John Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville


John Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville jure uxoris 6th Lord of Powys, KG, was an English peer who served with distinction in the Hundred Years' War between England and France under King Henry V.

Origins

John Grey was the second son of Sir Thomas Grey, of Berwick and Chillingham Castle, by his wife Joan Mowbray, a daughter of John de Mowbray, 4th Baron Mowbray by Elizabeth de Segrave, daughter and heiress of John de Segrave, 4th Baron Segrave. Joan Mowbray was a grand-daughter of Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk, so John Grey was a descendant of King Edward I.

Grey family

of Heton, Islandshire in Northumberland, married a certain Agnes, a lady of unrecorded parentage. He fought in many battles for the English king on the Marches of the Scottish borders. He was succeeded by his son:
Between 1408 and 1413 Henry V granted Grey three annuities, and on 8 August 1415 gave him the forfeited estates of his brother, Sir Thomas Grey, executed for his part in the Southampton Plot.
Grey fought at Agincourt in 1415. On 1 August 1417 Henry V launched his second invasion of Normandy, and in that year Grey was Captain of Mortagne in October 1417, and was with the King at the siege of Caen, where his valiant conduct caused the King to name him a Knight of the Garter. Henry V granted the castle and seigneurie of Tilly in Normandy in November 1417, recently forfeited by Sir William Harcourt, a supporter of the King's enemies.
Grey was subsequently sent with a guard to Powys to bring the recently captured Lollard leader, Sir John Oldcastle, before Parliament.
, Normandy. In 1419 John Grey was granted the comté of Tancarville
In 1419 he was again in France as Captain of Mantes, and on 31 January 1419 was granted the comté of Tancarville in Normandy to hold by grand sergeanty of delivery of a bascinet helmet at the Castle of Roan on Saint George's Day each year. Grey's continued service in the French wars earned him further grants, and he was made governor of the Castle of Tournay. In 1418 or on 31 January 1419 he was created a Knight of the Garter. In 1420 he was Captain of Harfleur, and by that date was one of the leading landowners in Normandy.
On 22 March 1420/1, while fording a river near the Chateau de Beaufort at the Battle of Baugé, Grey, Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence, and many other of the English nobility were slain by a Franco-Scottish force, having incautiously engaged the enemy without proper preparation and with no archers in support.

Marriage and issue

In 1418 Grey married Joan de Cherleton, 6th Lord of Powys, daughter and co-heiress of Edward Charleton, 5th Baron Cherleton, by his wife Eleanor Holland, widow of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. In his wife's right, Grey succeeded to the title of Lord Powis with its estates, including one moiety of Powis Castle, the other half having been inherited by his wife's sister Joyce de Cherleton, wife of John Tiptoft, 1st Baron Tiptoft. This arrangement remained in place until in the 1530s Joyce's great-grandson John Sutton, 3rd Baron Dudley sold the Tiptoft moiety of Powis Castle to his nephew, the 3rd and last Baron Grey of Powis. Joan de Cherleton survived her husband and in her widowhood in 1425 became heiress to her step-brother, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, who had earlier been the focus of the Southampton Plot. By his wife he had a son and only child and heir: