Howard family

“ A long illness followed, which was successfully treated at Newcastle by her brother-in-law, husband of her eldest sister, Elizabeth. While there she began a literary connection with William Johnson Fox [q. v.] , the new editor of the 'Monthly Repository,' and wrote a life of Howard for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Her father's widowed sister, Mrs. Lee, came to live with her mother at the same time. In 1829 the failure of the house in which the fortunes of the family had been invested brought them all into difficulties, and she was left penniless. ”

“ Howard, "not a stranger. He is one of the family—Robin Howard is his name."
"Our children have all left us except Bertha and Owen," spoke up Mr. Howard. "Little Robin had no home, so we concluded to make him our boy."
"Ow'n and me go rid'n on ol' Hickory," interposed this youthful member of the family, whose chief delight it was to be lifted up on the back of old Hickory and to ride down to the water-trough.
"Can you ride alone?" inquired the priest. ”

“ Nevertheless, the family of Howard had done one good thing—it had brought Guy and Cynthia together. George Howard, the brother of the two demons, a large, solid person, as unlike his sisters as the elephant is unlike the mosquito, had been Guy’s worshipping disciple at school and at Oxford; Dora and Cynthia had been “best friends.” George had now taken for the summer the cottage at Duffley whose garden adjoined Guy’s. ”

“ By his first wife, Margaret, daughter and heir of Sir John Plays, Sir John Howard had a son who died before him, leaving a daughter through whom descended to her issue, the Veres, earls of Oxford, the ancient Norfolk estates of the Howards at East Winch and elsewhere, with the lands of the houses of Scales, Plays and Walton, brought in by the brides of her forefathers. After the death of Margaret Plays, her widower found, with the peculiar instinct of his race, a second well-endowed wife. ”

“ But I have studied his family tree back for five hundred years and find neither poet nor singer, nor any thing that might suggest there had ever been one in the Geoffrey family. They are people of good blood, but of the most staid and prosaic type you could find. Originally an old English family of the country squire class, who became impoverished and came to America to rebuild their fortunes, they settled in New York in 1690 and though their descendants have scattered over the country, all—save Justin alone—have remained much of a type—sober, industrious merchants. ”

“ It is not wholly improbable, as will presently appear, that the family in some form must be accepted as the initial society, possibly among all the races of mankind. At a very early ethnical period the family, so far as it implies great authority, perhaps even the despotic power of the house-father over his wife and children, may often have been "patriarchal." To admit this, however, is very different from accepting as the primordial cell of social development the strictly defined patriarchal family of Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law. ”

“ Hugh demanded. “I happen to wear a new suit, a thing I have done innumerable times without causing the slightest comment, and for some unknown reason the family proceed to hold a conference terminating in a general wrangle.”
“I’m sure I meant it all right, Dad. I don’t see why Howard had to interfere—I wish he’d mind his own business,” Elinor remarked peevishly.
“Oh, is that so?” Howard returned. “You think you’re mighty clever, don’t you? I’ve as much right to speak as you have, and I’ll tell you one——”
“Children—children!” Marjorie intervened. ”

“ Howard was established beyond a doubt, and most painful it was for him to arrive at the conclusion, as he felt bound to do, that those persons had been guilty of the great crime of not only giving false evidence by deposing to events that had never occurred, but of conspiring together to endeavour to impose upon the Wicklow family a child who was not the real heir to the title and estates attaching to the earldom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Coincidental with these dreams came a drawing away from his companions and his own family. From a completely extrovert, gregarious little animal he became almost a recluse. He wandered by himself more than is good for a child and he preferred to do his roaming at night. Mrs. Geoffrey has told how time and again she would come into the room where he and his brother Eustace slept, after they had gone to bed, to find Eustace sleeping peacefully, but the open window telling her of Justin’s departure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the abnormalities which his family thought they saw in his poetry were not those which I see. To them, anyone who does not make his living by selling potatoes is abnormal. They sought to discipline his poetic leanings out of him, and his brother John bears a scar to this day, a memento of the day he sought in a big-brotherly way to chastise his younger brother for neglecting some work for his scribbling. Justin’s temper was sudden and terrible ”

“ Howard looked first at the playthings, and then at the children, and thus she spoke:
"'My dear children, I sent for these pretty toys from the fair, in order to encourage you to be good: there is nothing that gives me greater pleasure than to see children polite and mannerly, endeavouring to please everybody, "in honour preferring one another," as God hath commanded us to do. Pride and ill manners, my dear children, are great faults; but humility, and a wish to please everyone rather than ourselves, make us resemble the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who did not despise the poorest among men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sir John Howard, only son of the match between Howard and Mowbray, took service with his cousin the third duke of Norfolk, who had him returned as knight of the shire for Norfolk, where, according to the Paston Letters, this Howard of the Essex branch was regarded by the gentry as a strange man. He followed the White Rose and was knighted at the crowning of King Edward IV., who pricked him for sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. In the duke’s quarrel he brawled with the Pastons, his wife boasting that, should her husband’s men meet with John Paston “there should go no penny for his life.” ”

“ Goodriche came over to visit Mrs. Fairchild, and she then invited all the family to come and spend a whole day with her in the summer, and she promised that on that day, if all was well, she would tell them another story about old Mrs. Howard.
But the happiest times of people's lives are often those in which there is least to write and talk about; so we must pass over the spring, and go on to the month of June, the very first day of which was that fixed for the visit to Mrs. Goodriche. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Goodriche, "a little old lady, named Mrs. Howard, lived in this house with her maid Betty. She had an old horse called Crop, which grazed in that meadow, and carried Betty to market once a week. Mrs. Howard was one of the kindest and most good-natured old ladies in England. Three or four times every year Betty had orders, when she went to market, to bring all manner of playthings and little books from the toy-shop. These playthings and pretty little books Mrs. Howard used to keep by her till she saw any children whom she thought worthy of them. ”

“ Cartwright said to her children when she got Mrs. Howard's invitation. She called them to her, and said:
"'Here, Billy—here, Patty, is a note from Mrs. Howard to invite you to spend the day with her to-morrow; and I am glad of it, because I know you love to go to Mrs. Howard's, she is so good to all children, and has been particularly kind to you. I hear she has some pretty playthings by her now to give away; but don't you be greedy of them, my dears. You have a variety of playthings, you know—more than most children have, and it does not become anyone to be covetous. ”

“ When he arriv up in the Humbolt mountains where our cabin was, he imejitly let in to howling his woes to the stars like a wolf with the belly-ache. And from then on we heered nothing but that watch. I'd saw it and thunk very little of it. It was big as my fist, and wound up with a key which Uncle Garfield was always losing and looking for. But it was solid gold, and he called it a hairloom, whatever them things is. And he nigh driv the family crazy.
"A passle of big hulks like you-all settin' around and lettin' a old man get robbed of all his property," he would say bitterly. ”

“ Goodriche—"she was then a very little girl—and your grandmother and great-uncle, both young ones; with many others now dead and gone. In one corner of the parlour was a cupboard with glass doors, where Mrs. Howard had placed such of those pretty toys (as I before spoke of) which she meant to give away in the afternoon. The prettiest of these was the jointed doll, neatly dressed in a green satin slip, and gauze apron and bib.
"By the time Master and Miss Bennet had made their bow and curtsey, and were seated, Betty came in with the dinner, and Mrs. Howard called the children to table. ”

“ Symonds for her great kindness to her children.
"From the day of the thunderstorm till the end of the summer the little girls spent Saturday afternoon, every week, with Mrs. Howard, and now and then stopped an hour with her on other days; and never passed the window without speaking to her, often coming in with flowers, or fruit, or a fresh egg, or some little thing from the garden or poultry-yard. Thus such a friendship grew up between the old lady and these little girls, that one might have thought that Mrs. Howard must have been their grandmother. ”

“ Howard rather wondered at this answer, and said:
"'Not good, my dears, how is that?'
"'We wish to be good, ma'am,' said one of the little girls, 'but we are not.'
"'Well to be sure!' remarked Mrs. Baynes; 'but you have a very good mamma, my little dears.'
"'Mamma is good to us,' said Mary.
"'But God is the only real good person,' added Amelia.
"Mrs. Howard was rather surprised, but as the storm was still getting more frightful, she moved her chair, shut the window, and sat in the middle of the room; the two little ones in their fear clinging to her, whilst she put an arm round each of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Howard sat knitting (for she prepared stockings for most of the poor children in the neighbourhood) , whilst her little visitors played in the garden and in the field, and Betty came to and fro with the tea-table and tea-things.
"Whilst the children were all engaged with their sports in the croft, a poor old man, who had been gathering sticks, came by that way, bending under the weight of the load. ”