HOWARD, Sir Robert (c. 1590-1653), of Audley End, Essex and Clun Castle, Salop.

Sir Robert Howard acquired his Shropshire estate of Clun and the manor of Bishop’s Castle in 1622, when his elder brother died. The burgesses of Bishop’s Castle laid on entertainment for him when he came to enter his inheritance, and immediately adopted him as their representative in Parliament, although they did not admit him to the corporation until 1628.14Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 132. The dominant feature in Howard’s public life during the 1620s and 30s was the airing of what he must have hoped would remain his private affair, his notorious adulterous relationship with Frances, wife of the 1st duke of Buckingham’s younger brother, John Villiers, Viscount Purbeck. On 5 March 1625, Howard proved uncooperative in the court of high commission, and was able to claim parliamentary privilege. His claim failed, but the only penalty brought against him was excommunication, and his parliamentary career continued in spite of the unfinished business of the contested privilege claim. In 1634, Archbishop William Laud had both Howard and Frances Purbeck arrested as they appeared to be defying the church’s sanction against their association, and in order to secure his release from prison Howard was compelled to renounce his lover and to enter a bond with a penalty of £2,000. A report in 1637 that he had converted to Catholicism seems not to have been accurate.15HP Commons 1604-1629.

Howard maintained his hold on the goodwill of the Bishop’s Castle burgesses, despite his chaotic private life and his challenge to them in 1630 over rights to fines from foreign burgesses.16Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 172. They elected his steward a burgess in 1637, and on 12 March and 20 October 1640 returned Howard to each of the Parliaments of 1640.17Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 192, 197v, 199v. He played no part in the Short Parliament, and when he was returned again to the second Parliament of that year was hardly more active in the general business of the Commons than he had customarily been. But his own case in the court of high commission gave him a greater prominence in December than he might otherwise have expected. In 1635, after imprisonment for adultery with Lady Purbeck, he had given bonds in high commission for his good behaviour, and had undertaken to appear regularly at the court. The Lords decided that this was ultra vires on the part of the court, and ordered on 8 December 1640 that the bond be cancelled. On the 21st, they went further and awarded Howard damages of £1,000, of which £500 were to be paid by Archbishop Laud. The political background, from which Howard undoubtedly profited, was the general attack in the Commons on the bishops, which invested with greater significance than it would otherwise have merited, his inclusion, on 16 December, in a committee to review the new ecclesiastical Canons. On 24 December it was reported in the Lords that the archbishop had paid Howard’s damages, and Laud recorded in his memoirs how he had to sell plate to pay the fine.18LJ iv. 106a, 113b, 114a, 114b, 117b; CJ ii. 52a; Laud’s Works, iii. 392-5.

On 13 March 1641, Howard was recruited to a committee to enable John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, to lease his estates in Hampshire.19CJ ii. 52a, 103b. On 3 May, he took the Protestation, but on 28 June had leave to go into the country, and probably never returned to Westminster.20CJ ii. 133a, 191b. Despite his suffering at the hands of the government during the 1630s, Howard took the side of the king in the civil war, doubtless moved by considerations of his aristocratic lineage and his identity with the royal cause through his office-holding. Immediately prior to the outbreak of war, Howard was active in implementing the royalist commission of array in Shropshire. On 3 August 1642, the embryonic Shropshire committee reported Howard, and four other Members with seats in that county, to the Speaker for their opposition to Parliament. Although Howard’s name does not appear on the ‘declaration and protestation’ agreed at the Shropshire assizes (8 Aug.), he must have been fully in sympathy with the grand jurors’ resolve to adventure their

lives and fortunes in the defence of his majesty’s royal and sacred person and honour, the just right and privileges of Parliament and the known laws of the land and liberties of the subjects, that thereby the distractions and disturbances of his majesty’s kingdom may be reduced to his legal government.21The Declaration and Protestation ... at the Assizes held for the County of Salop (1642, 669.f.6.69).

He was reported to be eager to prosecute the king’s cause later that month, despite illness, and on 6 September Sir Robert Harley, a Member from the marcher counties, was one of three MPs in charge of a book in which the names of delinquent colleagues were to be recorded. That day, Howard was among those disabled from sitting.22Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs’, 35-6; CJ ii. 706b, 755a.

In December 1642, Howard participated in the raising of a regiment of dragoons in Shropshire, and lent his name to the ‘engagement and resolution’ of the principal gentry there, in defence of ‘king and country’.23The Ingagement and Resolution of the Principall Gentlemen of the County of Salop (1642, 669.f.6.69). He was supplied with powder for the dragoons in August 1643.24Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, 271. Quite how these dragoons were deployed during the war seems obscure, although they seem to have been present at the siege of Bristol in July 1643 and garrisoned Donnington castle, Berkshire, in September.25Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 237, 314. Howard had made his way to Oxford by January 1644 to attend the rival Parliament there, in doing so repudiating his disablement. He signed the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, suing for peace.26The Names of the Lords and Commons assembled ... at Oxford (1644), 3; A Copy of a Letter from the Members of both Houses (1644), 6 (E.32.3). Early in 1645 he was urging Salopians to contribute to the king’s cause.27W. Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, viii. 266-7. By September his mood had darkened. From Bridgnorth, where he was governor of the garrison, he wrote rather pessimistically to George Lord Digby* on the royalists’ prospects. On 26 April 1646, Bridgnorth, and the 400 soldiers in the garrison, surrendered to Parliament.28CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 143, 442-3; J. Vicars, Magnalia Dei Anglicana, or Englands Parliamentary Chronicle (1646), 413 (E.348.1). Howard was allowed to return to Clun, and submitted to the Committee for Compounding.29CCC 1292. In January 1647, his name was included in a list of delinquents whose resources were to be targeted in order to pay off the disbanded officers of the parliamentarian armies, and on 30 March the inhabitants of Clun requested that their parish church be repaired from the fines levied on Howard.30CJ v. 47b, LJ ix. 116a, b. As long ago as July 1644, a fine of £1,500 had been proposed for him, and although his surrender in 1646 now made proceedings against him possible, not until March 1648 was Howard’s fine set, at £1,475, two thirds of the alleged value of his estate. From then until 1651, he was in regular correspondence with the commissioners, arguing after he had paid half the levy, that the outstanding sum should be reduced because he held his estate only as a life tenant.31CCAM 436; CCC 1293. A private bill was brought in during the Rump Parliament in order to allow Howard to break the entail on his property so he could pay his fine; it was still before the House in July 1652.32CJ vi. 566a, 611b; vii. 2b, 4b, 156a. Howard died on 22 April 1653 and was buried at Clun. His son with Frances Purbeck, Robert Danvers alias Villiers, took a seat in the Parliaments of 1659 and 1660, although none of his legitimate offspring ever sat in the Commons.