HOWARD, Charles (1628-85), of Naworth Castle, Cumb., and Hinderskelfe, Yorks.

The scion of one of England’s greatest aristocratic families, Howard shared a common ancestor (the 4th duke of Norfolk, who had been executed for treason in 1572) with the 21st earl of Arundel, the 3rd earl of Suffolk, the 1st earl of Berkshire, and Edward, Lord Howard of Escrick*, his future father-in-law. His great-grandfather, Lord William Howard, had acquired an extensive estate in the northern counties, establishing the family seat at Naworth Castle, about ten miles north-east of Carlisle.79A True Representation of the State of the Bordering Customary Tenants, 3-4; Household Bks. of Lord William Howard ed. G. Ornsby (Surt. Soc. lxviii), viii; ‘Charles Howard, 1st earl of Carlisle’; ‘Lord William Howard’, Oxford DNB.

Howard was ‘bred up and kept by Sir Francis Howard, his uncle, a papist, at Naworth … in the popish religion’ and tutored by another uncle, Robert Howard. The two uncles attempted to convey him to France during the civil war, but he was captured en route in July 1645 after his party of royalist horse had been intercepted by parliamentarian cavalry in Yorkshire. When Howard’s case came before the Committee for Sequestrations* in April 1646, it was the subject of conflicting testimony. Colonel John Bright* and Captain Edward Gill* swore upon oath that Howard had resisted the parliamentarian troopers with drawn sword; they also laid emphasis upon his admission that he was a Catholic. However, the Yorkshire MP Henry Darley deposed that he had received a letter from Howard just before his capture, stating his willingness to surrender to Parliament and that he had since ‘conformed himself’ to the Church of England. This version of events was corroborated by one of the Howard family’s manorial officers, James Danby*.80Supra, ‘James Danby’; SP20/11/8; LJ viii. 296a-b. Darley had a strong vested interest in limiting any fines upon Howard’s estate, having been granted the wardship first of Howard’s elder brother William and then, after William’s death, of Howard himself, by his William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, the master of the court of wards.81Supra, ‘Henry Darley’; WARD9/556, pp. 877, 951; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 38-9. It was almost certainly either Saye or Darley, or both, who had arranged Howard’s marriage in 1645 to the daughter of their political ally, Lord Howard of Escrick. Saye used his influence on Darley’s behalf again in May 1646, procuring a vote in the Lords for lifting the sequestration on Howard’s estate.82LJ viii. 294b. In August, an ordinance was passed effectively discharging Howard’s estate from sequestration and wardship charges to the tune of £4,000.83LJ viii. 477a.

Howard’s new mentors were leading parliamentary Independents, and their influence may partly explain his transformation into a godly parliamentarian. But there was also a strong element of expediency to his conversion – as he demonstrated during the second civil war, when he collaborated with royalist leaders in Cumberland (perhaps to the extent of raising forces for the king) in order to preserve his estate from plundering.84SP19/141, f. 31; [Musgrave], A Plain Discovery How the Enemy and Popish Faction in the North Upholds Their Interest (1649), 3 (E.560.26); A True and Exact Relation, 3-4, 35-6; Strange Newes from the North (1650), 5-6 (E.603.3). However, when it became clear after Preston that the king’s cause was hopeless, he fortified Naworth against the royalists and renewed his links with the parliamentarians, and in particular with Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, the commander of the four northern counties under the Rump.85Naworth Estate and Household Accts. ed. Hudleston, 52; [Musgrave], A Plain Discovery, 3. It was probably with Hesilrige’s blessing, and certainly with that of his subordinate Colonel Thomas Fitch*, that Howard and Sir Wilfrid Lawson* secured the return of Lord Howard of Escrick for Carlisle in April 1649.86Supra, ‘Carlisle’; Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 35-6; Naworth Estate and Household Accts. ed. Hudleston, 17. Similarly, the council of state almost certainly consulted Hesilrige over its appointment of Charles Howard as sheriff of Cumberland in the autumn of 1649. When disgruntled radicals presented charges of collaboration against him to the council in 1649 and again in 1650, Hesilrige was evidently among his defenders.87SP19/141, f. 31; Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 3-4, 35-6; [J. Price], Musgrave Muzl’d, or the Mouth of Iniquitie Stoped (1651), 7-8 (E.625.11). Anxious to bind Howard more firmly to the Rump’s interest, the council declared all such allegations ‘false and scandalous’.88CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 455; 1650, p. 175; 1651, pp. 21, 23. However, his choice of Roland Nicols as his household chaplain during the late 1640s and early 1650s would not have inspired Hesilrige’s or the council’s confidence. Nicols had been chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, during the first civil war and was described by one Cumberland radical as ‘a malignant priest, late preacher to the king’.89Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 4; Naworth Estate and Household Accts. ed. Hudleston, 101, 102, 103, 108, 127; Mems. of Anne, Lady Halkett, and Ann, Lady Fanshawe ed. J.C. Loftis (Oxford, 1979), 32, 35-6, 43, 47; Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 636-7.

Howard’s transition from cavalier to parliamentarian was evidently complete by April 1651, when he was appointed captain of Oliver Cromwell’s lifeguard.90Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 52. He had been given this plum office, according to one hostile report, as a favour to Hesilrige.91Second Narrative, 22. Howard accompanied Cromwell on the army’s return from Scotland to England in 1651 and fought bravely at the battle of Worcester, receiving ‘divers sore wounds’.92Mems. of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, ii. 363-4. With the fall of the Rump in April 1653, Howard seems to have taken over from Hesilrige as commander of the forces on the Border, and in May he was selected by the council of officers as one of four men to represent the four northernmost counties in the Nominated Parliament – apparently with special reference to Cumberland and probably Westmorland as well.93Supra, ‘Northern counties’. He was named to four committees in this Parliament, including those for Scottish and Irish affairs.94CJ vii. 283b, 286b, 323b. Although he has been identified with the ‘moderates’ in the House, neither his committee appointments nor his seven tellerships (all on minor divisions) reveal anything substantial about his political alignment at Westminster.95CJ vii. 284a, 289b, 315b, 335b, 344b, 347a, 355a; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 175, 199. His partners as teller ranged from the radical Major-general Thomas Harrison I and Andrew Broughton to the political mainstreamers Sir Robert King and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. What his tellerships do suggest is that he was active in debate. This can also be inferred from his addition to the council of state in July 1653.96CJ vii. 284b. Howard attended 101 of the 140 sessions of the council between July and October, was named to numerous conciliar committees and served as president of the council for two weeks early in October.97CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. xli; 1653-4, pp. 47, 64, 75, 76, 90, 93, 114, 122, 139, 152, 171, 205, 209, 223, 235, 237, 243, 256, 267. In the elections held on 1 November 1653 to select 16 councillors to continue their places on the next council, Howard tied in last place with Richard Norton and Samuel Moyer.98CJ vii. 344a. He attended 18 of the 38 sessions of this last of the commonwealth councils, but failed to secure appointment to its protectoral successor.99CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. xl.

In terms of his religious sympathies at this time, it may be significant that the House selected him in August to inform the Independent divine Walter Cradock – a puritan ecumenicist who favoured a broad-based national church – of his appointment to preach a thanksgiving sermon.100CJ vii. 297b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 241-2. Howard’s apparent regard for Cradock is broadly consistent with his later membership of George Cockayne’s Independent congregation at St Pancras, Soper Lane, where he would have rubbed shoulders with John Ireton*, Robert Tichborne* and Bulstrode Whitelocke*.101Second Narrative, 22; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 201. Howard paraded his new-found godliness at a dinner-party in the early 1650s, when he refused to take the toast, prompting the radical preacher Hugh Peters, who was sitting next to him, to launch into a peroration against the ‘very bad custom’ of drinking healths.102Lodewijck Huygens: the English Jnl. 1651-2 ed. A.G.H. Bachrach, R.G. Collmer (Leiden, 1982), 146. It was also said that Howard demonstrated ‘a high profession of religion’ among his fellow army officers, ‘to the pitch of praying and preaching at their meetings’.103G. Burnet, Hist. of his own Times (Oxford, 1833), ii. 271.

Howard’s career continued to flourish under the protectorate. In the spring of 1654, Cromwell sent him north with ‘divers troops’ to suppress royalist moss-troopers or Border raiders, and it was probably at some point in mid-1654 that he was given command of Hesilrige’s former garrisons of Carlisle, Berwick and Tynemouth.104CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 100, 244, 245-6, 290. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that summer, Howard was returned for Cumberland on his own interest as the region’s senior officer and wealthiest landowner.105Supra, ‘Cumberland’. Even his enemies acknowledged that he was the most powerful man in Cumberland.106Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 3; Strange Newes from the North, 3. Indeed, such was his ‘great potency and power’ that his tenants conceived it useless to mount a legal challenge to his attacks upon their customary rights. Instead, they petitioned Cromwell directly, citing Howard’s delinquency in 1648, but to no avail.107A True Representation of the State of the Bordering Customary Tenants, 4-7. Whitehall evidently regarded him as a safe and godly pair of hands – hence his appointment in August 1654 as an ejector for the four northern counties.108A. and O. ii. 969. At Westminster, he was named to committees on the ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers, to determine the protectorate’s military establishment and to consider Scottish affairs – receiving six committee appointments in all.109CJ vii. 366b, 370a, 370b, 371b, 375b, 381a. He was also a teller with Lord Broghill on 29 November on a minor division concerning the assessment bill.110CJ vii. 392b.

Howard’s ties to Cromwell and the court interest strengthened significantly during 1655. In January, Cromwell gave him the command of Colonel Nathaniel Rich’s* regiment of horse – which was stationed under General George Monck* in Scotland – and in May he was appointed to the newly-established Scottish protectoral council (his salaries as an army officer and Scottish councillor would amount to almost £1,000 a year).111Mercurius Politicus no. 241 (18-25 Jan. 1660), 5067; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 108, 152; TSP iii. 423; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 13, 15 (E.935.5); Letters from Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 111; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 151. As one of the Border region’s most senior military figures, he played a leading role in the suppression and trial of the northern insurgents involved in Penruddock’s rising.112Add. 4156, ff. 58, 166-9; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/1/1/9/7; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 94, 103, 108, 116; TSP iii. 568. However, he was not at ease harrying leading royalists, not least because he seems to have socialised with some of them, notably Sir Patricius Curwen*.113J. Musgrave, A Cry of Bloud of an Innocent Abel against Two Bloudy Cains (1655), 21 (E.731.8). He excused his actions to Curwen’s civil-war colleague Sir John Lowther† on the grounds that he was merely obeying the protector’s orders: ‘truly, I cannot help it’.114Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/1/1/9/7. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for persecuting former Cavaliers, he was appointed a deputy major-general under John Lambert* that autumn, with responsibility for Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland, while Robert Lilburne* took charge of Yorkshire and County Durham.115CSP Dom. 1655, p. 387. He worked closely with Lilburne and other northern parliamentarians in implementing the decimation tax, but was not generally identified as one of the more zealous or reform-minded major generals.116Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/1/1/9/9; TSP iv. 321, 340, 561-2. Unlike Lilburne, for example, he apparently showed no taste for purging ‘malignant’ office-holders from municipal corporations.117Infra, ‘Robert Lilburne’. On the contrary, he supported the plea of Carlisle’s ‘well-affected’ that several conformable ex-royalists be allowed to continue as aldermen.118SP18/126, ff. 12, 13.

Returned for Cumberland again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Howard was named to 35 committees between September 1656 and May 1657 – including those for Scottish and Irish affairs – and was a teller in ten divisions.119CJ vii. 426b, 427a, 450a, 461a, 467a, 477b, 498a, 502b, 511a, 520b, 528b, 530b. He was named to four committees relating to northern affairs and was active on at least two of them – the committees for suppressing theft on the northern marches and for establishing a court of equity at York.120CJ vii. 439b, 456a, 464a, 504a; Burton’s Diary, i. 175, 227, 291. Like the MP for Westmorland, Thomas Burton, he was the butt of a campaign by the radical pamphleteer John Musgrave to have the two men expelled from the House for their alleged complicity with the royalists. It was Musgrave who had tried to turn the council of state against Howard back in the early 1650s – but he would be no more successful in 1656-7 than he had been on that previous occasion.121Supra, ‘Thomas Burton’; CJ vii. 439b; Burton’s Diary, i. 299. A number of Howard’s committee appointments concerned the advancement of a godly ministry and moral reformation, and it may be indicative of his religious sympathies in the mid-1650s that on 25 February 1657 he was appointed to ask the orthodox Independent divine Joseph Caryl to preach on the next day of humiliation.122CJ vii. 430a, 443b, 448a, 469a, 493b, 497a.

The issue that moved Howard most in debate (as well as accounting for one of his committee appointments and tellerships) was the punishment of the Quaker evangelist and alleged blasphemer, James Naylor.123CJ vii. 467a, 470a. It was probably no coincidence that his position on Naylor was very close to that of the protector’s own, as he revealed on 8 December 1656

I could freely give my vote that he is a grand impostor and seducer and that his opinions are heretical and blasphemous. His confession will justify me thus far; but then to vote it horrid blasphemy, I cannot consent … so that I desire to declare my conscience in it, I am not satisfied, from what I heard at the bar, that Naylor is guilty of blasphemy.124Burton’s Diary, i. 78.

He subsequently urged the House to suspend Naylor’s punishment until it had debated the matter further, adding ‘I believe that may his give his Highness a present satisfaction’.125Burton’s Diary, i. 263. Nevertheless, while acknowledging that he was ‘not so severe as haply others are’ on the issue of Naylor’s offence and punishment, he was certainly no friend to the Quakers, and on 9 and 18 December he attempted to present petitions against the sect from a group of northern ministers.126Burton’s Diary, i. 85, 168.

Howard was closely associated with the shift towards a more civilian and monarchical form of government in the first half of 1657 – an initiative championed by his colleague and likely political patron (along with Monck) on the Scottish council, Lord Broghill.127Henry Cromwell Corresp. 206, 214; P. Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2004), 91-2, 101, 127, 130, 151, 152. As early as January 1657, it was being rumoured that Howard had lost whatever enthusiasm he may have had for the rule of the major-generals and that Cromwell would make him a lord (he would be created Viscount Howard of Morpeth that summer).128Burton’s Diary, i. 321; Add. 11411, f. 15v. Howard played a prominent role in pushing the Remonstrance (what would become the Humble Petition and Advice) through the House and in attempting to secure its acceptance by Cromwell. Five of his ten tellerships in this Parliament related to the proposed new Cromwellian constitution.129CJ vii. 498a, 502b, 511a, 520b, 528b; Little, Broghill, 152, 153; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 275. It was Howard and Sir John Reynolds who were majority tellers on 25 March in favour of including a clause in the Remonstrance urging Cromwell to assume the title and office of king; and on 4 April, Howard was a majority teller in favour of persisting with the offer of the crown in spite of the protector’s rejection of it.130CJ vii. 511a, 520b. He was also named to several committees for drawing up and presenting the Humble Petition and for justifying the House’s offer of the crown and satisfying Cromwell’s scruples about accepting it.131CJ vii. 501a, 514a, 520b, 521b. The author of the Narrative of the Late Parliament was entirely justified in listing Howard among the ‘kinglings’ in the House, along with his brother-in-law George Downing and his legal adviser William Brisco.132Narrative of the Late Parliament, 22. Howard’s last Commons’ appointment in 1657 was his tellership on 5 May in a division on a bill concerning vagrancy.133CJ vii. 530b. Shortly thereafter, he left Westminster for Cumberland and the marriage of his sister Margaret to the Scottish nobleman Lord Balgonie, who was a grandson of the former Covenanter general the earl of Leven. Howard provided his sister with a marriage portion of 45,000 Scottish merks, or roughly £2,250.134Worc. Coll. Oxf., Clarke MS LI, f. 2; NAS, GD 26/3/237; GD 26/13/336-7; CP vii. 618.

Created Viscount Howard of Morpeth in the summer of 1657, Howard was summoned to the Cromwellian Other House later that year and attended this body regularly from its first day of sitting, on 20 January 1658, until Parliament was dissolved the following month.135TSP vi. 668; HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504-23. At about the same time, claimed Edmund Ludlowe II*, Howard was sent to ‘feel the pulse’ of his old mentor Sir Arthur Hesilrige, prior to his entering the Commons – Hesilrige having been excluded as an enemy of the protectorate in September 1656.136Ludlow, Mems. ii. 32. It was disloyalty of a more personal nature that preyed upon Howard’s mind that winter, however, for in or about December 1657 his wife gave birth to a healthy son a mere seven months after the supposed date of conception. Howard’s younger brother, Philip Howard*, fought a duel with John Lord Belasyse* on the assumption that the Yorkshireman was the child’s father, before journeying up to Scotland to confront what was thought to be the true culprit, the earl of Rothes.137Infra, ‘Philip Howard’; Clarke Pprs. iii. 131; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 258, 551; HMC 5th Rep. 200; Baillie, Lttrs. And Jnls. iii. 367; CP. It was Howard’s troubles with his wife and his tenants that lay behind the mocking remarks in the pamphlet A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament that Howard’s right to lord it over the Commons as a member of the Other House stemmed from his ‘having … so excellent a spirit of government over his wife, family and tenants’.138Second Narrative, 22.

Howard’s estrangement from his wife was not without political consequences, for she was the main conduit through which the royalists sought to suborn her husband’s allegiance. Indeed, Charles Stuart seems to have been writing to Howard through his wife as early as August 1656, insisting that he had never looked upon Howard as an enemy.139CCSP iii. 153, 173. However, as a result of the marital difference between the Howards, the royalists temporarily lost their line of communication with him.140CCSP iv. 169. Despite his contact with the exiled royal court – notably, it seems, through the Northumberland gentleman Ralph Delaval* – Howard held firm to the protectoral interest.141Supra, ‘Ralph Delaval’; NAS, GD 26/3/237; TSP vii. 495; CCSP iv. 109; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 245. In the spring of 1658, he joined John Disbrowe*, Edward Whalley* and other senior officers in an address to Cromwell in which they expressed their support for him ‘as our general and chief magistrate’ and their confidence in the Petition and Advice as a means of securing ‘the great ends of all our former engagements: our civil and spiritual liberty’.142A Further Narrative of the Passages of These Times (1658), 51-2. He also attended the Other House assiduously in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.143HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 525-65. Howard allegedly approached the protector early that year with a design to engage General Monck and his Scottish army against the protectorate’s republican and military opponents in London.144CCSP iv. 153; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 72-3. And in April, he joined Colonel Richard Ingoldsby* and other Cromwellian stalwarts in offering to seize Lambert and the Wallingford House leaders and thereby neutralise the republican threat.145Ludlow, Voyce, 88; Baker, Chronicle, 641; Complete Prose Works of John Milton ed. D.M. Woolfe et al (1953-84), vii. 64.

Following the fall of the protectorate late in April 1659, Howard was removed from all commands and commissions.146Ludlow, Mems. ii. 82; Clarke Pprs. iii. 196; CCSP iv. 194; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 11. As a result, he was again targeted by the royalists as a likely supporter and was assigned command of the northern insurgents in Sir George Boothe’s* Presbyterian-royalist rebellion that summer, although its organisers deemed him ‘undependable’.147CCSP iv. 209; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 23. The fact that he was taken into custody in Carlisle at some point over the summer, released late in August and then re-arrested soon afterwards and imprisoned in the Tower, suggests that the restored Rump suspected him of complicity in the rebellion but did not have firm evidence of his involvement until it had interrogated Boothe and his confederates.148CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 150, 217, 253; CJ vii. 786a; CCSP iv. 376, 385. Released from the Tower in November, Howard was again courted by the royalists – this time because of his ‘credit’ with General Monck.149CCSP iv. 432, 546, 557, 559, 563. Late in 1659, Howard and his brother Philip helped to raise troops in Northumberland and Cumberland to resist Lambert’s forces; and in February 1660, a victorious Monck restored Howard to his field and garrison commands. In March, Howard wrote to the king urging him to trust the general.150Ludlow, Mems. ii. 238; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 125-6, 137; Clarke Pprs. iv. 303; CCSP iv. 511, 621-2; Baker, Chronicle, 675. The following month, Howard and 40 other army officers presented a petition to Monck, promising obedience to his orders and those of the forthcoming Convention.151The Remonstrance and Address of the Armies…to the Lord General Monck (1660), 5-8 (E.1021.1); To His Excellency the Lord General Monck (1660, 669 f.25.5); CSP Ven. 1659-60, p. 138; Baker, Chronicle, 697-8.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Howard was returned for Cumberland. Although listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement, he had evidently resolved by this stage to shed his radical and puritan past, declaring on 17 July that ‘as monarchy had been so long interrupted by rebellion and faction, so had episcopacy by schism and heresy, and that no one that spoke against episcopacy offered anything better’.152G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 335; HP Commons 1660-1690. He conformed to the Church of England after the Restoration and employed its ministers as his domestic chaplains.153Castle Howard Archives, J3/2 Showered with offices and gifts by the crown, he was created earl of Carlisle at Charles II’s coronation and awarded a court pension in 1667 of £1,000 a year.154CTB i. 736; HP Commons 1660-1690; ‘Charles Howard, 1st earl of Carlisle’, Oxford DNB. He was somewhat less popular with the Cumberland royalist gentry, who doubtless regarded him as a parliamentarian turncoat. Their resentment towards him prompted the crown to replace him as governor of Carlisle late in 1660 with Sir Philip Musgrave*.155CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 304, 431. Howard enjoyed a chequered political career under Charles II. An opponent of Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon in the 1660s, he flirted with the ‘country’ interest in the mid-1670s, only to vote against the second exclusion bill in 1680.156HP Commons 1660-1690.

Howard died on 24 February 1685 and was buried in York Minster on 12 March.157Drake, Eboracum, 503. In his will, he bequeathed the bulk of his personal estate to his ‘beloved wife’ – a phrase that suggests he and Lady Anne had resolved their marital problems.158PROB11/380, f. 27. His eldest son Edward† represented Morpeth in the Cavalier and Exclusion Parliaments, before succeeding him as 2nd earl of Carlisle.159HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Edward Howard, Visct. Morpeth’.