Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-7pwfn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T13:43:58.603Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Vocation of Philip Howard—I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Godfrey Anstruther O.P.
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When in 1572 Thomas 4th Duke of Norfolk was attainted and beheaded on the charge of conspiring to marry Mary Queen of Scots and to dethrone Elizabeth, the Howard family lost the title of Duke for the best part of a century. His son however inherited through his mother, Mary Fitzalan, the title of Earl of Arundel, and this became the principal title of the family till the dukedom was restored in 1660. This son was Philip 23rd Earl of Arundel, who was still a minor when his father was executed. His father’s last act was to entrust him to the tender mercies of the great Lord Burghley, so that he was brought up a Protestant. But he married a good Catholic wife in the person of Anne, daughter of Thomas Lord Dacre, and Arundel House their London dwelling became one of the most noted citadels of the faith. Philip himself was converted in 1583 by William Weston, S.J., who was later Robert Nutter’s fellow-prisoner at Wisbech. Realizing that this step was high treason, Philip planned to flee to the Continent, leaving a letter for the Queen to be delivered only after his departure. But his flight was discovered before his ship left Portsmouth and he was arrested on board and lodged in the Tower. Four years later, when the Armada appeared in the Channel he was accused by a timorous priest, also a prisoner there, of procuring from the priest prisoners twenty-four hours non-stop intercession for the success of the Armada.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 39 , Issue 457 , April 1958, pp. 156 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © 1958 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

1

An extract from A Hundred Homeless Years, by Godfrey Anstruther, O.P., to be published by Blackfriars Publications in May (25s.)

References

2 THE HOWARD FAMILY TREE

3 The Lives of Philip Howard E. of Arundef and of Anne Dacre his wife, ed. by the Duke Of Norfolk, 1857, p. 225.

4 Nichols, J., progress of K.James I. London, 1828. II. 449.

5 Hervey, M. F. S., Life of Thomas E. of Arundel, Cambridge, 1921, p. 70.

6 Historical MSS Commission, Cowper, 1, 79.

7 There is extant (Westminster Cathedral Archives, XVI, no. 1) a Latin testimonial dated 5 January 1617 and signed by Edward Coffin, s.J., certifying the Earl’s nobility, Catholic upbringing and benevolence to the afflicted Catholics. Tierney has added in pencil: ‘The man who wrote this knew however that though the Earl had been educated in the Catholic faith he had nevertheless publicly abandoned it.’ It was simpler for the Canon to accuse a Jesuit of perjury than to verify his dates. This testimonial is written at the most eleven days after, and if Coffin is using the new style, on the day after the apostasy. It would be reasonable as well as charitable to suppose that the news had not yet reached him.

8 Walker, Edward, A Short View of the Life of Thomas E. of Arundel lrnd Surrey. British Museum, Harl. 6272, ff. 152-172 (Printed in his Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions, 1705, IV, 209 sq.). f. 170.

9 State Papers Domestic, James I, 90, no. 8.

10 State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 173. p. 78.

11 Ibid., 498, nos. 64, 65.

12 Historical MSS Commission, Cowper, 11. 289.

13 The Lives . . . (v. note 3), p. 210.

14 Ibid., p. 228.

15 State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 483, no. 98.

16 Walker, op. cit., f. 166v.

17 The Diary of john Evelyn, ed. W. Bray and M. B.Wheatley. London, 1906. I, 26.35. 37.

18 Walker, op. cit., f. 170.

19 Westminster Cathedral Archives, B. 29, no. 10. In Hervey, op. cit., p. 448.

20 Dominicana. Publications of the Catholic Record Society, XXV, pp. 1-23.

21 Not Sir Kenelm Digby (who had not yet arrived in Rome) but his son, who was agent for Henrietta Maria. All his letters are signed ‘il cavaliere Digby’. The Annales call him Sir Digby who afterwards married Philip’s sister Catherine, which clearly refers to John.

22 Dominicana, p. 3.

23 Archivio Vaticano, Vescovi, 26, I. f. 28.