HOWARD, Thomas (1683-1732)

Thomas Howard’s father, also named Thomas Howard, was a younger brother of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. This Thomas Howard threw his lot in with James II. He fought with his king in Ireland and was drowned on 5 Dec. 1690 as he attempted to escape to France. Like others who were in arms for James II, he was due to be attainted by process of outlawry, but since he died before his outlawry was formally pronounced, his brother, Norfolk, argued that the attainder was erroneous and secured a writ of error to reverse it. CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 365; 1693, p. 76. The young Thomas Howard thus escaped the consequences of his father’s actions.

The young Thomas Howard was raised as a Catholic at the court in exile in France (where his mother was governess to the prince of Wales). His Catholicism was used as a lever by his childless uncle, Norfolk, to secure support for his divorce bill which, he argued, would enable him to remarry and provide instead a protestant heir to his dukedom. Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 203; CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 5. Norfolk’s untimely death meant that he was succeeded by his Catholic nephew after all. There were soon rumours that the new duke might follow his uncle’s example and abandon Catholicism. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 72; HMC Portland, iv. 168. Nevertheless, when he came of age in 1704 his failure to take the oaths suggested that he was indeed a committed Catholic. Early in 1706 an attempt to tighten the laws that disabled Catholics from inheriting landed estates prompted Norfolk to petition the House against the proposed bill. HMC Lords, n.s. vi. 416. At or about this time he was in secret negotiations for a marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury. When her brother, Charles, the future 3rd earl, discovered the intrigue he was horrified. He insisted that he would never give his consent to her marrying a Catholic, though he seems to have been just as worried about the ‘worldly concerns’ of Catholics who were ‘in a very precarious way’, as about their religious beliefs, citing the bill to limit their rights of inheritance which was then before Parliament. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/1010. It was presumably the financial aspects of such a marriage that most worried him, for two years later Elizabeth married the Catholic George Brudenell, 3rd earl of Cardigan, and at that point Charles Bruce cannot have known that his new brother-in-law would eventually convert to Protestantism.

Norfolk’s financial position is unclear. At his accession to the dukedom he was said to have inherited an estate worth £12,000 a year, ‘which is but the third part of what that family had’. His determination to live up to his status – he was reported to live ‘great both in table and equipage’ – seems to have imposed a strain on his finances, and by 1706 he appears to have been contemplating selling land. HMC Portland iv. 329; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 544. He seems to have been determined to secure a wealthy wife. By September 1706 he was said to be angling after Sir Nicholas Shireburn’s daughter, then aged only 13. HMC Portland, iv. 329. Two years later he was said to be on the verge of marriage to a still wealthier Catholic heiress. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 350. Hopes of his conversion still persisted and in the spring of 1709 various Protestant relations tried to persuade him to meet William Wake, then bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of Canterbury), ‘in order’ as Wake recorded in his diary ‘to the gaining the head of their family … to our Church’. LPL, ms 1770, ff. 74v, 77r. The attempt had been engineered by Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, and it was to Somerset that Norfolk wrote that,

Having considered that the meeting which was to have been at your lordships can have no effect, since I am fully convinced of what I believe to be entirely true, and fearing such a meeting should make a noise, as it needs must, I hope your lordship won’t take it amiss, if I desire it may be put off. I should be sorry to trouble the Bishop of Lincoln for nothing. W. Suss. RO, Petworth House Archives/15.

In May 1709 Norfolk’s adherence to Catholicism was underlined by his marriage to Mary Shireburn, the wealthy heiress that he had courted in 1706.

The Norfollk electoral interest, already diminished by the sale of the pocket borough of Castle Rising to Thomas Howard^‡, the son of Sir Robert Howard^‡, in 1695, continued to decline during the 8th duke’s lifetime. HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 412-15, 598-600; iv. 408. Presumably preferring to concentrate on repairing his estates, until 1727 he ‘seldom intervened in elections’. HP Commons 1715-54, i. 323-3. Bolstered by his wife’s fortune, he increased his wealth through commercial investments and headed at least one consortium to exploit mineral resources in Argyllshire. HP Commons 1690-1715, iv. 957-60. In 1720 he secured an act of Parliament regarding the fee simple of Arundel Buildings and his estates in Norfolk and Suffolk. Castle Howard, J8/1/736. Another act of Parliament in 1724 allowed him to develop lands in the Westminster parish of St Clements Danes. PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1723/10G1n17.

Norfolk and his duchess both espoused the Jacobite cause, funnelling money to the exiled court, but Norfolk’s support was considerably more lukewarm than that of his wife. The duke became a member of the mock corporation of Walton in Lancashire, a social club with decided Jacobite overtones. Another leading member was James Radclyffe, the Catholic 3rd earl of Derwentwater who was executed in 1716 for his part in the Jacobite rebellion of the previous year. VCH Lancs. vi. 289-300; P.K. Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788, pp. 279, 286, 298-9. Norfolk’s brother and heir, Edward Howard* [830], the future 9th duke of Norfolk, was also implicated in the 1715 rebellion. Norfolk’s involvement in attempts to save his brother and in the abortive negotiations prompted by Thomas Strickland (the Catholic bishop of Namur) for a compromise oath that would allow English Catholics to swear allegiance to the new king, broke his marriage and left him in an awkward position, not quite trusted by the Jacobites nor yet by the Hanoverians. The Jacobites complained that he was in a position to contribute far more money than he did to the cause; the Hanoverian ministry arrested him in October 1722 on suspicion of involvement in the Atterbury plot. Monod, 132-4; WSHC, 2667/25/3; Add. 70236, E. Harley to Oxford, 1 Jan. 1720; HMC Carlisle, 43; HMC Polwarth, iii. 190-1.

Norfolk continued to play a prominent role in the social life of the metropolis. He was welcome at court and hosted weekly assemblies at his London house. HMC Carlisle, 55; London Evening Post, 16-18 Dec 1731; HMC Hastings, iii. 9. His eagerness to participate in public life continued to prompt rumours that he would renounce Catholicism. When he died at the age of only 49 of an acutely painful and lingering illness that puzzled his doctors, it was even said that ‘he was poisoned by the Jesuits some months since, on account of his having made some declarations that carried the appearance as if he intended to turn Protestant’. HMC Carlisle, 93. Dying without issue, Norfolk’s complex will confirmed the entail of his estates in Norfolk, Suffolk and Nottinghamshire which went in large part to his brother Edward Howard, his successor in the dukedom and sole executor. A codicil bequeathed cash sums totalling more than £7,000 to his mother, brother Philip, cousins Bernard and Betty, and William Stafford-Howard^†, the Catholic 2nd earl of Stafford.