Oswald Barron

“ At his death in 1786 he was succeeded by his son Charles, the notorious “Jockey of Norfolk,” the big, coarse, generous, slovenly, hard-drinking Whig of whom all the memoir-writers of his age have their anecdotes. He conformed to the Church of England and spent a vast sum in restoring Arundel Castle. A third cousin succeeded him in 1815, Bernard Edward Howard, who, although a Roman Catholic, was enabled, by the act of 1824, to act as earl marshal. This was the grandfather of the fifteenth duke, earl of Arundel, Surrey and Norfolk, and hereditary earl marshal of England. ”

“ Thus it befell that, of the chiefs of the Howards born since the great Mowbray alliance, two had died by the axe and one in the prison from which a fourth had hardly escaped. A fifth had fallen in a lost battle, and only one had died in peace in his own house. ”

“ The victor of Flodden is the common ancestor of all living Howards that can show a descent from the main stock. The second duke, twice married, was father of at least eleven sons and six daughters, the sons including Edward the lord high admiral, killed in boarding Prégent’s galleys at Brest, Edmund the knight marshal of the army at Flodden, and William the first Lord Howard of Effingham. The eldest son, Thomas, succeeded as the third duke of his name, although the second under the patent of 1514. ”

“ William Howard, Viscount Stafford, was the fifth son of Thomas, earl of Arundel, and grandson of Philip the prisoner. Marrying the sister and heir of the fifth Lord Stafford, who died in 1637, he and his wife were created Baron and Baroness Stafford by a patent of 1640, with remainder, in default of heirs male, to heirs female. ”

“ Thomas, son of the fourth duke of Norfolk’s marriage with the daughter and heir of Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, founded the line of the present earls of Suffolk and Berkshire and of the extinct Lords Howard of Escrick. ”

“ Prospering by the law, William Howard of Wiggenhall rose to knight’s rank and acquired by purchase Grancourt’s manor in East Winch, near Lynn, where he had his seat in a moated house whose ruins remain. He was probably dead and buried in his chapel at East Winch before November 27, 1308, the date of the patent by which Henry Scrope succeeded him as a commissioner of trailbaston. His two wives, Alice Ufford and Alice Fitton—heir of Fitton’s manor in Wiggenhall—were both daughters of knightly houses. ”

“ He himself was attainted and was lying a prisoner in the Tower, doomed to die in the morning, on the night of the death of Henry VIII. He was not released until the accession of Mary, parliament restoring his dukedom on his petition for reversal of the attainder. His grandson Thomas succeeded him in 1554, and in 1556 made the second of those marriages which have given the Howards their high place among the English nobility. The bride was Mary, sole heir in her issue of her father Henry, the last of the Fitzalan earls of Arundel. ”