From 1296 to 1309 he received various summonses for military service against the Scots and in Flanders. He was summoned to attend the king at Salisbury 24 February 1296/7 and to a military council at Rochester 8 September 1297. In 1297 the
Sheriff of Dorset was ordered to provide housing within
Sherborne Castle for John and his wife "to live in during the king's pleasure".[2]
He was summoned to Parliament on several occasions, firstly on 6 February 1298/9, when he is deemed to have become 1st
Baron Moels[2] in the
Peerage of England; his last summons was on 16 June 1311, after his death. Although he was not summoned to the Parliament at Lincoln[2] in 1301, he was one of the signatories to the
Barons' Letter of 1301 sealed at that Parliament by seven English earls and 96 English barons to
Pope Boniface VIII as a repudiation of his claim of feudal overlordship of Scotland (expressed in the Bull
Scimus Fili), and as a defence of the rights of King
King Edward I of England as overlord of Scotland. His surviving seal displays his arms two bars three roundels in chief (tinctures not apparent) with legend: S(IGILLUM) JOH(ANN)IS DE MOLIS[3] ("seal of John de Moels"). In the Parliament held at Westminster on 28 February 1304/5 he was one of the persons who mainperned William de Montagu, who together with Amauri de St Amand had been imprisoned in the
Tower of London.[2]
His principal landholdings were: Cadbury and Mapperton in Somerset; King's Carswell, Diptford and Langford in Devon; Little Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire; Over Orton and Stoke Basset in Oxfordshire.[4]
He married a certain Maud of unknown parentage[2] by whom he had children including:
Roger de Moels, 3rd Baron Moels, who died before 13 July 1316,[6] without male issue.
John de Moels, 4th Baron Moels (died before 21 August 1337[6]), who married Joan Lovel, daughter of Richard Lovel of
Castle Cary, Somerset. He died leaving two daughters, each a co-heiresses to a moiety of the feudal barony of North Cadbury, the de Moels barony by writ and other lands:
Muriel de Moels (died before 1362), eldest daughter, who married Thomas Courtenay (died 1356/1362), 5th son of
Hugh Courtenay, 1st/9th Earl of Devon (1275–1340).
^Henry Summerson, 'Moels , Sir Nicholas de (d. 1268/9)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2010
accessed 10 June 2017
^Victoria County History, Somerset, North Cadbury[page needed]
^Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the
Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.606. pedigree of Pomeray