Following Tewkesbury, Suffolk was granted the estates of the under-age Francis, Viscount Lovell during Lovell's minority, and may have received the custody of the ex-Lancastrian Queen, Margaret of Anjou, in 1472, since Margaret was held at one point in Wallingford and subsequently in Ewelme. This was followed by a number of other offices and promotions, none of which were lucrative. In 1472 he was appointed High Steward of Oxford University and the following year made a Knight of the Garter. He was also the King's Lieutenant of Ireland (in later centuries the post came to be known as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) between March and July 1478 (although he probably never took the position in person). So little, in fact, had his financial situation improved, that in the first parliament after Edward's return from exile—in 1471—Suffolk refused his summons to attend parliament. This was because he felt himself unable to sustain the status and maintain the retinue of a royal duke in London for whatever duration the parliament turned out to be. With the exception of the Lovell estates Suffolk received no major grants, in stark comparison to Edward's brothers George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and even the king's Woodville in-laws. Suffolk's continuing poverty was reflected in the fact that, although he again took loyal part in King Edward's 1475 French campaign (on possibly the only occasion he ever went abroad), he could muster only forty men-at-arms and 300 archers. Michael Hicks remarks that, as a retinue, this "fell far short of those of other royal dukes". Soon after his return from France his mother, the Duchess Alice, died; certainly by 15 August 1476, when John finally came into possession of her dower lands, and by extension, finally, his whole estate. She was buried at Ewelme, Oxfordshire in a "stunning alabaster monument".