Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Surrey

“ II. i. This scene (by Fletcher) , while scarcely advancing the action of the drama, is yet finely effective, taken by itself. It is a close dramatization from Holinshed (1587) , p. 865, even to the extent of keeping many of the original phrases.
II. i. 18. To have brought. The first three Folios read To him brought; the correction was made in the Fourth.
II. i. 43, 44. Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too, Lest he should help his father. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and in 1524 Duke of Norfolk, had married Elizabeth Stafford, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On complaint of these grievances being made to the Privy Council of England, the Earl of Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, treasurer to Henry VIII. and father of Sir Edward Howard referred to in the previous story, and of Sir Thomas Howard, who forms the subject of this sketch, said the narrow seas should not be so infested while he had estate enough to furnish a ship and a son capable of commanding it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Written in the castell of Shirefhoton, the xxiiijth day of Aprill. Your lovyng cousin, Thomas Surrey.
134.1 [From Paston MSS., B.M.] Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the writer of this letter, fought for Richard III. at the battle of Bosworth, and was taken prisoner. ”

“ She was the daughter of Francis Newport, first Earl of Bradford, by Lady Diana Russell. She married, first, Thomas Howard of Ashtead, County Surrey, Esq., Knight of the Bath, Groom of the Bedchamber to George the First, Auditor of the Exchequer, and Clerk Comptroller of the Board of Green Cloth, by whom she had a son, who died while a schoolboy at Westminster, and a daughter married to Lord Dudley and Ward. By her second husband, the Honourable William Feilding, younger son of William, fifth Earl of Denbigh, and second Earl of Desmond (whom she also survived) , she left no children. ”

“ From 1611 onwards he missed no opportunity of urging Salisbury and others to obtain him permission to return home, if only as a recognition of his exemplary conduct while abroad; but the king turned a deaf ear to his importunities. In 1614 he was ordained priest at Rome by Cardinal Bellarmine (Foley) . After this he probably returned to Madrid, where he possessed some influence and a wide circle of acquaintance. In 1616 his father, the archbishop, wrote to the newly converted Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel [q. v.] ”

“ When Sir Thomas Wyat approached London, Howard was very active in the defence of the queen. He shut Ludgate in Wyat's face. ‘And that night’ (3 Feb. 1553-4) , says Wriothesley, ‘the said Lord Admirall watched the [London] Bridge with iii c men, and brake the drawbridge, and set rampeers with great ordinance there.’ As a reward for his exertions he was created Baron Howard of Effingham on 11 March 1553-4; the manor of Effingham, Surrey, had been granted him by Edward VI in 1551. But Howard's active devotion to Elizabeth's interests roused the suspicions of Mary and her advisers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Because, of all men who were then living, Surrey most deserved to reign over England, the jealous tyrant supposed there could be no safety for his youthful son until the House of Howard had been humiliated, and both its present head and its prospective head ceased to exist. ”

“ An engagement was now become inevitable, and both sides prepared for it with tranquillity and order. [*] The English divided their army into two lines: Lord Howard led the main body of the first line, Sir Edmond Howard the right wing, Sir Marmaduke Constable the left. The earl of Surrey himself commanded the main body of the second line, Lord Dacres the right wing, Sir Edward Stanley the left. The front of the Scots presented three divisions to the enemy: the middle was led by the king himself; the right by the earl of Huntley, assisted by Lord Hume; the left by the earls of Lenox and Argyle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ HOWARD, WALTER (1759–1830?) , called the 'Heir of Poverty,' born on 19 May 1759, was son of William Howard, by Catherine Titcombe of St. Helier, Jersey, and grandson of Charles Francis Howard of Overacres, and lord of Redesdale, Northumberland. His father claimed kinship with the ducal family of Norfolk; in 1750 he sold Overacres, the seigniories of Redesdale and Harbottle, and the advowson of Elsdon, Northumberland, to the Earl of Northumberland, and thenceforward appears to have been supported by Edward Howard, duke of Norfolk (1686-1777) [q.v.] ”

“ He was admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1756. In 1758 he married Henrietta, daughter of Edward Leeds, of Croxton, Cambridgeshire. He continued to lead a secluded life at Cardington and at Watcombe, Hampshire, busying himself in the construction of model cottages and the erection of schools. In 1765 his second wife died after giving birth to a son. In the following year Howard went for a prolonged foreign tour, from which he returned in 1770.
In 1773 the characteristic work of his life may be said to have begun by his acceptance of the office of high sheriff of Bedford. ”

“ On the death, on 16 March 1842, of his grand-father, Bernard Edward, twelfth duke of Norfolk [q. v.] , his father succeeded to the titles and estates, and Howard became known as Lord Edward Howard. He was a liberal in politics. In July 1846, when the first Russell administration came into power, he was appointed vice-chamberlain to the queen and a privy councillor, and retained his office until March 1852. After unsuccessfully contesting Shoreham at the general election of 1847, Howard was returned in 1848 to the House of Commons as M.P. for Horsham. ”

“ At the disruption of the party over Irish home rule he joined the liberal unionists, but did not sit in the 1886 parliament. He succeeded his uncle, William George Howard (1808-1889) , the invalid and bachelor eighth earl of Carlisle, in 1889. In the House of Lords he continued to vote with the liberal unionists, while his wife had become an ardent public worker on the radical side. On one question of social reform, the temperance question, they were wholly agreed. ”

“ Lord William, uncle to Catherine Howard, was arbitrarily adjudged to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods for concealing her misconduct; but Henry was pleased soon after to remit the sentence: he lived to be eminent in the state under the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a good old age. Lord Thomas suffered by the ambition so frequent in his house, of matching with the blood royal. He formed a secret marriage with the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to the king ”

“ Immediately vpon this most famous entrie, the noble Earle, (according to their resolutions, as I take it, put downe before) was seconded by the noble L. Admirall in person, who was accompanied, with the noble L. Thomas Howard, the most worthy gentleman his sonne, now L. Howard, Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Richard Leuison, and with diuers other gentlemen, his L. followers of good account: his colours being aduanced by that valiant resolute gentleman, (a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding) S. Edward Hobby Knight. ”