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Lord William Howard (1563–1640) and His Catholic Associations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Howard S. Reinmuth Jr.
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Extract

Lord William Howard is surely the least known of the fourth Duke of Norfolk's three sons. Although a Catholic, he was not a martyr like his half-brother Philip. Unlike his elder brother Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, he had no spectacular public career. But because he was not a martyr, he was a more typical Catholic layman than his half-brother; because he lacked high public office and never sought the position of a courtier, but spent his time managing his estates and participating, though as a Catholic unofficially, in local government, he was more typical of landowners of the period than his brother Thomas. Between the two extremes of martyrdom and hypocrisy were the great majority of English Catholics; between these two extremes we can place Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, Cumberland. In this paper I should like to consider Lord William's Catholicism in three contexts: his own position; in relation to other Catholics through the marriages he arranged for his children; in the attempts he made to protect individual Catholics.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 226 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 This paper was read in a slightly different version at the Sixteenth Conference on Post-Reformation Catholic History at St Anne's College, Oxford, 27 July 1973.

2 Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, ed. Rev. G. Ornsby, Surtees Society 68 (1877), p. 373.

3 BM, Egerton MSS 2714/1802.

4 HMC, Cal. Salisbury MSS. 19, p. 15.

5 P.R.O., S.P. 14/40/11.

6 Westmorland Record Office, D/Ry 97.

7 The English Franciscan Nuns, 1619-1812, and The Friars Minor of the same Province, 1618-1761, ed. Trappes-Lomax, R., C.R.S. 24 (1922), pp. 271–2.Google Scholar

8 Mousley, J. E., ‘The Fortunes of some Gentry Families of Elizabethan Sussex’, Ec HR 11, no. 3 (1959), pp. 475, 482;Google Scholar Manning, R. B., ‘Catholics and Local Office Holding in Elizabethan Sussex’ BIHR 25 (1962), pp. 50, 58, 60.Google Scholar

9 The Bedingfeld Papers, ed. Pollen, J. H., C.R.S. 7 (1909), pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

10 P.R.O., S.P. 14/40/11. Ornsby, op. cit., 227.

11 Hugh, Aveling, ‘The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1558-1790’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section 10, part 6 (1963), p. 292.Google Scholar

12 P.R.O., S.P. 14/86/34.

13 Cal. C.C.D., pp. 2240-1 for genealogy. William Lord Eure was described as a convicted Popish recusant in a petition of the House of Commons to Charles I in 1626. They wanted him removed from office, also Sir Henry Bedingfield and family who were described as non-churchgoers. John, Rushworth, Historical Collections, 8 volumes, second edition 1721–22, 1, 392.Google Scholar

14 Ornsby, op. cit., p. 451.

15 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., ed. Thomas, Birch, 7 vols. (1742), 1, p. 80.Google Scholar The articles of peace between Charles I and the Parliament in July 1646, specifically excluded from its terms several Royalists who were Roman Catholics: four of the thirteen were Sir Francis Howard, Sir John Winter, Sir John Preston, and Sir Henry Bedingfield.

16 I owe this suggestion to Mrs Martha Robinson who was particularly impressed by this phenomenon among Yorkshire Catholics.

17 Rowse, A. L., ‘Nicholas Roscarrock and His Lives of the Saints’ in Studies in Social History, A Tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, ed. Plumb, J. H. (1955), 1–31 passim. Google Scholar

18 John, Throsby, Thoroton's History of ‘Nottinghamshire, 3 vols. (1790), 1, 78, 79.Google Scholar Copnall, H. H., Nottinghamshire County Records (1915), p. 155.Google Scholar For Henry Widmerpoole, a convicted recusant, see Miscellanea 5, CR.S. 6 (1909), note 5, pp. 290-1. Miscellanea 6, C.R.S. 7 (1909), pp. xi, 5.

19 Robert, Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols. (1816–40), 3, p. 381.Google Scholar Ornsby, op. cit., 291.

20 H.M.C., Lord Kenyon MSS (Fourteenth Report, part 4), 371.

21 Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth-Woodhouse MSS. Str. 15/267. See also Str. 12/175 and Str. 12/296 for Lord William's clientage to Strafford.

22 John Rylands Library, Crawford MS., fol. 195. William, Camden, Britannia, second edition, 4 vols (1806), ed. Richard Gough, 3, p. 429.Google Scholar