Robin of Redesdale, another earl of Devon suffered at the headsman’s hands, his patent being afterwards annulled by a statute of Henry VII. On the restoration of Henry VI. John Courtenay, only surviving brother of Thomas and Henry, was restored to the earldom by the reversal of attainder. He, too, died in the Lancastrian cause, being killed on the 4th of May 1471 at Tewkesbury, where he led the rear of the host. The representation of the Reviers earls and of the Courtenay barony fell then to his sisters and their descendants. Beside him at Tewkesbury died his cousin Sir Hugh Courtenay of Boconnoc, son of Hugh, a younger brother of the blind earl, leaving a son Edward, who thus became the heir male of the house though not its heir general. Joining in the cause which had cost so many of his kinsmen their lives, he and his brother Walter shared the duke of Buckingham’s rising. On its failure they fled into France to the earl of Richmond, beside whom Sir Edward fought at Bosworth. By a patent of the 26th of October 1485 he was created earl of Devon with remainder to the heirs male of his body, and by an act of 1485 he was restored to all honours lost in his attainder by the Yorkist parliament. He defended Exeter against Warbeck’s rebels and was a knight of the Garter in 1489, dying twenty years later, when the earldom became again forfeit by his son’s attainder. That son, William Courtenay, had drawn the jealousy of Henry VII. by a marriage with Catherine, sister of the queen and daughter of King Edward IV., the Yorkist sovereign whose hand had been so heavy on the Courtenays. After the queen’s death, Henry sent his wife’s brother-in-law to the Tower on a charge of corresponding with Edmund Pole, an attainder following. But on the accession of Henry VIII., the young king released his uncle, who although styled an earl was not fully restored in blood at his death in 1511. His son Henry Courtenay obtained from parliament in December 1512 a reversal of his father’s attainder, thus succeeding to the earldom of his grandfather. At the Field of Cloth of Gold he ran a course with the king of France. He was knight of the Garter and on the 15th of June 1525 had a patent as marquess of Exeter. Profiting by the suppression of the monasteries he increased his estate, his power being all but supreme in the west country. But Cromwell was his enemy and the royal strain in his blood was a dangerous thing. Involved in correspondence with Cardinal Pole, he was sent to the Tower with his wife and his young son, and on the 9th of December 1538 he was beheaded as a traitor. The misfortunes of the house were heavy upon the son, who at twelve years old was a prisoner for the sake of his high descent. His honours had been forfeited, and release did not come until the accession of Queen Mary, who took him into favour. Noailles the ambassador found him le plus beau et le plus agréable gentilhomme d’Angleterre, and he had some hopes of becoming king consort. The queen created him earl of Devonshire by a patent of the 3rd of September 1553 and in the next month he was restored in blood. But, disappointed in his hopes, he formed some wild plans for marrying the Lady Elizabeth and making her queen. He could raise Devon and Cornwall. Wyat did raise Kent, but the plot was soon crushed. The earl was sent back to the Tower and thence to Fotheringhay. At Easter of 1555 he was released on parole and exiled, dying suddenly at Padua in 1556. His co-heirs were the descendants of the four sisters of Earl Edward (d. 1519), the wives of four Cornish squires, and with him was extinguished, to the belief of all men, the Courtenays’ earldom of Devon. His heir male was Sir William Courtenay, his sixth cousin once removed, head of a knightly line of Courtenays whose seat was Powderham Castle, a line which, during the civil wars, stood for the White Rose. Sir William, who is said to have been killed at St Quintin in 1557, was succeeded by his son, another Sir William, one of the undertakers for the settling of Ireland, where the family obtained great estates. William Courtenay of Powderham, of whose marriage with the daughter of Sir William Waller (the parliament’s general) it is remarked that the years of bride and bridegroom added together were less than thirty when their first child was born, was created a baronet by writ of privy seal in February 1644, the patent being never enrolled. His great grandson, Sir William Courtenay, many years a member of parliament, was on the 6th of May 1762, ten days before his death, created Viscount Courtenay of Powderham Castle.
Since the death at Padua in 1556 of Edward, earl of Devon, that ancient title had been twice revived. Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who was created earl of Devon in 1603, died without lawful issue in 1606. In 1618 Sir William Cavendish, son of the famous Bess of Hardwick, was given the same title, which is still among the peerage honours of the ducal house descending from him. For the Courtenays, who had without protest accepted a baronetcy and a viscounty, their earldom was dead. In the reign of William IV., the third and last Viscount Courtenay was living unmarried in Paris, an exile who for sufficient reasons was keeping out of the reach of the English criminal law. In the name of this man, his presumptive heir male, William Courtenay, clerk assistant of the parliament, succeeded in persuading the House of Lords that the Courtenay earldom under the patent of 1553 was still in existence, the plea being that the terms of the remainder—to him and his heirs male for ever—did not limit the succession to heirs male of the body of the grantee. Five other cases wherein the words de corpore suo had been omitted from the patent are known to peerage lawyers. In no case had a peerage before been claimed by collateral heirs male. “I have often rallied Brougham,” writes Lord Campbell, “upon his creating William Courtenay earl of Devon. He says he consulted Chief Justice Tenterden. But Tenterden knew nothing of peerage law.” After the death of the exile in 1835 the clerk of the parliament succeeded him as an earl by force of the House of Lords decision of the 15th of March 1831. His second son, the Rev. Henry Hugh Courtenay (1811–1904), succeeded, as 13th earl, a nephew whose extravagance had impoverished the estates. He in turn was followed, as 14th earl, by his grandson Charles Pepys Courtenay (b. 1870).
No other recognized branch of this house, once so widely spread in the western counties, is now among the landed houses of England. Among its cadets were many famous warriors, but three prelates must be reckoned as the most eminent of the Courtenays. William, a younger son of the match of Courtenay and Bohun, was bishop of Hereford in 1370, bishop of London in 1375 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1381. Proceeding against Wycliffe he opposed John of Gaunt, who, taunting him with his trust in his great kinsfolk, threatened to drag him out of St Paul’s by his hair, a threat which roused the angry Londoners in his defence. He died in 1396 and lies buried at the feet of the Black Prince in his cathedral of Canterbury. By his will he left his best mitre to his nephew Richard Courtenay—son and pupil, as he styles him—against the time he should be a bishop. This Richard, a friend of Henry V. when prince, and treasurer of his household, was bishop of Norwich in 1413. Twice chancellor of Oxford, he repelled Archbishop Arundel and all his train when that primate would have had a visitation of the university, although the claim of the university to independence was at last broken down. Tall of stature, eloquent and learned, he kept the favour of the king, who was with him when he died of dysentery in the host before Harfleur. Heir of this bishop was his nephew Sir Philip of Powderham, whose younger son Peter Courtenay was the third of the Courtenay prelates, being bishop of Exeter from 1478 to 1487, when he was translated to Winchester. Although of the Yorkist Courtenays, he was of Buckingham’s party and, being attainted by Richard III. for joining with certain of his kinsfolk in an attempt to raise the west, he escaped to Brittany, whence he returned with the first Tudor sovereign, who had him in high favour. A fourth prelate of this family was Henry Reginald Courtenay, who was bishop of Bristol 1794–1797 and bishop of Exeter from 1797 to his death in 1803.
See charter, patent, close, fine and plea rolls, inquests post mortem and other records. G. E. C.’s Complete Peerage; Dictionary of National Biography; Notes and Queries, series viii. vol. 7; J. H. Round’s Peerage Studies; Calendars of State Papers; Machyn’s Diary (Camden Society); Chronicles of Capgrave, Wavrin, Adam of Usk, &c. (O. Ba.)
COURTENAY, RICHARD (d. 1415), English prelate, was a son of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham Castle, near Exeter, and a grandson of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon (d. 1377). He
