Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk

“ All the present English peers of the noble House of Howard descend from a common ancestor in Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk of the name of Howard, who died in 1524. Thus the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Suffolk, and the Earl of Carlisle are descended from his first wife, Mary, daughter and heiress to Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and the Earl of Effingham from his second wife, Margaret, daughter and heiress of Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, and widow of Lord Henry Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland. ”

“ He then added new buildings, where he dwelt until his death, 1544, when the property passed, by the marriage of his daughter, to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded 1572, and it was then called Duke's Place. It descended to their son, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who sold it to the Corporation, was eventually taken down, and streets built on the site. The only vestige remaining is a stone arch between 73, Leadenhall Street and 39, Mitre Court. ”

“ She thus, the daughter of one of the most aspiring men of the time, became allied to the two most powerful and ambitious families in the kingdom—those of Northumberland and Howard. By this second marriage, Margaret Audley (who died when only at the age of twenty-three) became the mother of two sons—Lord Thomas Howard, afterwards created Earl of Suffolk, of whom we shall speak presently, and Lord William Howard, ancestor of the Earls of Carlisle, &c.—and two daughters, Elizabeth, who died in her infancy, and Margaret, who became the wife of Robert Sackville, Earl of Dorset. ”

“ But as she was so young it was arranged that she should not live with her husband till she reached a nubile age. She never did live with him, for he caught a severe chill through lying on the damp ground when hot and tired with hunting, and he died in November, 1611. She was the wealthiest heiress in Devonshire, and the Earl of Suffolk schemed to obtain her for his third son, Sir Thomas Howard. She was not only rich, but beautiful. Her father had been a remarkably handsome man, and Lord Clarendon, long after this date, speaks of her as “having been of extraordinary beauty.” ”

“ The old Earl, when he wrote to Marcombes in January 1640, did not guess the sequels to these two little romances. For though the wedding clothes were making, Broghill was never to marry Mrs. Harrison, whom he, like many other gallants, had “passionately loved.” On the contrary, it was Mr. Thomas Howard, “not much harmed,” who was to be the happy man; and the lady whom Broghill was presently to marry was the Lady Margaret Howard, the beautiful daughter of the Earl and Countess of Suffolk, and a cousin of Mr. Thomas Howard. ”

“ Probably to defeat this inquiry, he made a great part of it over to his son-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, and his brother, Sir W. Howard (Carte, Hist. of England, iv. 47-8) . The king threatened the earl with another Star-chamber bill, but Howard appeased him by making humble submission, and promising to pay all, though he was fully 50,000l. in debt (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1619-23, pp. 115, 116) . The king and Buckingham stood sponsors for his grandson, James Howard, afterwards third earl of Suffolk (1619-1688) [q.v.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ Robert Howard, his eldest, lord of Forncet manor and honour, in his wife's right, who died in his father's lifetime, leaving issue by
Margaret, daughter and coheir to Thomas de Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, by Eliz. his wife, (45) daughter and coheir of Richard Earl of Arundel.
11, Sir JOHN HOWARD, Knt. who began very early to distinguish himself in the wars. In the latter part of the reign of Henry VI. he accompanied John Viscount Lisle to Blay with 22000 men, and soon after marched to the relief of Chatillon, with John Earl of Shrewsbury, where that valiant Earl was slain. ”

“ The general dislike of Andrew Barton and his doings was embodied in a representation by Portuguese ambassadors to King Henry VIII., who does not appear to have com [Pg 22] plained to the Scots King, or taken any steps in the matter.
The public feeling was voiced, however, by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey—afterwards victor of Flodden, and second Duke of Norfolk—who exclaimed that "The King of England should not be imprisoned in his kingdom, while either he had an estate to set up a ship, or a son to command it." ”

“ We cannot but suspect a liaison with Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, in whose house Lady Howard continued to live after the death of his wife. In the confusion of the Civil Wars, and the distraction of men's minds from family scandals to events of public import, it would have been quite possible for Lady Howard to mislead the Tavistock people as to the true parentage of her son George. The Earl was by no means an old man when the Countess died, in fact, was aged forty-nine years. ”

“ In 1552 he was made governor of Calais, and in 1553 lord high admiral, being created Baron Howard of Effingham in 1554 for his defence of London in Sir Thomas Wyat’s rebellion against Queen Mary. He befriended the princess Elizabeth, but his popularity with the navy saved him from Mary’s resentment; and when Elizabeth became queen he had great influence with her and filled several important posts. ”

“ His second wife was the second daughter of Theophilus Howard, second Earl of Suffolk, who brought him in Northumberland House in London, originally called Northampton House. Sion House had been granted by the Crown to the ninth Earl. Evelyn went to see it, and thought it ‘pretty, but the garden more celebrated, than it deserved.’
By Lady Elizabeth Howard, who long survived her husband, he had an only son and heir, and a daughter, who died unmarried. Algernon Earl of Northumberland was buried at Petworth, in Sussex. ”

“ When finished, the picture was bought by the Duke of Dorset for 400 guineas. It is not Reynolds at his best, and Charles Lamb, who saw it at the Reynolds exhibition held in 1813 in Pall Mall, criticised it rather severely.
[446] Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral at the defeat of the Armada, best known to history as Lord Howard of Effingham. The portrait Smith missed was painted by Frederigo Zucchero, whose (attributed) portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Leicester, Raleigh, and James I. are in the National Portrait Gallery. His Howard is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. ”

“ Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Surrey, and Norfolk, was twentieth in lineal descent from that William de Albini who, in the year 1139, had acquired the Castle and Earldom of Arundel by virtue of his marriage with the widow of King Henry the First. He was born at Finchingfield, in Essex, in 1585,—a date which nearly marks the period of lowest depression in the strangely varied fortunes of an illustrious family. ”

“ William Howard, a younger son of Thomas first Earl of Berkshire, at Westminster Abbey, November 12, 1677, went the same year to the Hague as master of the household to the Prince of Orange (Evelyn) , became privy purse to James II. (The British Compendium, or Rudiments of Honour) , died at his house in Leicester Fields, January, 1696-7, and was buried in the church of St. Martin. It was his second wife, and widow, who died October 13, 1730.
If, as it is possible, Miss Bellenden did hold the appointment of maid of honour to the queen, she must have replaced Miss Stewart or Miss Warmistre ”

“ Thomas Howard, brother to the Earl of Carlisle, was one of them; there was not a braver, nor a more genteel man in England; and though he was of a modest demeanour, and his manners appeared gentle and pacific, no person was more spirited nor more passionate. Lady Shrewsbury, inconsiderately returning the first ogles of the invincible Jermyn, did not at all make herself more agreeable to Howard; that, however, she paid little attention to; yet, as she designed to keep fair with him, she consented to accept an entertainment which he had often proposed, and which she durst no longer refuse. ”

“ In or about the reign of Henry VII a figure of him kneeling in his robes with the legend 'Pray for the soul of William Howard, chief justice of England,' was inserted in one of the stained-glass windows in the church of Long Melford, Suffolk. He does not seem, however, to have held the office of chief justice (Dugdale, Orig. 44, Chron. Ser. 34) . Howard married, first, Alice, daughter of Sir Robert Ufford, ancestor of the first earls of Suffolk; secondly, Alice, daughter of Sir Edmund de Fitton of Fitton in Wiggenhall St. Germains, Norfolk. ”

“ Whether conviction, or ambition to serve his country as a legislator were his motives, it is not for man to judge: but he is unlike his ancestor, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who, braving the power of Queen Elizabeth, disregarded her favour, and almost merited the title of martyr from the persecutions she heaped upon him for having abjured the Protestant worship, although educated in it by his father, the attainted Duke of Norfolk, in despite of Mary and her Spanish consort, who was likewise his sponsor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Want of money, and a consciousness that he was living ‘beneath the compass of his birth,’ brought him to court about 1570, but the intrigues of which his brother, Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, was suspected at the time, depressed his prospects (cf. his Latin letter to Burghley, 22 Sept. 1571, in Cott. MS. Cal. C. iii. f. 94) . When in 1572 Norfolk was charged with conspiring to marry Mary Queen of Scots, Banister, Norfolk's confidential agent, declared in his confession that Howard was himself first proposed 'for that object' (Murdin, p. 134) . ”

“ He died unmarried in 1677, when the title and estates passed to his brother Henry, sixth Duke of Norfolk, who had been previously created a peer by the title of Baron Howard of Castle Rising, Earl of Norwich, and Earl Marshal of England. He married, first, Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the Marquis of Worcester, and by her had issue, two sons and three daughters ”

“ In the summer of 1471, he seems to have been endeavouring to win the hand of a certain Lady Elizabeth Bourchier; but here he did not prosper, for she was married a few months later to Lord Thomas Howard—the nobleman who more than forty years after was created Duke of Norfolk by King Henry VIII. for his victory over the Scots at Flodden.270.5 As to his further proceedings in 271 search of a wife, we shall have occasion to speak of them hereafter.
A.D. 1472.
Property was at all times a matter of more importance than love to that selfish generation ”

“ During September 1667 Evelyn persuaded Howard to give the Arundelian marbles, which were lying neglected in the same garden, to the university of Oxford. The university made him a D.C.L. on 5 June 1668, at the same time conferring on his two sons, Henry and Thomas, of Magdalen College, the degree of M.A. Howard was raised to the peerage, with the title of Baron Howard of Castle Rising in Norfolk, on 27 March 1669, and in the following April went as ambassador extraordinary to Morocco. ”