of France. He was accredited to negotiate various matters with Louis, and on his death was sent to congratulate the new king Francis I. An affection between Suffolk and the dowager queen Mary had subsisted before her marriage, and Francis roundly charged him with an intention to marry her. Francis, perhaps in the hope of Queen Claude’s death, had himself been one of her suitors in the first week of her widowhood, and Mary asserted that she had given him her confidence to avoid his importunities. Francis and Henry both professed a friendly attitude towards the marriage of the lovers, but Suffolk had many political enemies, and Mary feared that she might again be sacrificed to political considerations. The truth was that Henry was anxious to obtain from Francis the gold plate and jewels which had been given or promised to the queen by Louis in addition to the reimbursement of the expenses of her marriage with the king; and he practically made his acquiescence in Suffolk’s suit dependent on his obtaining them. The pair cut short the difficulties by a private marriage, which Suffolk announced to Wolsey, who had been their fast friend, on the 5th of March. Suffolk was only saved from Henry’s anger by Wolsey, and the pair eventually agreed to pay to Henry £24,000 in yearly instalments of £1000, and the whole of Mary’s dowry from Louis of £200,000, together with her plate and jewels. They were openly married at Greenwich on the 13th of May. The duke had been twice married already, to Margaret Mortimer and to Anne Browne, to whom he had been betrothed before his marriage with Margaret Mortimer. Anne Browne died in 1511, but Margaret Mortimer, from whom he had obtained a divorce on the ground of consanguinity, was still living. He secured in 1528 a bull from Pope Clement II. assuring the legitimacy of his marriage with Mary Tudor, and of the daughters of Anne Browne, one of whom, Anne, was sent to the court of Margaret of Savoy. After his marriage with Mary, Suffolk lived for some years in retirement, but he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and in 1523 he was sent to Calais to command the English troops there. He invaded France in company with Count de Buren, who was at the head of the Flemish troops, and laid waste the north of France, but disbanded his troops at the approach of winter. Suffolk was entirely in favour of Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and in spite of his obligations to Wolsey he did not scruple to attack him when his fall was imminent. The cardinal, who was acquainted with Suffolk’s private history, reminded him of his ingratitude: “If I, simple cardinal, had not been, you should have had at this present no head upon your shoulders wherein you should have had a tongue to make any such report in despite of us.” After Wolsey’s disgrace Suffolk’s influence increased daily. He was sent with the duke of Norfolk to demand the great seal from Wolsey; the same noblemen conveyed the news of Anne Boleyn’s marriage to Queen Catherine, and Suffolk acted as high steward at the new queen’s coronation. He was one of the commissioners appointed by Henry to dismiss Catherine’s household, a task which he found distasteful. He supported Henry’s ecclesiastical policy, receiving a large share of the, plunder after the suppression of the monasteries. In 1544 he was for the second time in command of an English army for the invasion of France. He died at Guildford on the 24th of August in the following year.
After the death of Mary Tudor on the 24th of June 1533 he had married in 1534 his ward Catherine (1520–1580), Baroness Willoughby de Eresby in her own right, then a girl of fifteen. His daughters by his marriage with Anne Browne were Anne, who married firstly Edward Grey, Lord Powys, and, after the dissolution of this union, Randal Harworth; and Mary (b. 1510), who married Thomas Stanley, Lord Monteagle. By Mary Tudor he had Henry earl of Lincoln (1516–1634); Frances, who married Henry Grey, marquess of Dorset, and became the mother of Lady Jane Grey; and Eleanor, who married Henry Clifford, second earl of Cumberland. By Katherine Willoughby he had two sons who showed great promise, Henry (1535–1551) and Charles (c. 1537–1551), dukes of Suffolk. They died of the sweating sickness within an hour of one another. Their tutor, Sir Thomas Wilson, compiled a memoir of them, Vita et obitus duorum fratrum Suffolcensium (1551).
There is abundant material for the history of Suffolk’s career in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. (ed. Brewer in the Rolls Series). See also Dugdale, Baronage of England (vol. ii. 1676); and G. E. C., Complete Peerage. An account of his matrimonial adventures is in the historical appendix to a novel by E. S. Holt entitled The Harvest of Yesterday.
SUFFOLK, THOMAS HOWARD, 1st Earl of (1561–1626), second son of Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, was born
on the 24th of August 1561. He behaved very gallantly during
the attack on the Spanish armada and afterwards took part in
other naval expeditions, becoming an admiral in 1599. Created
Baron Howard de Walden in 1597 and earl of Suffolk in July
1603, he was lord Chamberlain of the royal household from 1603
to 1614 and lord high treasurer from 1614 to 1618, when he was
deprived of his office on a charge of misappropriating money.
He was tried in the Star-chamber and was sentenced to pay a
heavy fine. Suffolk’s second wife was Catherine (d. 1633),
widow of the Hon. Richard Rich, a woman whose avarice was
partly responsible for her husband’s downfall. She shared his
trial and was certainly guilty of taking bribes from Spain. One
of his three daughters was the notorious Frances Howard,
who, after obtaining a divorce from her first husband, Robert
Devereux, earl of Essex, married Robert Carr, earl of Somerset,
and instigated the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. The earl
died on the 28th of May 1626. He built a magnificent residence
at Audley End, Essex, which is said to have cost £200,000. One
of Suffolk’s seven sons was Sir Robert Howard (1585–1653), who
inherited Clun Castle, Shropshire, on the death of his brother,
Sir Charles Howard, in 1622. He was twice imprisoned on
account of his illicit relations with Frances, Viscountess Purbeck
(d. 1645), a daughter of Sir Edward Coke, and after sitting in
six parliaments was expelled from the House of Commons for
executing the king’s commission of array in 1642. He died on
the 22nd of April 1653. Another of Suffolk’s sons, Edward
(d. 1675), was created baron Howard of Escrick in 1628. He was
one of the twelve peers who signed the petition on grievances,
which he presented to Charles I. at York in 1640, and after the
abolition of the House of Lords in 1649 he sat in the House of
Commons as member for Carlisle, being also a member of the
council of state. In 1651 he was expelled from parliament for
taking bribes and he died on the 24th of April 1675. His second
son, William, 3rd lord Howard of Escrick (c. 1626–1694), was
a member of the republican party during the Commonwealth;
later he associated himself with the opponents of the arbitrary
rule of Charles II., but turning informer he was partly responsible
for the conviction of Lord William Russell and of Algernon
Sydney in 1683. On the death of William’s son, Charles, the
4th lord, in 1715 the barony of Howard of Escrick became
extinct.
Suffolk’s eldest son, Theophilus, 2nd earl of Suffolk (1584–1640), was captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners under James I. and Charles I., and succeeded to the earldom in May 1626, obtaining about the same time some of the numerous offices which had been held by his father, including the lord-lieutenancy of the counties of Suffolk, Cambridge and Dorset. He died on the 3rd of June 1640, when his eldest son James (1619–1689) became 3rd earl. This nobleman, who acted as earl marshal of England at the coronation of Charles II., died in January 1689 when his barony of Howard de Walden fell into abeyance between his two daughters.[1] His earldom, however, passed to his brother George (c. 1625–1691), who
- ↑ Having thus fallen into abeyance in 1689 the barony of Howard de Walden was revived in 1784 in favour of John Griffin Griffin, afterwards Lord Braybrooke, on whose death in May 1797 it fell again into abeyance. In 1799 the bishop of Derry, Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th earl of Bristol, a descendant of the 3rd earl of Suffolk, became the sole heir to the barony. On Bristol’s death in July 1803 it passed to Charles Augustus Ellis (1799–1868), a grandson of the bishop’s elder son, John Augustus, Lord Hervey (1757–1796), who had predeceased his father. It was thus separated from the marquessate of Bristol, which passed to the bishop’s only surviving son, and it has since been held by the family of Ellis.
