Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, ( Kenninghall, Norfolk, 10 March 1536Tower Hill, London, 2 June 1572) was an English nobleman and politician. Although from a family with strong Roman Catholic leanings, he was raised a Protestant. He was a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth I through her maternal grandmother, and held many high offices during her reign.

Norfolk was the son of the poet, soldier and politician Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. He is believed to have commissioned Thomas Tallis, probably in 1567, to compose his renowned motet in forty voice-parts, '' Spem in alium''.

He was executed for his role in the Ridolfi plot.

Early life, family, and religion

Norfolk was born at his family's house at Kenninghall, Norfolk on March 10, 1536, being the eldest son of the Earl of Surrey and his wife Frances de Vere. His younger siblings were Jane, Henry, Katherine, and Margaret. After Surrey's execution in January 1547, their aunt, Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, assigned the upbringing and guardianship of the children to John Foxe, the Protestant martyrologist, who remained a lifelong recipient of Norfolk's patronage. Although Norfolk was educated and raised Protestant, a vein of Catholicism was never far below the surface, not least because the Howards had always remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church in the turbulent years of the Anglican Reformation (his father had fallen out of favour in part because he was a Catholic, and his grandfather, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, had been a prisoner in the Tower from the end of the reign of Henry VIII and was kept there throughout the reign of Edward VI for the same reason, although he was then released early in the rule of Queen Mary, who was also a Catholic). As soon as he was released from the Tower in 1553, his grandfather removed John Foxe's tutorship and reassigned the further education of his seventeen-year-old heir to the devout Catholic John White, the bishop of Lincoln (1554-56). In July 1554 he became first gentleman of the chamber to Mary's consort, King Philip II, and in November he was with them at the opening of parliament. His father predeceased his grandfather, so Norfolk was able to first inherit the earldom of Surrey (the title held by his father at the time of his death) in 1553 after Mary reinstated the Howard titles, and after his grandfather's death in 1554, the dukedom of Norfolk. As he was a minor, however, his extensive estates including fifty-six manors were held by the crown until he came of age.

He was a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth I through her maternal grandmother, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and he was trusted with public office despite his family's history and leanings towards the Church of Rome.

For Norfolk to have been a Catholic, disguised as a Protestant so as not to attract the attention of the authorities, was not unusual during the turbulent years of the Reformation. Many English Catholics took the attitude of publicly showing themselves as Protestants, but secretly and privately professing and maintaining their Catholic faith. After the death of his first wife Mary FitzAlan in 1557 and to marry Margaret Audley who would be his second wife, had to request a dispensation from Pope Pius IV since Elizabeth was Margaret's cousin.

Career

While still young, Norfolk was Earl Marshal of England and Queen's Lieutenant in the North. From February to July 1560, he was commander of the English army in Scotland in support of the Lords of the Congregation opposing Mary of Guise. He negotiated the February 1560 Treaty of Berwick by which the Congregation invited English assistance, and after the Treaty of Edinburgh was signed in July of that year he was able to return to Court.

Norfolk was the Principal of the commission at York in 1568 to hear evidence against Mary, Queen of Scots, presented by Regent Moray, including the casket letters.

He is believed to have commissioned Thomas Tallis in 1567 to compose his famous motet in forty-parts, Spem in alium.

Legal troubles and execution

Having lost his third wife in 1567, and despite having presided at the York commission, Norfolk planned what would have been his fourth marriage, to Mary, Queen of Scots. The Scottish statesman William Maitland of Lethington favoured the proposed union, and Mary herself consented to it, but Norfolk was unwilling to take up arms. He was briefly involved in the Northern Rebellion, which was organised in part by his brother-in-law Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, in an attempt to free Mary, and Elizabeth ordered his arrest for this in October 1569. He was imprisoned for nine months and was released in August 1570 because as there was insufficient evidence to accuse him of treason, since he was not directly involved in organising the Northern Rebellion. Following his release and after some hesitation, he agreed to participate in the Ridolfi plot with King Philip II of Spain to put Mary on the English throne and restore Catholicism in England. Elizabeth's intelligence network (particularly William Cecil, Lord Burghley) soon became aware of the plot, which also involved Spanish Intelligence, whose purpose was to overthrow her and possibly even assassinate her. Norfolk initially denied involvement, but subsequently admitted to a role in the plot.

The evidence against Norfolk was now far more compelling than it had been in 1569-70. It was clear that it remained his intention to marry Mary, despite Elizabeth’s objections. It was also apparent that he had engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow, and perhaps kill, Elizabeth. At his trial on 16 January 1572, which lasted twelve hours, Norfolk pleaded his innocence. However, a jury of twenty-six of his fellow nobles, including Burghley and Leicester, unanimously found him guilty of treason, whereupon he was sentenced to death.

Norfolk having been condemned to death by a jury of his peers, it was reasonable to suppose that his execution would quickly follow. Indeed, it was rumoured that he was to be executed on the last day of January, whereupon crowds flocked to the Tower. In fact, Elizabeth, torn between the demands of justice on the one hand and Norfolk’s ‘nearness of blood nd… his superiority of honour’ on the other, could not be brought to sign the death warrant until 9 February, and on the 10th she countermanded her instructions. She did the same thing a fortnight later, to the dismay of Burghley and the Privy Council. They insisted that Parliament be assembled to debate the urgent threat posed by Norfolk and Mary, although parliaments normally met only once every three or four years and the previous parliament had been dissolved just ten months earlier.

This new parliament, the fourth of Elizabeth’s reign, assembled on 8 May 1572. Over the course of the next three weeks, Burghley and the Council used their spokesmen in the Commons to press the case for executing Norfolk. In late May, two members went so far as to observe that by failing to execute the duke, the queen was demonstrating that she believed the guilty verdict to be incorrect, which ‘dishonoureth the nobles that have condemned him’. Initially Elizabeth refused to relent. Indeed, as late as 21 May Leicester remarked that he could ‘see no likelihood’ that Norfolk would be executed. However, the queen’s mind was changed when she faced strong parliamentary pressure to execute Mary. As Stephen Alford has observed, Norfolk’s execution ‘was the political price Elizabeth had to pay to save the Scottish Queen’. Even so, Elizabeth was determined that the decision to execute the duke should be seen to be hers rather than Parliament’s. On Saturday 31 May the crown’s spokesmen in the Commons persuaded the lower House, with great difficulty, to postpone petitioning the queen to execute the duke until the following Monday (2 June), ‘in hope to hear news before that time’. That hint was well taken, as Norfolk finally went to the block less than one hour before the Commons reassembled.

Shortly before seven in the morning on 2 June 1572, Norfolk, was led the short distance to a specially erected scaffold on Tower Hill, accompanied by his former tutor Foxe and by Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul’s. After mounting the steps he addressed the crowd which had assembled to witness his execution. Despite admitting that he deserved to die, he declared himself to be partly innocent, whereupon he was interrupted by an official, who warned him that he should not try to clear himself, having been ‘tried as honourably as any nobleman hath ever been in this land’. Urged to wind up quickly, as ‘the hour is passed’, Norfolk ended his speech by denying that he was a Catholic, as was commonly believed. After bidding a tearful farewell to Foxe and Nowell, and forgiving the public hangman, the duke removed his doublet and laid his head on the block. Before a silent crowd, which had been urged not to shout out to avoid ‘frighting’ his soul, Norfolk’s head was severed with a single stroke.

Norfolk was the first nobleman to be executed during Elizabeth's reign, being the first member of the nobility to face the block since Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk – the father of Lady Jane Grey – was executed early in Mary I’s reign. Equally striking is that he was the premier nobleman of England, the queen’s second cousin and a leading member of the Privy Council. Until recently, he had also been much admired by Elizabeth and Burghley. Indeed, in 1565 Burghley had described Norfolk as ‘wise, just, modest, careful’ and, despite his youth – he was then aged just 27 – ‘a father and stay to this country’. In the immediate aftermath of his execution, Elizabeth was reportedly ‘somewhat sad’ at the duke’s death.

Norfolk's lands and titles were forfeit, although much of the estate was later restored to his sons. The title of Duke of Norfolk was restored, four generations later, to his great-great-grandson Thomas Howard.

Marriages and issue

First wife

Thomas Howard's first wife was Mary FitzAlan, daughter of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel and his first wife Katherine Grey. She died after a year of marriage, having given birth to a son, who, on the death of his grandfather, inherited the Arundel title and estates:

* Philip Howard (28 June 155719 October 1595), who became the 20th Earl of Arundel. Shortly after his death, he was declared a martyr and he was finally canonised by the Catholic Church in 1970, being one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His tomb and sanctuary is in Arundel Cathedral.

It is from this marriage that modern dukes of Norfolk derive their surname of 'FitzAlan-Howard' and their seat in Arundel. Although her funeral effigy is at Framlingham church, Mary FitzAlan was not buried there but first at the church of St. Clement Danes, Temple Bar and then, as directed in her grandson's will, her remains were transferred to the Fitzalan Chapel in Arundel.

Second wife

Norfolk next married another heiress, Margaret Audley, widow of Sir Henry Dudley and daughter of Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden and his second wife Elizabeth Grey. Thus Margaret was the first cousin of Howard's first wife. For the marriage to conform with Catholic canon law, a dispensation had to be requested from Pope Pius IV, given the close relationship of Norfolk's first wife to Margaret Audley. Norfolk sent his lawyers to the Holy See to negotiate the dispensation, but the delays in obtaining (in addition to the fact that by this time Queen Mary had died in November 1558 and Elizabeth ascended the throne, who began to reverse the restoration of Catholicism in England) it meant that the marriage was approved and later ratified by the House of Lords in March 1559.
Norfolk's children by his marriage to Margaret were:
* Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk;
* Lord William Howard, ancestor of the Earls of Carlisle;
* Lady Elizabeth Howard (died in childhood);
* Lady Margaret Howard

Margaret Audley Howard's tomb effigy is found at St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.

Third wife

After Margaret's death in 1563, Norfolk married Elizabeth Leyburne (15364 September 1567), widow of Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre of Gillesland and daughter of Sir James Leyburn.

Norfolk's three sons by his first two wives, Philip, Thomas, and William, married, respectively, Anne, Margaret, and Elizabeth Dacre. The Dacre sisters were the daughters of Elizabeth Leyburne by her marriage to Thomas Dacre and were, thereby, stepsisters to Norfolk's sons.

Attempted fourth marriage

Norfolk became a widower again after his third wife's death in 1567. In 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England and was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth. Thomas Howard was suggested as a husband for Mary, as he was a cousin to Queen Elizabeth and the wealthiest landowner in the country. Together they would have a strong claim on England's throne as Mary was also Elizabeth's cousin, through the royal Tudor line. This suited Norfolk, as he was ambitious and felt that Elizabeth consistently undervalued him.

Therefore, Norfolk supported the Rising of the North in 1569 in an attempt to free Mary and later marry her. It is still debated whether this rebellion actually aimed to overthrow Elizabeth and whether Mary even knew about it beforehand. Howard soon lost his nerve and the plan failed, but he made another effort to marry Mary in 1571 as part of the Ridolfi Plot. This was a plan to murder Elizabeth and free Mary. She would then marry Howard so that they could take the throne together. Elizabeth's government discovered the plot, and Howard's servants betrayed him under torture. Norfolk was imprisoned by Elizabeth and put on trial in January 1572. He was found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill, London, in June.Hodder Education History for Edexcel: Early Elizabethan England

Depictions

*Thomas Howard appears as a character in the Philippa Gregory novels ''The Virgin's Lover'' and ''The Other Queen'', and in the novel ''I, Elizabeth'' by Rosalind Miles.
*A highly fictionalized version of the 4th Duke of Norfolk appears as a villain, played by Christopher Eccleston, in the 1998 film '' Elizabeth''.
*Another version of the Duke is in the BBC mini-series '' The Virgin Queen'', played by Kevin McKidd.
*In the Channel 4 documentary ''Elizabeth'' (2000) presented by David Starkey, the Duke is portrayed by actor John Gully.

See also

*John George Howard, a Toronto architect who claims to be related to the Duke.

References

Further reading

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* papers from Norfolk's treason trial 1568–1572.
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