Edward Howard, styled Viscount Morpeth, the heir of Charles Howard earl of Carlisle, first entered Parliament in September 1666 when, while still underage, he was returned as Member for his namesake borough, Morpeth in Northumberland. Morpeth may have sat for a Northumbrian borough, but it was in neighbouring Cumberland where he, with his father, exercised his predominant local influence. As early as 1664, well before he was of age, he was first appointed by Parliament as a commissioner of assessment for that county and he was consistently placed on its commission of the peace from 1667 until his death. In December 1668 Morpeth was appointed joint lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland with his father to govern those counties while Carlisle was absent, serving as ambassador in Sweden.
Morpeth was not a particularly active member of the Cavalier Parliament and appears to have followed his father in his political allegiances, adhering to the court and to Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), by spring 1677, if not earlier.
After succeeding to his father’s peerage in February 1685, the new earl of Carlisle came to only 19 meetings of James II’s Parliament, most of them in June and early July. Undoubtedly, he felt little warmth for the new regime as James II had quickly appointed others to replace the late earl of Carlisle – Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, as lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland and Sir Christopher Musgrave‡ as governor of Carlisle – even though the second earl had been effectively acting in those posts for several years. By 1687 Carlisle was consistently listed as an opponent of the king’s attempt to repeal the Test Act and penal laws. He supported the seven bishops in their trial in 1688 and was suggested as a surety for the bail of John Lake, bishop of Chichester.
Carlisle supported William of Orange’s claims to the throne during the scant six days during which he came to meetings of the Convention. His brief period of attendance was concentrated on the crucial days of late January and early February 1689. Although he was marked as ‘sick’ at a call of the House on 25 Jan. he made his way into the House four days later and appears to have been there on 31 Jan. when Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, recorded him as voting to declare William and Mary king and queen, although his name does not appear in that day’s presence list in the Journal. Carlisle voted to agree with the Commons on the use of the word ‘abdicate’ on 4 Feb. and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, included him among the four peers ‘who never used to come’ whose unexpected appearance, ‘brought [in] upon his crutches’, in the House on 6 Feb. was decisive in tipping the crucial division that day in William’s favour.
So weakened by illness was Carlisle that he stopped attending the Convention altogether after 18 Feb. 1689. On 28 May 1689 the House sent a summons demanding his presence by 16 June, but formally excused him on 6 June ‘in regard of great lameness’.