John was a descendant of Sir William Howard, j.c.p. under Edward I, who possibly came of burgess stock from Bishop’s Lynn. His grandfather, Sir John Howard, served as admiral of the northern fleet (1335-7), and by the mid 14th century the family was of quasi-baronial importance with interests and connexions scattered throughout East Anglia. The Howard estates, accumulated through marriage and purchase, included five manors near Bishop’s Lynn and the property of John’s grandmother, the de Boys heiress, at Fersfield and Garboldisham in south Norfolk and Brook Hall near Dunwich in Suffolk. John’s father died in 1389, when he was about 23, but his mother lived on until 1416. Most of the inheritance passed to him at his father’s death, however, and that same year his landed holdings were augmented considerably following the demise of his father-in-law, Lord Plaiz.
Howard’s career had begun by March 1387 when he was already a knight and serving at sea in the fleet commanded by Richard, earl of Arundel. He was closely connected with Sir Simon Felbrigg, a cousin on his mother’s side, with whom he was associated in a religious foundation in 1392, and it may have been Felbrigg who introduced him to the royal household. (Sir Simon had married a kinswoman of Queen Anne and from 1395 appeared on ceremonial occasions as the King’s standard-bearer.) On 10 Mar. 1394 Howard was retained by Richard II for life with an annuity of £40. That September he joined the King’s expedition in Ireland, returning in the following spring. The cancellation of his appointment as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in December 1396 was evidently of no lasting political significance, for he was nominated as a j.p. in Suffolk in the following July. Howard’s election to Parliament in the autumn of 1397 probably owed much to his position as one of the King’s retainers, for Richard required supporters in the Commons for the enforcement of his stringent measures against the Appellants of 1387-8. During the recess he was commissioned to seize and supervise estates forfeited by Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, and in December he was instructed to treat with the men of Essex and Hertfordshire for payment of a communal fine of £2,000 and to return to Parliament when it re-assembled at Shrewsbury ready, in conjunction with his fellow shire knight, Robert Tey, to give a personal account to the King of that commission’s activities. When Richard set off on his second voyage to Ireland, in the spring of 1399, Sir John again accompanied him.
Howard’s royal annuity was not confirmed by Henry IV, but he soon accommodated himself to the new regime and his influence as a landed magnate remained unimpaired. He continued to serve on royal commissions and as a j.p. without interruption, and he now became steward of the liberty of Bury St. Edmunds. Sir John’s chief interests lay not with his hereditary estates bordering the Wash, but rather in the property acquired by his marriages. Thus, he officiated as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1400-1 (during which term he was summoned to the great council of August 1401), and of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1401-3; and it was as knight of the shire for Cambridgeshire that he was returned to Parliament for the second time, in 1407.
As sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1414-15, Howard became involved in preparations for Henry V’s first expedition to France, and in January 1416 he was pardoned £180 charged on his account in consideration of the expenses incurred at that time. In the summer of 1420 there was grave danger of a breach of the peace at the Suffolk assizes between the followers of Howard and Sir Thomas Kerdeston, a distant kinsman of his wife, and the prospect of a riot prompted Sir Thomas Erpingham to inform the King’s Council so that both men might be warned to cease ‘alle suche gederyng of strengthe and of meigntenance’. Both Howard and Kerdeston were described as ‘weel ykynde and of gret allyaunce’, able to gain support ‘as weel of lordys of estate as of othre gentilmen as knyghtis and squyers’.
After his third Parliament, in 1422, Howard became less active than before in local administration, although he continued to be a j.p. in Suffolk and to serve as a commissioner to raise royal loans. In February 1436 he himself was requested for a loan of 100 marks in aid of the duke of York’s expedition to France. A year or so later he set out on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, only to die at Jerusalem on 17 Nov. 1437. His body was apparently brought back for burial next to his second wife, at Stoke Nayland.