John Courtenay, 7th/15th Earl of Devon

Ruins of Tiverton Castle, seat of the Earls of Devon

John Courtenay, 7th/15th Earl of Devon (c.1435 – 4 May 1471) was a son of Thomas de Courtenay, 5th/13th Earl of Devon by his wife Margaret Beaufort. The ordinal number given to the early Courtenay Earls of Devon depends on whether the earldom is deemed a new creation by the letters patent granted 22 February 1334/5 or whether it is deemed a restitution of the old dignity of the de Redvers family. Authorities differ in their opinions,^[1] and thus alternative ordinal numbers exist, given here.

He was the younger brother of Thomas Courtenay, 6th/14th Earl of Devon. He married Laura Bourchier, daughter of Thomas Bourchier, Earl of Essex. It was his brother who knighted him on 29 December 1460 after the Battle of Wakefield. After the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, Edward, Earl of March marched and took the capital from the Lancastrians. Parliament voted an attainder on his opposition, and John was among those declared traitors. The new King Edward IV marched north and sealed his reign with the bloody victory on Towton Field.

At the readeption of Henry VI on 9 October 1470, John was restored to ancestral lands by the Lancastrians. The Yorkists marched south and defeated the governing house led by the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, just outside London on 14 April 1471. The decisive Yorkist victory ended Henry VI's brief return to power and all nobility, including John Courtenay were deprived of their possessions, titles and honours. Still unmarried he died 4 May 1471 in the Battle of Tewkesbury.

The effect of the attainder was to terminate the Barony of Okehampton (creation 1299), so that the earldom inherited from Redvers family, was in abeyance, passing laterally to the descendants of his sisters.

Sources

• Weir, Alison (1999). Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy. London, UK: The Bodley Head. p. 106.
• The Peerage

References

1. Watson, GEC Peerage, IV, p.324 & footnote (c): "This would appear more like a restitution of the old dignity than the creation of a new earldom"; Debrett's Peerage however gives the ordinal numbers as if a new earldom had been created. (Montague-Smith, P.W. (ed.), Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, Kelly's Directories Ltd, Kingston-upon-Thames, 1968, p.353)