Grey, Baron Grey of Codnor in 1454 just before the Wars of the Roses escalated from a political feud into an actual war. His location in Codnor, a powerful member of Derbyshire’s gentry, reflects links between the Neville family and the wider Lancaster affinity first created by John of Gaunt – though it must have been complicated even then by the fact that Grey’s mother was a member of the Percy family- the Nevilles’ and the Percies’ feud with one another had led to the so-called Battle of Heworth Moor on 24 August 1453 when the Percy family headed by Lord Egremont attacked a Neville wedding party to celebrate the marriage of Sir Thomas Neville to Maud Stanhope. Thomas Neville, the groom, was our Katherine Strangeways’ cousin.
Henry Grey, conflict between his own extended family and his family through marriage aside, tends to turn up in most popular accounts about the Wars of the Roses as an example of local feuding impacting on national politics. I know that I’ve posted about him before but in all honesty I’ve never given much thought to his wife or the fact that she was the great grand-daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Essentially Grey started off as a Lancastrian – hence the marriage. He was on the Lancastrian side at the Second Battle of St. Albans in 1461. However, after the Battle of Towton in 1461 he swiftly made his peace with Yorkist Edward IV and thereafter entered the lists as a loyal Yorkist.
Henry Grey was less interested in the national picture than in what was happening in his own backyard. He had his own local feud with the Vernons of Haddon Hall to keep him out of mischief and in 1467 a member of the Vernon family, Roger (he was Henry Vernon’s uncle for those of you who know these things), managed to get himself killed after a series of unfortunate events in Belper where he was a squire. Locally it is said that there was a battle fought at Codnor between the Greys and the Vernons as a result of Roger’s death.
George, Duke of Clarence who had acquired large portions of the land in the area as part of his inheritance (remember he is descended from John of Gaunt- the Cousins War is well named) favoured the Vernon family despite the fact that they had fought against the Yorkists. Edward IV was said to have favoured the Grey family. In any event the Earl of Shrewsbury eventually fined both parties and told them to stop killing one another but this was only after the Duke of Clarence had failed to get them to keep the peace and both sides had attempted to nobble the jury.
In 1471, partly as a result of the rumbling aftereffects of the death of Roger Vernon, Grey managed to get himself in even more hot water by inciting a riot in Nottingham. Grey was summoned to London where Edward IV asked some very difficult questions. By this stage an act had been passed trying to prevent local magnates from keeping their own bands of armed retainers – not that it seemed to have much effect.
By then it would have to be said that Henry Grey had got the hang of killing people as he turned up for the concluding battles of the Wars of the Roses – at Barnet, Tewkesbury, Bosworth and Stoke. It was only at Stoke in 1487 that he fought for the Lancastrian cause. Edward IV had even appointed him to office in Ireland (not that it went particularly well) so it is interesting that Henry VII not only granted him land but gave him a licence to work with metals.
After Katherine died Henry Grey remarried twice more. His third wife, also and rather inconveniently named Katherine married Edward IV’s nephew William de la Pole -meaning that she was married to a man marked as a potential Yorkist contender to the throne, taking us in one of those ever decreasing historical circles that I like so much. Though the good news for readers of this post is that Katherine Strangeways and Henry Grey didn’t have any children.
Katherine Strangeways’ mother the dowager duchess of Norfolk from her first marriage to John Mowbray would marry twice more. Both her third and fourth husbands have their part to play in the Wars of the Roses – her last marriage being described as “diabolical” by her contemporaries – guess what I’m posting about tomorrow? There are no rewards for anyone who has worked out who Katherine Neville ended up marrying or what the scandal was – but I can guarantee that some of you will exhale and think – ‘well, why didn’t she say at the start of this whole unravelling of Katherine Neville’s family?’
Weir, Alison. (2008) Britain’s Royal Families. London: Vintage Books