John Cornewall, 1st Baron Fanhope

Coat of arms of John Cornewall, 1st Baron Fanhope

John Cornewall, 1st Baron Fanhope KG (also John Cornwall ; called Green Cornewall ) (* before 1375; † December 11, 1443 ) was an English nobleman and military man.

origin

John Cornewall was the eldest son of his father of the same name, Sir John Cornewall († around 1392), who was the third son of Sir Geoffrey Cornewall from Burford in Shropshire . His mother is said to have been a niece of Duke Johann V of Brittany , in whose service his father then stood for a long time. Cornwall's year of birth is unknown, but it is unlikely that he was born after the mid-1370s. According to tradition, he was born on board a ship in the bay of St Michael's Mount on the south coast of Cornwall when his mother returned to England from a visit to Brittany . Presumably because of his birth at sea, he was therefore also called the Green Cornewall .

Service under Richard II.

Around 1392 Cornewall inherited the property of his father, who, however, had not owned any major property as a younger son. Like his father, he therefore tried to make a career in the military. As a knight, he was part of King Richard II's retinue , when in 1396 the French King Charles VI. met in Ardres . Richard II rewarded his service with a generous annual payment of 190 marks . Cornewall was allowed to marry Philippa , the widow of Sir Richard Cergeaux from Colquite in Cornwall. As a widow, his wife had a Wittum from her husband's estate for lifelong use, and King Cornewall transferred the management of the other possessions of Cergeaux as long as his inheritance was still a minor. In 1399 Cornewall took part in Richard II's second campaign to Ireland, during which Henry Bolingbroke returned to England, overthrew the king and finally became the new king as Henry IV.

Advancement through marriage to Elizabeth of Lancaster

As early as the 1390s, Cornewall had received an annual pension of 40 marks from John of Gaunt , the father of Henry Bolingbroke . This probably ensured that Cornewall also enjoyed the favor of Henry IV, although he had previously benefited significantly from the favor of the deposed Richard II. After the death of his first wife in 1399, he lost the right to manage the lands of their Wittum in Cornwall. In July 1400, the successful tournament fighter Cornewall allegedly caught the attention of Elizabeth of Lancaster , the king's widowed sister, at a July 1400 tournament in York . A little later, Cornewall was allowed to marry her, which caused quite a stir when a little knight married the king's sister. Still, the couple continued to enjoy the king's favor. Since Elizabeth received an annual pension of 1,000 marks from her brother, Cornewall was now a wealthy man. During the first parliament of 1404 he successfully applied for a Wittum for his wife from the earlier, confiscated property of her first husband John Holland, 1st Earl of Huntingdon . At the baptism of John, the first son of Cornewall and Elizabeth on February 15, 1405, the king was godfather . In the event that his wife died before him, King Cornewall guaranteed an annual pension of 400 marks from her first husband's property in 1409.

Military service for Henry IV and Henry V.

Cornewall took part in several campaigns by the king to suppress the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in Wales and Scotland. In 1410 he was accepted into the Order of the Garter for his services . In 1412, during the Hundred Years War, he was one of the commanders of the campaign led by Thomas, Duke of Clarence to France. When the new King Henry V undertook a campaign to conquer Normandy a little later , Cornewall was one of the leading English commanders. He took part in the Battle of Azincourt , in which he could capture Louis I de Bourbon, comte de Vendôme . As the war continued, other French nobles came under his control over the next few years, and he received substantial ransom for their release. To do this, he bought their prisoners from other Englishmen and thus acquired their ransom claims. However, when his only legitimate son was killed during the siege of Meaux in 1421, Cornewall ended his military service.

Next life

Even after his wife's death in November 1425 and the associated loss of her pension, Cornewall remained a wealthy man. He had used the money from her pension, the ransom money, and the favor of the king to buy a stately home. Before 1424 he had bought the estate of Ampthill in Bedfordshire from Eleanor , the widow of Almaric St Amand, 3rd Baron St Amand . There he had Amphthill Castle built. The castle, described as splendid, must have been habitable as early as the end of 1429, because from this point in time until August 1432 it served the Duke of Orléans , one of the highest-ranking French prisoners, as a residence. In July 1432, Cornwall's long service to the House of Lancaster was rewarded with the elevation of Baron Fanhope . His title was named after a property in Herefordshire that Cornewall bought from the heirs of John Chandos . Cornewall had probably acquired the estate mainly because he had hoped to be appointed to the parliaments as the owner of the estate, as had previously been the case with members of the Chandos family . In 1436 Cornewall is mentioned again as a military in Calais , but his final years were politically uneventful. In Bedfordshire, however, there was a feud between him and Reginald Gray, 3rd Baron Gray de Ruthin , the county's leading magnate . This conflict over jurisdiction led to an armed conflict in Bedford on January 12, 1439 , in which eighteen men were killed. In July 1441 Fanhope was again on the committee that reviewed the allegations against Eleanor Cobham for witchcraft.

After his death Cornewall was not buried next to his second wife Elizabeth in the parish church of his residence in Burford in Shropshire, but in the chapel he donated in the cemetery of the Dominican Settlement near Ludgate in London. From his marriage to Philippa Arundel he had no children, from his marriage to Elizabeth of Lancaster he had at least two children:

• Constance († before 1429)
• John Cornwall (1405-1421)

His daughter had been engaged to John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel , as a child , but had died before the wedding. Since Cornewall died without any legitimate offspring, his title expired on his death. He left his two illegitimate sons 800 marks, while his property around Ampthill was sold to his friend Ralph Cromwell . He paid 5,000 marks for Ampthill, with which he is said to have received a discount of £ 1,000 on the market price.

literature

• Albert Compton Reeves: Lancastrian Englishmen . University Press of America, Washington, DC 1981. ISBN 0-8191-1943-1 , pp. 139-202

Web links

• Sir John Cornwall on thepeerage.com , accessed October 27, 2017.
• SJ Payling: Cornewall, John, Baron Fanhope (d. 1443). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ralph A. Griffiths: The Trial of Eleanor Cobham. An episode in the Fall of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester . In: Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester (51), 1968-69, p. 390

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Fanhope 1432-1443	Title expired