five miles from Mowbray's castle at Framlingham), and started breaking into Mowbray's retainers' houses in the area. Mowbray requested that a commission of oyer and terminer be organised to investigate Wingfield and Brandon, which was issued in late December 1447. By the early 1450s, Mowbray believed that East Anglia was his to rule, and described himself as the "princypall rewle and governance throw all this schir" (i.e. that his was the "principal rule and governance through all this shire"). In the late 1440s, John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, another enemy of de la Pole, sought Mowbray's "good Lordship". In 1451 Mowbray and de Vere collaborated in the county of Suffolk while investigating suspected participants in Jack Cade's Rebellion, which had broken out the previous year. The region continued to experience disorder, and Mowbray's men were responsible for much of it. The unrest included the destruction of properties belonging to Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of Suffolk himself fell from power and was murdered in April 1450. In the following years, Mowbray's affinity, according to Richmond, committed "one outrage after another [and] the duke was either unable to control them, or chose not to do so". Mowbray used any means to defeat his opponents, including charging them with outlawry in another county without their knowledge, and then seizing their goods as forfeited to himself. Mowbray also forced the gaoler of Bury St Edmunds to release a man charged with murder into Mowbray's custody. According to the gaoler's later report, he had done so but only out of "fear and terror" of the Duke of Norfolk. Mowbray spent much of the early 1450s hunting down de la Pole's affinity. The removal of de la Pole did not advance Mowbray's power in East Anglia. He still had rivals in the region with wealth and court connections. The Earl of Oxford in particular wished to extend his landholdings from Essex into Suffolk, while Lord Scales had been granted the remnants of de la Pole's affinity by Queen Margaret. It was this lack of political connections (specifically, his exclusion from the King's council) that lead to his defeat against de la Pole. Mowbray was unsuccessful in influencing local commissions and in nominating parliamentary candidates for shire elections. In any case, the county of Norfolk already possessed a strong and relatively independent layer of wealthy gentry, including the Pastons, the Howards and