with some reason suspected of complicity in Throgmorton’s plot and prepared to escape to Flanders, but his plans were interrupted by a visit from Elizabeth at his house in London, and by her order subsequently to confine himself there. In September 1584 he became a Roman Catholic, dissembling his conversion and attempting next year once more to escape abroad; but having been brought back he was placed in the Tower on the 25th of April 1585, and charged before the Star Chamber with being a Romanist, with quitting England without leave, sharing in Jesuit plots, and claiming the dukedom of Norfolk. He was sentenced to pay £10,000 and to be imprisoned during the queen’s pleasure. In July 1586 his liberty was offered to him if he would carry the sword of state before the queen to church. In 1588 he was accused of praying, together with other Romanists, for the success of the Spanish Armada. He was tried for high treason on the 14th of April 1589, found guilty and condemned to death; but lingered in confinement under his sentence, which was never executed, till his death on the 19th of October 1595. He was buried in the Tower, whence his remains were removed in 1624 to Arundel. His career, his later religious constancy and his tragic end have evoked general sympathy, but his conduct gave rise to grave suspicions, and the punishment inflicted upon him was not unwarranted; while the account of the severity of his imprisonment given by his anonymous and contemporary biographer should be compared with his own letters expressing gratitude for favours allowed.[1] There appears no foundation for the belief that he was poisoned, and according to Camden his death was caused by his religious austerities.[2] He was the author of a translation of An Epistle of Jesus Christ to the Faithful Soule by Johann Justus (1595, reprinted 1871) and of three MS. treatises On the Excellence and Utility of Virtue. Inscriptions carved by his hand are still to be seen in the Tower. He had two children, Elizabeth, who died young, and Thomas, who (restored in blood) succeeded him as 2nd earl of Arundel, and was created earl of Norfolk in 1644.
Authorities.—Article in the Dict, of Nat. Biography and authorities there collected; the contemporary Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and of Anne Dacre his Wife, ed. by the duke of Norfolk (1857); M. Tierney, History of Arundel (1834), p. 357; C. H. Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses (1861), with bibliography, ii. 187 and 547; H. Howard, Memoirs of the Howard Family (1824).
Thomas Howard, 2nd earl of Arundel, and earl of Surrey and of Norfolk (c. 1585–1646), son of Philip, 1st earl of Arundel and of Lady Anne Dacre, was born in 1585 or 1586 and educated at Westminster school and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Owing to the attainder of his father he was styled Lord Maltravers, but at the accession of James I. he was restored to his father’s earldoms of Arundel and Surrey, and to the baronies of his grandfather, Thomas, 4th duke of Norfolk. He came to court, travelled subsequently abroad, acquiring a taste for art, and was created K. G. on his return in May 1611. In 1613 he escorted Elizabeth, the electress palatine, to Heidelberg, and again visited Italy. On Christmas day 1615 Arundel joined the Church of England, and took office, being appointed a privy councillor in 1616. He supported Raleigh’s expedition in 1617, became a member of the New England Plantations Committee in 1620 and planned the colonization of Madagascar. He presided over the House of Lords Committee in April 1621 for investigating the charges against Bacon, whom he defended from degradation from the peerage, and at whose fall he was appointed a commissioner of the great seal. On the 16th of May he was sent to the Tower by the Lords on account of violent and insulting language used by him to Lord Spencer. He incurred Prince Charles’s and Buckingham’s anger by his opposition to the war with Spain in 1624, and by his share in the duke’s impeachment, and on the occasion of his son’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth Stewart without the king’s approval he was imprisoned in the Tower by Charles I., shortly after his accession, but was released at the instance of the Lords in June 1626, being again confined to his house till March 1628, when he was once more liberated by the Lords. In the debates on the Petition of Right, while approving its essential demands, he supported the retention of some discretionary power by the king in committing to prison. The same year he was reconciled to the king and again made a privy councillor. On the 29th of August 1621 he had been appointed earl marshal, and in 1623 constable of England, in 1630 reviving the earl marshal’s court. In 1625 he was made lord-lieutenant of Sussex and in 1635 of Surrey. He was sent to the Hague in 1632 on a mission of condolence to the queen of Bohemia on her husband’s death. In 1634 he was made chief justice in eyre of the forests north of the Trent; he accompanied Charles the same year to Scotland on the occasion of his coronation, and in 1636 undertook an unsuccessful mission to the emperor to procure the restitution of the Palatinate to the young elector. In 1638 he supported the king’s exactions from the vintners, was entrusted with the charge of the Border forts, and, supporting alone amongst the peers the war against the Scots, was made general of the king’s forces in the first Bishops’ War, though according to Clarendon “he had nothing martial about him but his presence and looks.” He was not employed in the second Bishops’ War, but in August 1640 was nominated captain-general south of the Trent. In April he was appointed lord steward of the royal household, and in 1641 as lord high steward presided at the trial of Strafford. This closed his public career. He became again estranged from the court, and in 1641 he escorted home Marie de’ Medici, remaining abroad, with the exception of a short visit to England in 1642, for the rest of his life, and taking up permanent residence at Padua. He contributed a sum of £34,000 to the king’s cause, and suffered severe losses in the war. On the 6th of June 1644 he was created earl of Norfolk. He died at Padua, when on the point of returning home, on the 14th of September 1646, and was buried at Arundel.
Lord Arundel was a man of high character, an exemplary husband and parent, but reserved and unpopular, and Clarendon ridicules his family pride. His claim to fame rests upon his patronage of arts and learning and his magnificent collections. He employed Hollar, Oughtred, Francis Junius and Inigo Jones; included among his friends Sir Robert Cotton, Spelman, Camden, Selden and John Evelyn, and his portrait was painted by Rubens and Vandyck. He is called the “Father of vertu in England,” and was admired by a contemporary as the person to whom “this angle of the world oweth the first sight of Greek and Roman statues.”[3] He was the first to form any considerable collection of art in Great Britain. His acquisitions, obtained while on his travels or through agents, and including inscribed marbles, statues, fragments, pictures, gems, coins, books and manuscripts, were deposited at Arundel House, and suffered considerable damage during the Civil War; and, owing to the carelessness and want of appreciation of his successors, nearly half of the marbles were destroyed. After his death the treasures were dispersed. The marbles and many of the statues were given by his grandson, Henry, 6th duke of Norfolk, to the university of Oxford in 1667, became known as the Arundel (or Oxford) Marbles, and included the famous Parian Chronicle, or Marmor Chronicon, a marble slab on which are recorded in Greek events in Grecian history from 1582 B.C. to 354 B.C., said to have been executed in the island of Paros about 263 B.C. Its narration of events differs in some respects from the most trustworthy historical accounts, but its genuineness, challenged by some writers, has been strongly supported by Porson and others, and is considered fairly established. Other statues were presented to the university by Henrietta Louisa, countess of Pomfret, in 1755. The cabinets and gems were removed by the wife of Henry, 7th duke of Norfolk, in 1685, and after her death found their way into the Marlborough collection. The pictures and drawings were sold in 1685 and 1691, and Lord Stafford’s moiety of the collection in 1720. The coins and medals were, bought by Heneage Finch, 2nd earl of Winchelsea, and dispersed in 1696; the library, at the instance of John Evelyn, who feared its total loss, was given to the Royal Society, and a part,
