body. Inheritance On his father's death in 1432, Mowbray inherited the office of Earl Marshal, but not yet his father's lands or titles. Mowbray's father lacked full control of his estates, as they were encumbered by two Mowbray dowagers, the elder Mowbray's mother Elizabeth Fitzalan (until her death in 1425), and his sister-in-law, Constance Holland. They each held a third of the inheritance as their dower, a situation which repeated itself on the elder Mowbray's death in 1432, leaving Constance and Katherine as the two dowagers. Constance died in 1437, but Mowbray's mother survived until around 1483. Because of this, the historian Rowena Archer—who made one of the few full-length studies of the Mowbray family—described Mowbray as inheriting a "hopeless" and "onerous" legacy. It also had political consequences for the future. As he never held much property in the counties where his inheritance was (only holding, for example, seven of the twenty-six manors held by the Mowbrays in Norfolk and Suffolk), his influence was thus restricted there. Immediately after his father's death, Mowbray made claim to the earldom of Arundel, setting him against John, Lord Maltravers, who had also made claim. This was an old dispute. Mowbray's father and grandfather had also sought the earldom, blocking Maltravers' father's claim. Mowbray based his right through his grandmother Elizabeth Fitzalan, Duchess of Norfolk; Maltravers through his great-grandfather Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel. In July 1433 Mowbray presented a petition to Parliament (receiving special permission to attend as a minor). Mowbray—"in a rather remarkable decision," says Archer—lost the case. Maltravers, though, died in May 1435 and so was never summoned to parliament under his new title. Mowbray's ancestors had been largely Midlands magnates based around Lincolnshire estates. Even his father—after he became duke of Norfolk and inherited his mother's East Anglian dower lands—was often an absentee lord. Mowbray's father was thus never able to establish a sizeable (or "particularly coherent") regional following there, and this was the situation Mowbray inherited. Royal service In August 1436 Mowbray accompanied the Duke of Gloucester on a campaign to relieve Calais, then under siege by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The expedition, in which Mowbray provided a contingent, was "one of the largest English armies assembled during the fifteenth century." The campaign was a success, and Burgundy was forced to withdraw. On 13 September that year, Mowbray received livery of his inheritance, and immediately began