HOWARD, Henry (1540-1614)

Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, has long been reviled. To many of his contemporaries, and most historians, he was an odious sycophant, the tool of the Spanish crown and a party to murder.72 For a useful discussion of his reputation, see Peck, Northampton, 4-5. However, he was also one of the cleverest noblemen of his generation, who helped rescue the fortunes of the Howard family when they were at their lowest ebb. Moreover, if his work on naval reform is any guide, he was also a capable administrator. Had it not been for the Reformation, he would doubtless have achieved political power early in life. As it was, his continued devotion to the Catholic faith confined him to the margins of politics until his mid sixties.

Much of Northampton’s life is shrouded in secrecy. In large part this is because of the relative obscurity to which he was consigned during his youth. However, it is also because, under Elizabeth, Northampton dabbled in treason. Even after 1603, when the accession of James I finally placed him at centre stage, it can be difficult to reconstruct his activities precisely. This is mainly because Northampton never got into the habit of dating his letters, a practice no doubt born of years of secretive behaviour. However, it is also because much of his correspondence has been destroyed. Most of his letters addressed to the king were burned at his request, on the grounds that, if left lying around, they would form the subject of gossip.73 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 236. The same fate also befell many of his letters to Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset, who burned them the evening before his arrest for fear they would incriminate him.74 State Trials, ii. 987.

Early years, 1540-70

Henry Howard was born into one of the premier noble families of England. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Howard^†, 3rd duke of Norfolk, was earl marshal and lord treasurer; his father, styled earl of Surrey, was heir to the dukedom of Norfolk; while his aunt Mary - Surrey’s sister - was the widow of Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy^†, duke of Richmond, and lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves. As a small boy, Henry was educated by the famed Low Countries humanist Dr Hadrianus Junius, alongside his elder brother Thomas^† (later 4th duke of Norfolk) at Kenninghall, his grandfather’s palatial Norfolk seat. Like his father, an accomplished linguist who pioneered the writing of blank verse and sonnets in English, he was a natural scholar, quickly becoming proficient in Greek and Latin.75 Peck, Northampton, 8. However, shortly before his seventh birthday his comfortable world collapsed. Surrey was executed on a trumped up charge of treason, Norfolk was committed to the Tower and Thomas was entrusted to the care of a leading royal official.76 APC, 1547-50, p. 183. There is no indication that Williams also had custody of Henry. Henry was probably not reunited with his brother until the spring or summer of 1548, when he, Thomas and their sisters became the charges of their aunt Mary, the dowager duchess of Richmond, perhaps at Reigate but more likely the lodge (also known as the tower) at Greenwich Park, where Henry certainly spent much of his boyhood.77 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 214. Andersson claims that the Howard children were moved to the former priory at Reigate, but this property was owned not by Mary Fitzroy but by her kinsman, William Howard^†, 1st Lord Howard of Effingham: Andersson, 21; W.W. Brayley, Hist. of Surr. ed. E. Walford, iv. 37. Situated next to Greenwich Palace, this minor royal property would have afforded Mary easy access to the new king, Edward VI, who, like her, was a committed Protestant.

Mary’s protestantism meant that Henry and his siblings were henceforward tutored by John Foxe, the Protestant martyrologist. Foxe persuaded two of the children, Thomas and Jane, to abandon their Catholicism, but Henry, like his sister Katherine, remained loyal to the old religion. This exposure to Protestant teaching ended with the accession of Mary Tudor in 1553. Norfolk, released from the Tower, entrusted Henry to the care of John White^†, bishop of Lincoln, a former chaplain to Stephen Gardiner^†, bishop of Winchester and Norfolk’s closest ally at court. Over the next few years, Henry served as a page to Bishop White, who became bishop of Winchester himself in 1556. The extent of White’s influence on the young Henry is difficult to establish, but the bishop was one of the most uncompromising of the Marian prelates, playing an active part in heresy trials, an outlook which probably strengthened Henry’s commitment to Catholicism. Moreover, like Henry’s father, White also wrote poetry, as did Henry himself in later life.78 Oxford DNB, lviii. 591-2; T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. ed. J. Freeman, 210. For Howard’s verses lamenting the death of Prince Henry in 1612, see Nottingham UL, Pw V 2, pp. 39-42.

Following the death of Mary Tudor in 1558, White was deprived of his see by the queen’s Protestant successor, Elizabeth. However, Henry’s Protestant elder brother, now duke of Norfolk and earl marshal, became a member of the Privy Council in 1562. For the first five years of her reign, Elizabeth took Henry under her wing, paying for his maintenance and education.79 Add. 24652, f. 7v. By 1564 Henry was a fellow commoner at King’s College, Cambridge, where he proved to be an outstanding scholar. Awarded his MA in June 1566, he subsequently transferred to Trinity Hall to study civil law and teach.80 Andersson, 27, 30. For a more detailed discussion of the subjects probably taught by Howard, see ibid. 34-5. Teaching was an unusual career choice for a man of Howard’s social rank - no other nobleman taught at university during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – but Howard had not the luxury of a large private income, despite having inherited Tendring Hall, in southern Suffolk, on his grandfather’s death in 1554.81 W.A. Sessions, Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life, 63. Teaching provided him with a necessary supplement to his income, especially since (as he later recalled) he ‘ran the wildest course, and spent as much as any of my rank’.82 HMC Hastings, IV, 225.

In July 1569 Howard was granted permission by Trinity Hall to set aside his teaching duties.83 Andersson, 30-1 (‘possit regere et non regere ad placitum’). He took the opportunity to finish writing a tract (never published) on natural philosophy, the first treatise of its kind in English, which he dedicated to his sister Katherine. (Now married to Henry Berkeley^*, 7th Lord Berkeley, Katherine may already have begun paying him £50 annually out of her housekeeping).84 J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys ed. J. Maclean, 405. Completion of this tract marked the end of Howard’s academic career, as teaching posts were normally limited to three years and there were no vacancies among the college fellows. Howard now faced an uncertain future. Marriage to a wealthy heiress was one option. However, women seem to have held no attraction for Howard, who was probably homosexual, or at the very least ‘more wedded to the book than to the bed’, as one observer remarked.85 Secret Hist. of Ct. of Jas. I ed. W. Scott, ii. 158. According to William Camden, Howard cast envious eyes on the vacant archbishopric of York, but since Howard was neither ordained nor sympathetic to the Anglican Church, this seems unlikely.86 Andersson, 47.

The end of Howard’s academic career coincided with a fresh reversal in his family’s fortunes. His brother, Norfolk, had become closely associated with Scotland’s deposed Catholic queen, Mary Stuart, who fled to England in 1568. Mary was descended from Henry VII’s youngest daughter Margaret, and were Elizabeth to die childless the English throne would probably descend to her. Despite her religion, Norfolk privately agreed to marry Mary to strengthen his family’s position. When Elizabeth learned of this she confined Norfolk to the Tower. Shortly thereafter a number of northern earls rose in revolt in support of Mary, among them Charles Neville^†, 6th earl of Westmorland, the husband of Howard’s sister, Jane. The rising collapsed, forcing Westmorland to flee to the Spanish Netherlands.

Although he played no known part in these acts of treason, Howard found himself implicated, as Norfolk had originally toyed with the idea of marrying him to Mary, and the men of Kenninghall looked to him for leadership when they rebelled in support of the duke in December 1570.87 Collection of State Pprs. relating to affairs in the reign of Queen Eliz. (1759) ed. J. Murdin, 134; Andersson, 55; N. Williams, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, 178. However, he was shielded from harm by Elizabeth’s chief minister, Sir William Cecil^† (later 1st Lord Burghley),88 C. Sharp, Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569, p. 309. who recognized Howard’s potential usefulness as a propagandist and source of information on the Catholic community.

The wilderness years, 1571-97

Following the discovery of Norfolk’s role in the Ridolfi Plot (1571), not even Burghley could protect Howard from the displeasure of Elizabeth, who had initially taken pity on him.89 On Elizabeth’s kindness after he left Cambridge, see Add. 24652, f. 7v. Unable to show his face at court, Howard retreated to Audley End, Norfolk’s house in north-west Essex, his own property of Tendring Hall having been sold earlier that year. To his dismay, he was ordered to leave, as Norfolk’s three sons were being moved there from Kenninghall on the Council’s orders. In desperation, he remonstrated that the small allowance allotted to him by the queen was insufficient to pay for accommodation, and that he had nowhere else to go, his friends refusing to take him in for fear of incurring Elizabeth’s wrath. It is not known whether his appeal was heeded.90 Ven. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel ed. J.H. Pollen and W. MacMahon (Cath. Rec. Soc. xxi), 18; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 13v. Andersson mistakenly interprets Howard’s remonstrance as an appeal for an increase in his pension: Andersson, 57. On the sale of Tendring Hall, see W.A. Copinger, Suffolk, i. 218.

Howard’s brother Norfolk was tried for treason in January 1572. Howard pleaded with Burghley to intercede with the queen to save him, and to show clemency in respect of several other Catholic peers who were implicated in the Ridolfi Plot. However, when his wishes were disregarded he lost his temper, for which offence he was confined to the Fleet.91 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 15, 16. He was subsequently transferred to Lambeth Palace, and though Matthew Parker^†, archbishop of Canterbury, proved hospitable he asked (without success) to be returned to the Fleet, as ‘wisdom preferreth a cottage of clay before a cage of gold’.92 Sharp, Memorials, 309n. He was released in July, shortly after his brother’s execution.93 J. Strype, Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, ii. 104.

Norfolk’s death meant that, for the time being at least, Howard was de facto head of his family. The duke’s eldest son, Philip Howard^† (later 13th or 20th earl of Arundel), was only 15 and had not yet completed his education. In an ideal world, Howard would have assumed responsibility for Philip and the latter’s two half-brothers. However, he lacked the means, being still dependent on the charity of his sister Katherine and a small annual allowance from the queen. Responsibility lay instead with Burghley, who appointed a suitable tutor.94 Ven. Philip Howard, 17-18. Nevertheless, on returning from the royal progress in the autumn of 1572,95 For the evidence that Howard seems to have gone on progress, see Lansd. 109, f. 111. Howard was allowed to reside with his nephews at Audley End. Pathetically grateful, Howard described Burghley as ‘more like a father than a friend’, and thanked the minister, now lord treasurer, for his ‘rare friendship ... toward the poor remain of our unhappy house’.96 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 17, 18v. Andersson is unsound on this episode (Andersson, 102n, 103). He repaid Burghley’s kindness by writing a defence of episcopacy in answer to the presbyterian Thomas Cartwright. Published anonymously, Howard’s treatise refuted Cartwright’s argument that ministers should be chosen by their congregations by pointing out that the Church was not a democracy.97 Andersson, 84-5, 93, 106.

Howard remained at Audley End with his ‘little flock of Howards’ until at least the summer of 1575.98 Cott., Titus C.IV, ff. 23, 26r-v. By then, however, the government had uncovered evidence that he was not to be trusted. In December 1574 a bookbinder named Henry Cockyn was arrested for carrying messages for Mary, queen of Scots. Under torture, Cockyn revealed that Howard was in contact with Mary, who termed his nephews her children and expressed satisfaction that Howard had destroyed the marital contract between herself and Norfolk. In itself, this evidence was not very incriminating. However, in May 1575 a furious Elizabeth had Howard questioned.99 CSP Scot. 1574-81, pp. 87, 91, 134. Howard was forced to admit that ‘I cannot quite purge myself from blame’, but claimed that he had unintentionally stumbled upon ‘these cocks and quicksands of discredit’. He promised never again to ‘conceal suspicious speech or company’.100 Cott., Caligula C.IV, f. 209v (undated, but on the reverse is a list of interrogatories misdated 12 Apr. 1574); SP12/103/53. D.C. Peck’s claim that Howard was arrested as a result of Cockyn’s revelations is unfounded: D.C. Peck, Leicester’s Commonwealth, 16.

The loss of the queen’s goodwill was a serious blow to Howard. Without her support, he might easily be reduced to penury and separated from his nephews. In the aftermath of this affair, he penned a lengthy treatise praising Elizabeth and distancing himself from his late brother. Entitled ‘Regina Fortunata’, it was a costly production, being written on gilt-edged vellum and including a coloured portrait of the queen.101 Eg. 944; H.R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 100. However, the outlay was worthwhile, as Howard received no further punishment. By September 1576 Howard was again on friendly terms with Burghley, who invited him to dinner.102 C. Read, ‘Lord Burghley’s Household Accts.’, EcHR, n.s. ix. 347.

Although Howard had a prose style that James VI would later describe as ‘asiatic’ and ‘endless’,103 Letters of King Jas. VI and I ed. G.P.V. Akrigg, 190. Burghley continued to value him as a propagandist, and encouraged him to write a reply to John Knox’s infamous book deploring government by women. However, Howard was reluctant to put pen to paper, perhaps fearing that his words would later be construed as implicit support for Mary, queen of Scots.104 A.C. Caney, ‘Let he who objects produce sound evidence’, Florida State Univ. 1984, Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations, Ppr. 79, p. 14. Howard’s own explanation of his reluctance is, however, opaque: Add. 24652, ff. 5r-v. In the event, Burghley soon had a more important commission for Howard. For some time the queen had been contemplating marriage with François de Valois, duc d’Anjou, brother of the French king, Henri III. Burghley supported the match, as did the vice chamberlain of the household, Sir Christopher Hatton^‡, with whom Howard was on good terms.105 H. Nicolas, Mems. of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, 116-17. However, they were opposed by Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham^‡ and Robert Dudley^†, earl of Leicester, and by the puritan pamphleteer John Stubbs, whose The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, published in August 1579, argued that marriage between a Protestant and a Catholic contravened God’s laws. Fearful that Elizabeth would be persuaded to abandon the marriage, Burghley and his allies turned to Howard, who, in 1580, quickly composed a rebuttal. Marriage with Anjou, he observed, would make the queen master of vast swathes of France. Elizabeth was exhorted to take no notice of the ‘importunate tattling’ of those ‘peevish puritans’ who complained of Anjou’s Catholicism, since Anjou had supported the Huguenots against his brother, the king.106 C. Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Eliz. 563; John Stubb’s ‘Gaping Gulf’ with Other Letters and Other Relevant Docs. ed. L.E. Berry, 178-80. Although never published, Howard’s treatise helps to explain why Elizabeth announced in mid November that she intended to marry Anjou and wished to hear no further objections.

Howard’s treatise was more than simply a client’s defence of his patron’s interests. Like many closet Catholics, Howard hoped that the Anjou match would pave the way to toleration.107 CSP Span. 1580-6, pp. 245-6. As early as June 1577, well before Burghley approached him to write his tract, he made himself useful to the French ambassador, the seigneur de Mauvissière.108 Andersson, 101. The French government was so delighted at Howard’s enthusiastic support for the marriage that in April 1580 Henri III sent him a personal letter of thanks.109 Ven. Philip Howard, 29; CSP For. 1579-80, p. 252.

Faction fighting over the marriage led Howard, in December 1579, to inform the queen that Leicester, the royal favourite, had secretly married Lettice Knollys.110 Andersson, 116. This mischief-making proved to be a serious miscalculation, however, as Leicester recruited to his cause Howard’s kinsman and friend, Edward de Vere^†, 17th earl of Oxford, who had married Burghley’s daughter only to be disappointed of his hopes of advancement. Oxford accused Howard of recusancy and conspiracy,111 Caney, 15. whereupon the queen ordered the latter’s arrest. However, Howard was alerted to his peril by a friend on the Council, perhaps the lord chamberlain, Thomas Radcliffe^†, 3rd earl of Sussex, who hated Leicester. Fearing that his life was in danger, and no longer trusting Mauvissière, Howard, along with his distant cousin, Charles Arundell, who also stood accused, took refuge with the Spanish ambassador. The two men only re-emerged on hearing that the queen merely intended to confine them to a private house.112 CSP Span. 1580-6, p. 246.

Howard was in custody by 10 Jan. 1581.113 M. Graves, Thomas Norton, 254n. Under questioning, he conceded that he had frequented Catholic services, but claimed that he had been motivated by ‘zeal unto my God, not want of loyalty to my prince’. He also denied having had further contact with Mary, queen of Scots, protesting that it ‘lies not in the talents of so mean a man as I to win her liking, or to bind her favour by a merit of more weight than the loss of my brother’s head for dealing in her cause’.114 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 6, 7; SP12/147/6. This was dishonest, as many years later Howard admitted that he had secretly continued to act as an adviser to Mary, whom he had cautioned against rashness.115 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 166r-v. The Council suspected as much, and consequently Howard was evidently not freed until October, when he set about trying to mend his fences with Leicester.116 CSP Scot. 1574-81, p. 640; CSP For. 1581-2, p. 341; CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 29. The Lord Henry Howard who was dispatched to France on a mission to Anjou over the summer was probably the eldest son of Thomas Howard^†, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon.117 CSP Span. 1580-6, pp. 159, 172, 175. On Bindon’s son, who never inherited, see CP, vi. 584.

Howard was deeply grateful for the protection afforded him ten months earlier by Spain’s ambassador, Don Bernardino de Mendoza. Shortly after his release he therefore offered his services to the Spanish king. Mendoza was delighted, for although his position at court had now been weakened, Howard remained on familiar terms not only with Burghley, Sussex and Hatton but also with the ladies of the queen’s privy chamber, who often confided in him. By the beginning of 1582, Howard was a spy for Mendoza, whom he furnished twice weekly with detailed news from court, information which Mendoza described as ‘valuable’.118 CSP Span. 1580-6, pp. 246, 315.

Following his release, Howard remained an object of suspicion. As early as December 1581 there were plans afoot to disgrace him.119 CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 29. As these schemes came to nothing, Leicester and Walsingham proposed, in February 1582, to appoint him ambassador to the imperial Diet. This would not only remove him from the scene, but also provide him with an excellent opportunity to advance his career and cultural interests, as Howard had never held office, nor, so far as is known, had he ever travelled abroad.120 D. Lloyd, State-Worthies (1766), ii. 67, states that he visited northern Italy in his youth, a claim accepted uncritically by E. Chaney and T. Wilks, Jacobean Grand Tour, 230. However, Mendoza was appalled at the prospect of losing the services of a key informant, and begged Howard on his knees to decline the appointment, offering him a pension of 500 crowns, with a promise of more to come. Howard probably needed little convincing to refuse the offer of a diplomatic posting, as it was only by attending the court that he could provide Mary, queen of Scots with sound advice.121 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 166. Moreover, it was obvious that Leicester and Walsingham were trying to separate him from his nephews, over whom he held great sway.122 CSP Span. 1580-6, pp. 315-16. The eldest nephew, Philip, was now aged 24, had succeeded to the earldom of Arundel jure matris and been restored in blood. Howard, though he now lived alone in lodgings near Ivy bridge, a small Thames-side pier on the Strand conveniently situated for Whitehall,123 CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 32; Nicolas, 139. had no wish to be parted from the man who was rapidly emerging as head of his family. Consequently, his initial expression of interest in the offer of a foreign posting was nothing more than an attempt to extract money from Mendoza.

After declining the offer of a diplomatic posting, Howard attempted to mollify Walsingham, dedicating to him a tract against prophecies in June 1583.124 G.F. Nott, Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, i. 435. However, the secretary was now bent on his destruction. Following the death of Sussex a short while later, a blow which Howard likened to the loss of the pilot of his ship, Howard was called in for questioning. The cause of his arrest is uncertain,125 Andersson, 146; J. Bossy, Under the Molehill, 67. but in April 1583 Henry Fagot, a French spy, informed Walsingham that Howard was one of the two chief agents of Mary Stuart at the English court. He also revealed that Howard had recently paid a nocturnal visit on Mauvissière, who had recently offered him a pension.126 CSP Scot. 1581-3, pp. 431-2; Andersson, 100.

In the absence of firm evidence against him, Howard was detained only briefly. However, he was re-arrested on 5 November. His recently published tract against prophecy, which one of his enemies complained contained ‘sundry heresies’ and ‘spices of treason’, has been identified as the cause, but a more likely reason was that his name was found among papers belonging to Francis Throckmorton, a leading Catholic adherent of the Scottish queen, who had been seized for plotting on Mary’s behalf.127 Andersson, 128-9, 148; M. Graves, Thomas Norton, 267. In December Howard was interrogated over his links with Mary, and with Thomas Paget^†, 4th Lord Paget, a zealous Catholic who fled to Paris after Throckmorton was arrested. He protested his innocence, but the circumstantial evidence against him was now mounting up. The Council was particularly keen to establish whether Howard had ever received a ring from Mary, and to learn why the latter described him as ‘mon frère’. Howard denied receiving any such token from Mary, and claimed that the Scottish queen’s reference to him as her brother was merely out of respect for her former engagement to Norfolk. However, in the increasingly feverish atmosphere of the mid 1580s it was easy to believe in a more sinister explanation: that Mary and Howard were secretly engaged. This conclusion seems to have been reached by Burghley’s man-of-business Thomas Norton^‡ towards the end of 1583. In his ‘A Chayne of Treasons’, prepared for the Council, Norton claimed that the dark forces of popery had been looking for a high-born leader ever since the execution of Norfolk, and had now found one in the form of Howard, who would marry Mary and be elected king by the Catholic nobility once Elizabeth was dead.128 CSP Scot. 1581-3, pp. 675-6; Graves, 269-70.

By mid December 1583 there was speculation that Howard would be sent to the Tower. However, as solid evidence against him was lacking, he was confined to the house of Sir Ralph Sadler^‡, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, at Standon, in Hertfordshire, where he remained until at least the end of August 1584.129 Pprs. of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, II: 1578-85 ed. A. Hassell Smith and G.M. Baker (Norf. Rec. Soc. xlix), 269; Ven. Philip Howard, 338; Andersson, 150 (referring to a letter by Howard written from the house of John Dannett. Andersson has not noticed that Dannett was Sadler’s housekeeper). During this long period of confinement, Howard’s world began to crumble: Mendoza was expelled for his role in the Throckmorton Plot, Anjou died without ever marrying Elizabeth, and his own health failed. (In April he experienced an attack of the stone so painful that he declared that he preferred to die rather than be allowed to ‘languish in this endless maze of pain and misery’).130 Nicolas, 369. Perhaps inevitably, these setbacks sapped his will to resist. In April he jotted down the names of his associates for Burghley,131 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 35v. and in August he appealed to Sir Philip Sidney^‡, a former opponent over the Anjou match, for help in obtaining ‘liberty to seek my chance abroad’. By now the most he dared hope for was banishment. In that way he might travel to Paris to join Lord Paget and other adherents of Mary, queen of Scots.132 Andersson, 149-50; HMC Hatfield, xiii. 193 (miscalendared 1581).

In the event, Howard was released sometime before the winter of 1584. The Council nevertheless continued to regard him as dangerous: in November Secretary of State Sir William Davison declared that his spirit was ‘within no compass of quiet duty’, and claimed that the queen now had enough evidence to convict him whenever she chose.133 CSP Scot. 1584-5, p. 428. This may have been an exaggeration, as Howard was never, in fact, brought to trial. However, when Arundel tried to leave England without licence in May 1585, Howard was promptly re-arrested, despite protesting ‘that I am not to be caught amongst those who would bear arms against the state’. Initially placed in the custody of Roger North^†, 2nd Lord North, he was subsequently transferred to Redgrave Hall in Suffolk, the home of Sir Nicholas Bacon^‡, the son of a former lord keeper, where he remained until at least mid July, when he was again struck down by a violent fit of the stone.134 Andersson, 155; Nott, i. 437. Two months later, as England embarked on open war with Spain, he was again moved, this time ‘into a wild house, far from any town or company of man, woman or child’. There, ‘tormented by the stone and a spice of the strangury’, he kept house without either money of his own or household implements, forcing him to borrow, ‘to my great grief and no small discredit’.135 HMC Laing, i. 34-5. Calendared incorrectly as 23 Sept. 1583. How long Howard was obliged to carry on in this undignified fashion is unclear, but by the end of March 1586 he had evidently been granted ‘convenient liberty’, by which time he was said to be domiciled at Redgrave Hall once more.136 Collection of State Pprs. (1759), 488.

It seems likely that the Council’s purpose in rusticating Howard was to limit his usefulness to Mary, queen of Scots. If so, the tactic succeeded. Although he received a letter from Mary in March 1586,137 CSP Scot. 1585-6, p. 277. Howard played no part in (nor was able to prevent) the Babington Plot, the discovery of which three months later ensnared the Scottish queen. Thereafter, Mary’s cause was lost, leaving Howard with little alternative but to concentrate on helping Arundel, who had been promised his freedom in exchange for attending Anglican services. Despite Howard’s best efforts, though, Arundel refused the queen’s offer.138 Ven. Philip Howard, 151; CSP Scot. 1585-6, p. 479.

Following Mary’s execution in 1587, Howard volunteered to serve in the war against Spain in order to give ‘certain proof of my untamed loyalty’. However, despite frequent repetitions, his offer was ignored, as he continued to be regarded with suspicion.139 Nott, i. 438. In July 1588, after the Armada set sail, the queen’s indignation against him was reawakened, and the annuity from the crown ceased to be paid, plunging him into abject poverty.140 CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 499; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 41v. In February 1589 he was again arrested, along with his nephew Lord William Howard and the countess of Arundel. The reason remains a mystery, but as Parliament was then sitting it may have been to forestall the presentation of a petition to the House of Lords on behalf of Arundel. Confined to the house of the master of the Rolls (Sir Gilbert Gerard^‡), he remained under restraint until at least 13 Mar., but had been released by the 27th (two days before the Parliament ended), when he finished writing a work on the trinity.141 HMC Bath, v. 99; Letters of Philip Gawdy ed. I.H. Jeayes, 48; Nott, i. 469.

Following the dissolution, Arundel was convicted of treason and his lands seized. This was a disaster for Howard, as one of his few remaining sources of income had now been lost (Arundel having provided him with an annuity out of his lands).142 Venerable Philip Howard, 303. More than ever, it was essential that he recover the favour of the queen, though he now secretly hated Elizabeth, as became apparent early in the next reign.143 Oxford DNB, xxviii. 371; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 264. Consequently, just as he had done 14 years earlier, when he had written ‘Regina Fortunata’, he took up his pen. His theme was the defence of government by women, on which subject Burghley had urged him to write in 1576. Now that Mary was dead, there was little risk that his words would be misconstrued. However, he found the task difficult, as he was demoralized, his earlier sickness had returned and his writing skills were rusty.144 Add. 24652, f. 6v. Nevertheless, ‘A Dutiful Defence of the Lawful Regiment of Women’ was completed sometime over the next 12 months. Though never published, copies were presented to leading courtiers and members of the Council, at least eight of which survive.145 Andersson, 197-8. At around the same time, he also penned a paper (never published) condemning the continued threat to the Church posed by presbyterianism from his own, peculiarly Catholic perspective. ‘The way to draw Catholics from their affection to the Roman primacy’, he argued, ‘is to weed up’ those who ‘avow presbyteries’, as ‘the papists, finding that it is free for conceited persons to exempt themselves from conformity by pretending conscience, do likewise require dispensation for the tenderness of their own conscience in matters wherein they contend’.146 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 577. For the likely date, see ibid. f. 579.

If Howard hoped that these latest offerings would lead to the reinstatement of his annuity, he was soon disappointed. As late as July 1593 he was living at Greenwich on the charity of his first cousin Charles Howard^*, Lord Howard of Effingham (later 1st earl of Nottingham), in a property he described as a ‘little cell’.147 P. Hammer, ‘How to become an Elizabethan Statesman: Ld. Henry Howard, the Earl of Essex and the Pols. of Friendship’, Eng. Ms Studs. xiii. 2, 26n.; H.H. Drake, Hasted’s Hist. of Kent: the Hundred of Blackheath, 91. Nevertheless, he did not give up, but bombarded the queen on an annual basis with tracts that he had either composed or translated.148 Nott, i. 470. One of these offerings, submitted in about 1592, was a translation from the Spanish of the instructions supposedly given to Philip II by Charles V on his abdication in 1555. These instructions were valuable, he noted, because they touched upon ‘points of policy most suitable to the time wherein you live and the persons with whom you have to deal’, and because they demonstrated how far Philip, with whom Elizabeth was at war, had fallen from his father’s principles.149 HEHL, HA 6909 (we are grateful to Geoffrey Parker for this reference); Peck, Northampton, 12. The tract is undated, but in the dedicatory epistle Howard records that he had been in disfavour for 12 years. Working on the assumption that Howard’s disfavour began with his arrest in Nov. 1583, Andersson thinks this statement points to 1595 (Andersson, 170). However, Howard was persona non grata with the queen from the winter of 1580/1. However, the gift was tactless, as it reminded the elderly queen that her own days were numbered.

Although Elizabeth remained coldly aloof, Howard was not entirely bereft of hope. Sometime during the early 1590s he entered the circle of the young royal favourite, Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, to whom he had presented a copy of his treatise on the legitimacy of female monarchs. Indeed, he became not only a father figure to Essex (whose own father had died while he was young), but also one of the earl’s key advisers. As Charles V had done for Philip II, he set down for Essex detailed advice on how to achieve his political objectives. On the face of it, Howard was ill-qualified to offer Essex such guidance, as his own political fortunes, and those of his family in general, had hardly prospered. Nor was his judgement always sound, as his recent ill-considered gift to the queen showed. However, over the years he had demonstrated remarkable skills for survival, having avoided the scaffold despite repeated arrest. Moreover, unlike Essex, who was impetuous, Howard understood the value of patience, a virtue, he told Essex, which ‘worketh miracles’.150 Hammer, ‘How to become an Elizabethan Statesman’, 10; P. Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Pols. 307. These attributes, coupled with a sharp mind and extensive scholarship, impressed Essex, and by 1596 Howard was on such intimate terms with the favourite that he was usually the first to be admitted to his bedchamber each morning.151 Peck, Northampton, 15, 221n; Hammer, Polarisation, 287n.

As an adviser to Essex, Howard now had an important political task to perform that could not be construed as treasonable by the crown. However, he remained dissatisfied, for he was now in his fifties and craved office. In September 1597 he despaired of ever amounting to anything. ‘My life is already so past the line, and so far worn with care’, he grumbled, ‘as it is time for me to renounce the world, that affordeth me nothing in regard of any desert but contempt, oblivion and secret nips’.152 Mems. of the Reign of Queen Eliz. ed. T. Birch, ii. 325. Essex was not heedless of his friend and mentor’s discontent and, on being appointed earl marshal in December 1597, he entrusted Howard (whose father and brother had both been earl marshal) with the task of producing a lengthy tract on the duties and powers of his new office. He also brought Howard into the queen’s presence, and obtained for him an annual pension of £200, which continued to be paid for the rest of the reign.153 Peck, Northampton, 15; Lansd. 156, f. 125v. In effect, Essex made Howard his deputy.

Rise to prominence, 1597-1603

Howard clearly owed a great deal to Essex, and not only because he brought to an end a period of disfavour that had lasted 17 years. Following the failed expedition to the Azores (1597), of which he was the commander, Essex commended to the queen Howard’s nephew, Lord Thomas Howard^* (later 1st earl of Suffolk), who had served as one of his officers. He also showed great kindness to young Thomas Howard^*, Lord Maltravers (later 21st or 14th earl of Arundel), the son of Philip, earl of Arundel, who had died in the Tower in 1595.154 Mems. of the Reign of Queen Eliz. ii. 359; M.F. Hervey, Arundel, 13. However, friendship with Essex came at a price. Essex was the bitter rival of Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury), the son of Howard’s former protector, Lord Burghley, whom Howard continued to cultivate as late as 1596.155 Nott, i. 470. Outwardly at least Howard gave him loyal support. In November 1597, for instance, he assured Essex that if the earl could succeed ‘in dragging old Leviathan [Burghley] and his cub [Cecil]’ out of their den of mischief, ‘the better part of the world would prefer your virtue before that of Hercules’.156 Mems. of the Reign of Queen Eliz. ii. 364. However, during Essex’s absence at Cadiz in 1596, Howard tried to ingratiate himself with Cecil, claiming that, ‘though I be a bankrupt in fortune’s exchange, yet will I be an alchemist in my own devoted affection’.157 HMC Hatfield, vi. 271. Although he subsequently pledged loyalty to Essex on the latter’s return,158 Andersson, 176. Howard was worried that a sudden reversal in the earl’s fortunes would leave him high and dry unless he made contingency plans.

Howard’s caution was entirely justified, as Essex ultimately proved to be his own worst enemy. In September 1599 Essex returned to England from Ireland, where for the last six months he had attempted without success to crush the rebellion led by the earl of Tyrone [I]. The queen was enraged that Essex had agreed a truce, and, encouraged by Cecil, ordered him to be confined to York House. Howard, who had watched Essex’s progress in Ireland from the sidelines with his heart in his mouth,159 HMC Hatfield, ix. 342. was appalled, and tried to mediate between Essex and Cecil. Revealingly, he was no longer viewed by others as Essex’s loyal lieutenant in the struggle with Cecil, but as ‘a neuter’.160 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, ii. 397, 404.

Howard’s neutrality was a purely temporary state of affairs, however, as it was clear that Essex was finished. Though he visited Essex in August 1600, after the latter was banished from court, Howard worked hard to mend his fences with Cecil, by now the queen’s chief minister.161 Letters from Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew ed. J. Maclean (Cam. Soc. lxxxviii), 23; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, ii. 481. He undoubtedly laid great emphasis on the family connection between them: Cecil’s sister Anne was married to Howard’s cousin, the 17th earl of Oxford. By mid September these efforts had paid off. One well-informed observer reported that Howard was now ‘much graced by the queen’, who sought his advice, had his bed set up in the Council chamber when he fell ill and gave him New Year gifts.162 Letters and Memorials of State (1746) ed. A. Collins, ii. 215; Elizabethan New Year Gift Exchanges 1559-1603 ed. J.A. Lawson (Recs. of Social and Econ. Hist. n.s. li), 466, 485, 504, 514. By the time Essex mounted his ill-fated rebellion in February 1601, Howard had transferred his loyalties to Cecil.

On the face of it, Howard was the chief beneficiary of his new alliance with Cecil, but in fact Cecil benefited quite as much from the arrangement as Howard himself. By the end of the 1590s, all eyes were fixed firmly on the succession. The most likely candidate to succeed Elizabeth was the Scottish king, James VI, with whom Essex had established contact via Howard, a former supporter of the king’s late mother, Mary, queen of Scots. Following Essex’s fall from power, Howard ‘dealt very earnestly’ with James to alter his opinion of Cecil, whose father, Lord Burghley (now dead) had been one of Mary’s bitterest enemies. These overtures were well received, for in May 1601, after Cecil revealed that he was willing to smooth the way for his succession, James wrote to the chief minister in person. After gratefully accepting the offer of help, he urged Cecil to employ ‘his long approved and trusted’ friend, Howard, as ‘a sure and secret interpreter’ between them.163 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 179.

Clearly, Howard had become an essential element in Cecil’s political survival. Without him, Elizabeth’s chief minister could not easily have bridged the divide that separated him from James. Over the course of the next two years, Howard provided a vital conduit between Cecil on the one hand and James’s spokesmen, the earl of Mar [S] and Lord Bruce of Kinloss [S], on the other. He also ensured that he and Cecil remained James’s chief points of contact at the English court, disparaging those who, like Henry Percy^*, 3rd earl of Northumberland and Henry Brooke^†, 11th Lord Cobham, sought to establish independent contact with the Scottish king.164 Secret Corresp. of Sir Robert Cecil and Jas. VI of Scotland (1766) ed. D. Dalrymple, 29, 35, 39, 52. How regularly Howard communicated with Scotland is unclear, as he asked that his correspondence be destroyed. Only those letters that Bruce and Mar failed to commit to the flames have survived.

Since correspondence with a foreign king on a matter as sensitive as the succession was treasonous, Howard and Cecil acted with the utmost secrecy. However, while Cecil was nervous and feared discovery, Howard was an old hand at this sort of thing, having communicated secretly with James’s mother over many years. Indeed, his previous experience helps to explain why the main responsibility for carrying on the secret correspondence lay with him. Another reason, of course, was that he had time on his hands, whereas Cecil was busy with matters of state. Although Howard wrote most of the letters, packets sent from Scotland were generally opened in Cecil’s presence, so that the two men could pore over them together. However, on one occasion in 1602 Howard concealed from Cecil a note by Bruce expressing the fear that one of Howard’s packets had gone astray. Howard dared not reveal this news to Cecil, who was well aware that their enemies were trying to intercept their correspondence, for otherwise ‘all the course of convey and intelligence’ would have been ‘ruined for ever’. Instead, he coolly advised Bruce to check his papers. If none were missing, Bruce was instructed, in his next letter, to place prick marks either side of the code number he used in lieu of a signature. However, if any papers had indeed gone astray these dots were to be omitted. Either way, Howard would know the truth and Cecil would be none the wiser.165 Ibid. 114, 202-3, 205. It was a clever solution, and one which casts a unique glimpse into the cloak and dagger world which Howard had for so long inhabited.

Cecil’s fear of detection ultimately proved unfounded. During the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, Howard enjoyed the trust of the queen, who allowed him to assist the commissioners appointed to discharge the duties of the office of earl marshal following Essex’s execution. She may also have sought Howard’s advice on addressing Parliament, as a fair copy of her very last speech to Parliament, given on 19 Dec. 1601, is among his papers. (Alternative explanations for the presence of this document among his papers are, of course, possible.)166 J.E. Neale, Eliz. and Her Parls. 1584-1601, pp. 427-8. For the text, see Procs. in Parls. of Eliz. I ed. T.E. Hartley, iii. 278-81. In September 1602 Howard informed Mar that the queen ‘never used me in life so well as she doth now’.167 Secret Corresp. of Sir Robert Cecil and Jas. VI, 233.

Howard played a pivotal role in ensuring James VI’s smooth accession to the English throne in March 1603. Aside from seconding Cecil, his chief service was to ensure there was no Catholic opposition to the accession of another Protestant monarch. ‘The means are most politic and wise’, wrote Bruce the day after the queen’s death, ‘by which you have dispersed the cloud of an apparent popish uproar’. It is a measure of Howard’s importance to James that he was summoned to Scotland the moment James learned of the queen’s death in order to discuss the manner of the new king’s entry to England (‘none shall be so much trusted as yourself’).168 Corresp. of King Jas. VI with Sir Robert Cecil (Cam. Soc. lxxviii) ed. J. Bruce, 46-7. This summons, which was accompanied with the gift of a ruby,169 Archaeologia, xlii. 375. was fortuitous, as Cecil and Howard were eager to counteract the malign influence of Lord Cobham, who journeyed north to complain bitterly of his treatment by Cecil.170 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 192.

Howard met James for the first time at Berwick on or shortly before 7 April. There he was lobbied by several Catholics, who wished him to use his influence with the new king to obtain more lenient treatment for them and their co-religionists.171 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 66-7; Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata ed. W.P. Baildon, 269. He subsequently journeyed south with James, although for a short time he left the king while James travelled to York.172 HMC Hatfield, xv. 44, 58; Egerton Pprs. ed. J.P. Collier (Cam. Soc. xii), 365-6. In mid April, James announced that he intended to appoint Howard’s nephew, Lord Thomas Howard, to the Privy Council.173 Queen Eliz. and Her Times ed. T. Wright, ii. 495. This undoubtedly pleased Lord Henry, who may have helped persuade James to instruct his nephew to continue exercising the duties of lord chamberlain.174 Original Letters ed. H. Ellis, 1st ser. iii. 66; D. Lloyd, State-Worthies (1670), 792. However, nothing was said about his own preferment, even though James had assured him in 1602 that he would never forget the services he and Cecil had performed.175 Secret Corresp. of Sir Robert Cecil and Jas. VI, 107.

Not until 4 May, when the royal party reached Theobalds, the Hertfordshire home of Robert Cecil, was Howard himself appointed to the Council. On the face of it, this is surprising. No one deserved a seat more than Howard, a loyal supporter of Mary, queen of Scots, without whose help James might never have established cordial relations with Cecil, the chief architect of the peaceful transition of power. Moreover, there were no longer elements on the Council who might have opposed Howard’s addition to the board. Of course Howard, now aged 62, was a little old in the tooth to be starting a career in government, but this is unlikely to have given the king pause for thought. Besides, James admired Howard for his scholarship, and the two men soon established warm relations. His hesitation can only have stemmed from Howard’s religion.

Unlike his nephew Lord Thomas, Howard found it difficult to tolerate the Protestant form of worship. Under Elizabeth he had attended prayers when the queen was present, ‘but otherwise would not endure them’.176 Manningham Diary ed. R.P. Sorlien, 246. James, by comparison, insisted that all his servants take the oath of supremacy and attend Anglican services. Howard was thus faced with a stark choice: abandon his Catholic faith and be admitted to the heart of government, or refuse to do so, and remain forever in the political wilderness. Not surprisingly, he eventually resolved to put personal ambition ahead of the requirements of his religion. To the undisguised pleasure of the king, he declared that James had won him over to the Protestant faith.177 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 42; Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, I: 1603-12 ed. A.J. Loomie (Cath. Rec. Soc. lxiv), 7. Henceforward he attended Anglican services regularly, at least for the time being, and abandoned his habit of appealing publicly for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, though he freely confessed to the 7th earl of Shrewsbury (Gilbert Talbot^*), whose wife was a papist, that he had ‘much ado to discontinue this superstitious custom’.178 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii. 194. In Star Chamber in May 1605, in a case concerning the puritan libeller Sir Lewis Pickering, Northampton spoke as though he were addressing fellow Protestants.179 Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 228.

The news of Northampton’s conversion shocked many in the Catholic community. Certainly, one of Spain’s informants observed, rather nastily, that Howard was ‘of inconstant mind’. Elsewhere it excited ridicule, as it was plain that Howard had traded allegiance to Rome for a seat on the Council.180 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II: 1613-24 ed. A.J. Loomie (Cath. Rec. Soc. lxviii), 38; A. Bellany, Pols. of Court Scandal in Early Modern Eng. 205. Howard himself did not doubt that he had made the right decision, and was overcome with feelings of gratitude towards James. ‘To the place by birth from which I was dejected, rather by the wrongs of others than my own deserts, your Majesty restored me’, he declared. ‘I am now admitted, though unworthy, by your extraordinary grace dispensative, to be your privy councillor’. Hitherto he had been ‘branded with the mark of reprobation’, whereas James had now ‘signed me with the character of trust’.181 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 71v.

Though now a privy councillor, Howard lacked even a modest amount of property, having lived for the last 50 years mainly off the charity of others. An obvious solution to this problem was that he be allowed to acquire part of the lands forfeited to the crown on the attainders of his brother, the 4th duke of Norfolk, and nephew, Philip, earl of Arundel. However, by strict right of succession, these lands properly belonged to Howard’s great-nephew, the 18-year old Lord Maltravers. Moreover, Howard’s nephew, Lord Thomas, was eager to obtain a share of these estates himself, not least because he had a large family to provide for. In the event, James decided to exclude Maltravers and bestow the former Howard lands in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Shropshire on uncle and nephew, who subsequently divided them up between them.182 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 17; Peck, Northampton, 66, 231n. On the face of it, Howard had helped to cheat the head of the senior branch of his family of his inheritance. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. Howard had no children of his own, having never married, and was extremely fond of Maltravers. He can have been under no illusion that his life was entering its final phase. Any lands he received from the crown he would eventually leave to Maltravers, thereby ensuring that at least part of his family’s once great Norfolk estate descended to its rightful heir. In the meantime, his share of the Howard lands provided him with the means to maintain the lifestyle expected of a privy councillor.

By the summer of 1603, Howard’s fortunes had been transformed. Where once he had been a penniless nobleman on the margins of power, he was now a privy councillor with an estate of his own. What he still lacked, aside from a title, was high office. However, following the accession of James, priority was necessarily given to the king’s Scottish servants, such as George, Lord Home, who became chancellor of the Exchequer, and Edward, Lord Bruce,who became master of the Rolls. As a result, Howard was left empty-handed. This did not mean, of course, that he remained idle. On the contrary, in July 1603 the king singled him out for a special service, sending him, along with Cecil and Charles Blount^* (soon to be created earl of Devonshire), to Staines to discuss with the newly arrived ambassador from the Spanish Netherlands ending the Elizabethan war with Spain.183 H.V. Jones, ‘Jnl. of Levinus Munck’, EHR, lxviii. 245; HMC Hatfield, xv. 214. He also played a key role that summer in examining the conspirators in the Bye Plot, who had planned to kidnap the king and Council. Two of the plotters were Catholic priests, one of whom - William Watson - justified his treason on the grounds that James had broken faith with England’s Catholics, having failed to grant them toleration as he had promised. Following the judicial condemnation of Watson, James sent Howard to remonstrate with the priest over this outrageous claim, presumably in the hope that Watson would withdraw it on the scaffold.184 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 22; Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 269.

Not until the trial and conviction of Lord Cobham for treason in November 1603 was James able to provide Howard with an important office. This was the lord wardenship of the Cinque Ports, which was bestowed upon Howard in January 1604. Though not of the first rank, the lord wardenship gave Howard a much needed measure of authority, ensuring that he was no longer the only member of the Council without clearly defined official duties. The following month, Howard was also named to the commission for executing the office of earl marshal, thereby acknowledging not only his earlier work under Essex but also that of his brother and father. On paper at least, Howard was the most junior of the new six-man commission, but he quickly emerged as its leading member.185 R. Cust, Chas. I and the Aristocracy, 22.

Parliamentary apprenticeship and the negotiations for peace, 1604

Howard did not attend the opening of the Hampton Court Conference on 14 Jan. 1604, but was present two days later, when he seconded James, who condemned as dangerous a Catholic publication entitled Speculum Tragicum.186 State Trials, ii. 80. James remained nervous about the threat from militant Catholicism, and relied upon Howard, his ‘master intelligencer’, to employ his detailed knowledge of the Catholic community to discover the doings of his Catholic opponents and bring them to heel. Midway through the Conference, James complimented Howard on soundly peppering his papist opponents behind the scenes.187 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 221, 270. For James’s use of the term ‘master intelligencer’, see ibid. 252.

Two weeks after the Hampton Court Conference ended, James summoned a Parliament. As lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Howard enjoyed powers of patronage over seven parliamentary boroughs, and was resolved to exploit them to the full. However, the Ports were equally determined to exercise more control over their choice of parliamentary representatives than they had under Elizabeth. As recently as July 1603 their own representative body, the brodhull, had issued a reminder that only townsmen resident in the borough for which they were chosen were eligible for election.188 White and Black Bks. ed. F. Hull, 375. Their position was strengthened in January 1604 by a royal proclamation which required enfranchised boroughs to ‘make open and free election according to the law’.189 Stuart Royal Proclamations I: Jas. I ed. J. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 69. Not surprisingly, therefore, Howard encountered opposition from two of the boroughs under his control, New Romney and Winchelsea. However, aided by his deputy Sir Thomas Fane^‡, lieutenant of Dover Castle, Howard quickly bullied New Romney into submission, while at Winchelsea the freemen, who initially declined to elect Howard’s servant, Thomas Unton^‡, were obliged to order the townsman Thomas Egleston^‡, elected in his place, to resign his seat. By the time he compiled his return in mid March, Howard had secured one seat in each of the boroughs under his control, with the sole exception of Hythe.

Shortly before Parliament met, Howard was ennobled, thereby enabling him to sit in the forthcoming assembly. Granted an earldom, he adopted the suffix Northampton, a curious choice, perhaps, as he had no previous connection with Northamptonshire or its county town, and the last earl of Northampton, Henry IV, had taken the throne of England by force. His investiture, which took place at the Tower, involved three of his Howard kinsmen, Nottingham, Suffolk and Thomas Howard^*, 3rd Viscount Howard of Bindon.190 Coll. of Arms, WA, Ceremonials, I, f. 21. Howard was naturally delighted at his elevation, and before long he jokingly declared that his surname was ‘far out of use with me’.191 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 194. This undated letter is endorsed ‘1606’, but it seems more likely that it was actually written in 1604.

Northampton had never before sat in Parliament. Indeed, so far as is known, the only time he had ever witnessed a Parliament in session was in March 1576, when he heard Elizabeth tell both Houses that she would prefer the quiet of a private life to the troubles of a public one.192 HEHL, HA 6909; J.E. Neale, Eliz. I and Her Parls. 1559-81, p. 366. In any other man, lack of parliamentary experience might have bred a reluctance to contribute to proceedings, but Northampton was nothing if not confident and was only too eager to participate. Appointed by the crown on the first day of the meeting a trier of petitions for James’s three kingdoms (a largely honorific role),193 LJ, ii. 263b, 266a, 267b. he made his maiden speech one week later, following the first reading of the bill to recognize the king’s title. It was a long, tortured affair, in which he began by rejecting the view that a novice like himself should remain silent as ‘impertinent’. He subsequently proceeded to praise the foresight of Henry VII’s ministers, who had paved the way for the union of England and Scotland by marrying the king’s daughter Margaret to the Scottish king, James IV. He also commended the new king’s reintroduction of episcopacy to Scotland and his instruction to reform the office of arms, over which he himself now exercised authority. A distinction would now be made, he declared, ‘between intrusion and ancienty, … between worth and vanity’.194 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 408, 409v, 412v, 413. Clearly self-serving, the remark was also rather pointed, since the Cecils were mere parvenus compared with the Howards.

On the same day that Northampton spoke, a bill to restore in blood Charles Paget, the younger son of William Paget^†, 1st Lord Paget, was laid before the upper House.195 LJ, ii. 266a. It seems likely that Northampton was responsible. Like Northampton, Charles Paget had been one of Mary, queen of Scots’ most loyal supporters. Moreover, his association with Northampton was of long standing. Both men had been undergraduates at Cambridge together, and in 1583, after Paget had voluntarily travelled to France to exercise his Catholic faith, Northampton had been accused of corresponding with Paget on the subject of the Scottish queen. Like Northampton, Paget had supported the claims of James VI to the English throne, and, as a result, his lands in Derbyshire had been returned to him shortly after James’s accession.196 CSP Scot. 1581-3, p. 675; Oxford DNB, xlii. 342-4. However, he had not yet been restored to his full legal rights, which he had lost on being attainted for his part in the Babington Plot.

On 27 Mar. the Paget bill was placed in committee, whose members included not only Northampton but also several other Catholic (or crypto-Catholic) peers, among them the earl of Northumberland, the 2nd Viscount Montagu (Anthony Maria Browne^*), the 5th Lord Windsor (Henry Windsor^*) and the 5th Lord Monteagle (William Parker^*).197 LJ, ii. 267b. However, also on the committee were three bishops, including Anthony Rudd^*, bishop of St Davids, who, alarmed at the widespread expectation among England’s Catholics that James would shortly introduce a formal toleration, vehemently objected to restoring a recusant. In a thinly veiled reference to Northampton, he remarked that many Catholics ‘brag now of their number, strength and favourers in court, whereby they are emboldened to speak that openly which two years ago they durst scarce whisper in the ear.’ Were favour to be shown to ‘some of their consorts’ like Paget, who knew what they might aim at next?198 Devon RO, 3700M. Thanks to Rudd and his supporters, the bill was thrown out in early April.

The Lords’ rejection of the Paget bill represented a sound defeat for Northampton, but it was a relatively minor matter and by the time it occurred he was already embroiled in a much more serious affair. In late March the king rebuked the Commons for presuming to judge the outcome of the recent Buckinghamshire election dispute. The Commons had decided that Sir Francis Goodwin^‡ had been properly chosen as the senior knight of the shire, even though Chancery had ruled that, as an outlaw, his election was invalid. In the ensuing quarrel, members of the Council rallied to the side of their colleague Sir John Fortescue^‡, the candidate whose election Chancery deemed to be sound. It soon became apparent that the Buckinghamshire election dispute was so serious that, until it was settled, the Commons would not attend to the session’s main business, the king’s plan to bring about a statutory union of England and Scotland.199 A. Thrush, ‘Commons v. Chancery: the 1604 Bucks. Election Dispute Revisited’, PH, xxvi. 306-8. Publicly, at least, Northampton undoubtedly gave wholehearted support to Cecil and his fellow councillors. However, in early April he journeyed to Royston, where the king was hunting, to offer his advice.200 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 50. According to the French ambassador, he counselled James to beat a retreat.201 C. Russell, King James VI and I and his English Parls. 29. The arguments he employed are unknown, but James came to believe that if he conceded that the Commons had as much right to adjudge the validity of election returns as Chancery, the lower House would be so grateful that it would enthusiastically embrace the Union.202 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 150. By the time this reasoning was exposed as faulty, the damage had been done. In the aftermath of this sorry affair James instructed Northampton to investigate Goodwin’s behaviour during the election.203 Bodl., Rawl. D918, f. 35. However, if James hoped Northampton would provide him with a pretext to reverse his decision, he was to be sadly mistaken.

Northampton undoubtedly followed closely the progress of the bill to restore his great-nephew Maltravers to the earldom of Arundel, which passed through Parliament in March and April. Indeed, it may have been his allies in the Commons who smoothed the passage of the bill after the lower House demanded an assurance that Arundel was now a conforming Protestant.204 CJ, i. 168a. He certainly took an interest in legislation concerned with the import of popish books and the punishment of recusants, Jesuits and seminary priests, being named to several committees on these subjects.205 LJ, ii. 290a, 301b, 313b, 324b.

As a privy councillor, Northampton was naturally included on committees concerned with the three major issues of the session: the Union, wardship and purveyance. He evidently spoke in favour of the Union, for in 1605 James described his parliamentary speeches on the subject as being ‘but words’, though no record of his utterances has survived.206 Ibid. 266b, 277b, 284a, 290b; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 254. The Union, as envisaged by James, failed to find favour with the Commons, whereupon the king agreed to appoint a commission consisting of members of both the English and Scottish parliaments to devise detailed proposals. Northampton was not only named to the six-man committee instructed to draft the necessary enabling legislation, but was also appointed one of the English commissioners.207 LJ, ii. 290b, 296a.

As well as these appointments, Northampton was required to help consider two minor bills of concern to the crown. The first aimed to restrict hunting with guns, which James, a keen huntsman, had caused to be drafted. The second concerned the garbelling of spices, a measure necessitated by a dispute between the king and the corporation of London.208 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 107. As a commissioner for the office of earl marshal, Northampton was also chosen to serve as one of the spokesman for the Lords after the House decided, on 21 May, to ask the king to ennoble both claimants in the Abergavenny barony dispute.209 LJ, ii. 303b.

Northampton evidently missed only three sittings of the Lords during the first two months of the session (on 28 Mar., 8 May and 15 May). Thereafter his absences became more numerous, for on 19 May he was appointed a commissioner for the peace talks between England and Spain, which commenced the following day. At first, these absences were restricted to odd days, but in late June he missed three mornings in a row, and in early July he was absent on two consecutive afternoon sittings. The Lords, however, continued to behave as though he was present, appointing him in absentia to a committee for a bill against blasphemy on 4 July.210 Ibid. 340a.

Spain’s representatives considered Northampton to be the most enthusiastic advocate of peace on the Council. Their view was unquestionably correct. Ever since the mid 1580s Northampton had been a Spanish sympathizer, and he would later express fulsome praise of James’s decision to make peace. Indeed, it may have been Northampton who, in July 1605, first coined the phrase ‘rex pacificus’ to describe James.211 Winwood’s Memorials ed. E. Sawyer, ii. 93. We are grateful to Pauline Croft for a useful correspondence on this subject. However, the Spanish also believed that, without Northampton’s support, the king might have decided to continue the conflict. This was erroneous, as James needed little persuading to end the war, as did Cecil, who regarded peace as essential if the State was to avoid bankruptcy. However, it suited Northampton for Spain to believe that the king was equivocal, as, in their anxiety, the Spanish gave him an annual pension of 5,000 felipes and £6,000 in cash, more money than they bestowed on any other courtier at this time.212 Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy, 52, 55.

Northampton’s role in the peace negotiations was second in importance only to that of Cecil’s. Despite his hispanophile tendencies, his paramount concern throughout was to protect English interests. When, on 1 June, the Spanish delegation hinted that if England would not surrender the Cautionary Towns of Brill and Flushing, Spain would recover them by force, Northampton retorted that Elizabeth had held these towns by the same right that Spain had occupied several towns in northern France during the recent wars of religion. Later, on 4 July, the Milanese lawyer Allesandro Robida demanded that the English keep out of the Americas, which Spain had discovered at great cost in money and lives. At this Northampton replied that if the act of discovery conferred upon the discoverer a right of prohibition, Spain should cease fishing in northern waters.213 HMC 8th Rep. I, 95, 97. Helped by a paper drafted for him by Sir Robert Cotton^‡, whose services he had first employed two years earlier, he presented to the conference a list of reasons why England should be permitted to trade in the ‘Indies’.214 Peck, Northampton, 106-8.

The peace negotiations ended shortly after Parliament was prorogued on 7 July. As the English commissioner most acceptable to the Spanish, Northampton was subsequently dispatched to greet the constable of Castile, who arrived in August to sign the peace treaty.215 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 212; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 141. He also attended the feast to celebrate the treaty, held on the 19th. During these festivities, James had Northampton tell the constable that he hoped that his daughter Princess Elizabeth (whose birthday it was) would be the means of future peace between England and Spain, ‘unlike that other hostile Elizabeth, who had caused so much mischief’.216 Eng. as seen by Foreigners ed. W.B. Rye, 121. It was a message that James would never have entrusted to Cecil, who admired the late queen, and the fact that its delivery was entrusted to Northampton says much about the common ground that existed between him and the king.

Relations with James and Cecil, 1604-5

Northampton retained the king’s good opinion without interruption until at least the beginning of 1605. However, he had a malicious tongue, and gravely offended James by disparaging the king’s youngest son, Prince Charles (Stuart^*, later prince of Wales), who suffered from an hereditary neuromuscular disease that meant that he had weak legs. James accused him of often making ‘cruel and malicious speeches against Baby Charles and his honest father’, and was dismayed that Northampton opposed Charles’s creation as duke of York in January 1605. James evidently saw in this evidence of a wider anti-Scots prejudice, and charged Northampton with having an ‘innate hatred to me and all Scotland’. He took him to task for ‘quarrelling their continuance in their form of government’, and accused him of hypocrisy, for although Northampton had declared his support for the Union in Parliament, his officers in the Cinque Ports had fleeced Scottish travellers.217 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 250, 252, 254.

How Northampton cleared himself of these damaging accusations is unknown, but he was a born survivor, and no stranger to flattery. Indeed, James once remarked ‘set another leg as well made beside mine, I warrant you 3 [Northampton] will swear the king’s leg is the far finest’.218 Ibid. 288. By mid February 1605 he had been restored to favour, being appointed keeper of Greenwich Park and tower. Northampton was delighted with this post, as he loved Greenwich tower, having spent some of his happiest childhood years there. He soon set about refurbishing and enlarging this building, which he invested with semi-mythical significance, dubbing it ‘Oriana’, a reference to a character in the popular tale, Amadis de Gaul. He also created ‘delightful walks’ in the surrounding park, which he termed Merefleet, an allusion to the vale of Mirefleur, which also appears in Amadis de Gaul.219 Add. 6298, f. 285v; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 625; Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II, 38; A.D. Webster, Greenwich Park: its Hist. and Associations, 13. In April 1605 Northampton received a further mark of favour, being elected to the order of the Garter, a signal honour. That July he also secured his first major local office, that of lord lieutenant of Norfolk, in which county (thanks to James’s generosity and the agreement he had reached with his nephew Suffolk), he now owned significant property, including the castle and borough of Castle Rising. Over the summer he accompanied the king on progress, the first such tour of the new reign,220 Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 520, 538; HMC 8th Rep. I, 87; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 380, 395. On his ownership of Castle Rising, see Pprs. of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, V: 1603-7 ed. V. Morgan, E. Rutledge and B. Taylor (Norf. Rec. Soc. lxxiv), 137-8. during the course of which he was created an honorary MA at Oxford.

Repairing his damaged relations with the king was clearly of the first importance for Northampton. Almost as crucial, certainly in the first few years after James’s accession, was maintaining his alliance with Cecil, who, in the aftermath of the signing of the peace treaty, had become Viscount Cranborne. At first, this was not difficult, as the two men shared similar objectives, such as avoiding unnecessary persecution of Catholics. This latter policy was unpopular with many of their Council colleagues, though. Like Bishop Rudd in Parliament, they were worried at the growing boldness of many English Catholics. In early September 1604 the Council debated the matter before the king after receiving a petition against certain magistrates who had imprisoned several Catholics for failing to attend church after compounding for their recusancy. Northampton, who secretly still clung to his Catholic faith, vigorously supported Cranborne, who insisted that Catholics be treated with moderation as they intended no harm to the State. Catholics, he argued, were far better disposed towards James than they had been to Elizabeth, who was both illegitimate and excommunicated by the pope. Moreover, while Elizabeth ‘washed her hands’ in the blood of Catholics, James had often said publicly that he would not execute anyone for their Catholic faith. When the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir John Popham^‡, suggested that James enforce the laws only against those who were ‘dangerous’, Northampton shrewdly retorted that it was possible to describe all Catholics thus because they refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy. James found his arguments persuasive.221 Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy, 55-6.

During the first few years of James’s reign, Northampton and Cranborne often appeared to speak as one, and not only when the Council discussed the treatment of Catholics. On delivering his verdict in the Star Chamber trial of Sir John Hele^‡ in October 1604, Northampton declared that he was ‘in everything of the same opinion’ as Cranborne.222 Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 175. Three months later, Richard Bancroft^*, archbishop of Canterbury, expressed irritation after Northampton and Cranborne both sought to avoid being appointed to High Commission.223 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 31. However, Northampton and Cranborne did not see eye to eye on everything, particularly in matters of foreign policy. For instance, whereas Cranborne regarded the Dutch as England’s natural allies, and sought to protect their interests, Northampton, like the king, considered them rebels and traitors.224 Works of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath, vii. 170;

Perhaps inevitably, the harmony between Northampton and Cranborne did not last. Northampton secretly hated Cecil. When Cecil died, he declared that the former chief minister had a ‘black soul’, and was keeping Queen Elizabeth company in the fires of hell.225 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 134v; Oxford DNB, xviii. 371. Northampton could never forgive Cecil or his father for incensing Queen Elizabeth against Mary, queen of Scots.226 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 152. He was also jealous of Cecil’s success. Northampton was the oldest surviving member of the Howard dynasty, the premier aristocratic family in the kingdom, whereas Cecil was a relative upstart. Instead of the dominant position at court to which he aspired, he occupied only a second-rate office (the wardenship of the Cinque Ports) and a place on the commission for the office of earl marshal. By contrast, Cecil was the king’s chief minister, holding no fewer than three senior positions: the secretaryship, the mastership of the Wards, and, de facto at least, the keepership of the privy seal.

Over the winter of 1604-5, Cranborne came under pressure to relinquish some of his duties as secretary of state. It had become clear for some while that he was trying to do too much, and that he was prone to bouts of ill health.227 See ROBERT CECIL. Cranborne responded by offering to employ Sir Thomas Bodley^‡ as his assistant, but when Bodley declined Cranborne was pressed to surrender the secretaryship altogether.228 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 122; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 45. At the same time, it was rumoured that James had decided to raise Cranborne to an earldom,229 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 118. See also Cal. of Talbot Pprs. ed. G.W. Batho (Derbys. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. iv), 241. despite having only recently elevated him to a viscountcy, and was contemplating appointing him to the more prestigious but less onerous position of lord president of the Council, or of making him lord privy seal, the duties of which office Cranborne already discharged.230 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 59.

It seems likely that James was acting with Northampton’s encouragement. By shunting Cranborne aside, Northampton could hope to enhance his own prospects. However, while Cranborne did not object to being advanced in the peerage, he had no intention of relinquishing the secretaryship, which formed the basis of his power and influence. On 3 May 1605, the day before he was created earl of Salisbury, he exacted his revenge on Northampton. In Star Chamber, a public forum, he proposed that, in view of a case then about to come before the court, Northampton’s creation investiture as a knight of the Garter should be postponed.231 Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 204.

This snub was carefully disguised, as Cranborne, or rather Salisbury as he had now become, inflicted damage on Northampton under the guise of giving priority to a case that he knew to be dear to Northampton’s heart. At the centre of this case was Sir Robert Dudley, the son of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (now dead), who was trying to prove his legitimacy in order to claim a share of his father’s estate. Northampton supported Dudley, for although his father had been his enemy, his mother had been a Howard. Moreover, like Northampton himself, Dudley was secretly Catholic: only a few months later, he and one of the queen’s maids of honour would flee England and openly embrace the Catholic faith. Northampton felt protective towards Dudley, and after the latter’s flight he quietly sent him large sums of money. In 1607 the grand duke of Tuscany informed Northampton that he had given shelter to Dudley, who now styled himself earl of Warwick, ‘on account of his relationship with your illustrious lordship, and knowing from him the love your bear towards him’.232 J.T. Leader, Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Duke of Northumberland, 27, 30, 54; HMC Hatfield, xix. 296.

Salisbury must have known of Northampton’s paternal regard for Dudley, and must therefore have been confident that Northampton would not object to a postponement of his investiture. However, if Northampton thought that Salisbury’s motion for to postpone was intended to help his cause, he was soon to discover his mistake. Salisbury proceeded to align himself with Dudley’s main opponent, Lord Sydney (Robert Sidney^*, later Viscount Lisle and 1st earl of Leicester), who stood to lose much of his estate if Dudley was recognized as legitimate. Indeed, when judgement was given on 10 May, Salisbury pronounced in favour of Sidney, whereas Northampton voted for Dudley. According to one observer, Salisbury used his influence with the king to ensure that the verdict of the court as a whole went against Dudley.233 Leader, 45, 48; Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 219, 221.

Salisbury had succeeded in inflicting maximum damage on Northampton. Not only did Northampton wait longer than expected for his creation as a knight of the Garter but also Dudley lost his case. It is perhaps a measure of the displeasure felt by Northampton that the peers who attended him on his journey to Windsor later that month did not include the new earl of Salisbury.234 Add. 34218, f. 87. However, Northampton vented his anger not on Salisbury but on one of the latter’s closest allies, the earl of Nottingham. Northampton owed his kinsman Nottingham a considerable debt of gratitude, as the lord admiral had put a roof over his head more than a decade earlier, when his fortunes had been at a low ebb. However, he had since grown to despise his cousin, whom he described as ‘the weakest friend that lives’. His contempt was fuelled by reports he received from Sir Charles Cornwallis^‡, England’s ambassador to Madrid, concerning Nottingham’s conduct in Spain, whence the lord admiral had been dispatched to confirm the 1604 peace treaty. According to Cornwallis, Nottingham had accepted bribes, disgraced the Protestant religion and, without authority, committed England to the support of Spanish needs. Far from suppressing Cornwallis’ accusations, Northampton relayed them in July 1605 to James, who was so disgusted that Nottingham received a frosty reception on his return to England, to the latter’s dismay.235 R.W. Kenny, Elizabeth’s Admiral, 285; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 93.

Northampton’s animosity towards Nottingham, which stemmed from the blows recently inflicted on him by Salisbury, suggest that the lord warden and the king’s chief minister were now more like rivals than allies. Their growing hostility towards one another soon took on a physical form. In the summer of 1605, Salisbury began expanding his Thames-side residence, Salisbury House,236 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 359; L. Stone, Fam. and Fotune, 93. whereupon Northampton proceeded to buy up property immediately to the west of this building, around Charing Cross. The latter continued to snap up property in this area over the next three years, eventually acquiring a large plot, on which he built an immense pile that dwarfed that of his neighbour.237 M. Guerci, ‘Construction of Northumberland House and the Patronage of its Original Builder, Lord Henry Howard, 1603-14’, Antiquaries Jnl. xc. 345-6, 355. Significantly, this building, named Northampton House, lay closer to Whitehall than Salisbury House, which had previously enjoyed the distinction of being nearer the seat of royal power than any other private palace on the Strand. However, this symbolism has hitherto gone unnoticed.

The second session of Parliament, 1605-6

Although Northampton and Salisbury were now no longer firm allies, they were still expected to work together for the good of the king. Over the summer of 1605, one of the Council’s most pressing concerns was Parliament, which was due to reassemble that autumn. Northampton initially supposed that when Parliament met it would be filled with a clamour for the renewal of the war with Spain. There had been a certain amount of hostility in the Commons to the peace negotiations in May 1604, and now that it was rumoured that Spain’s economy was on the point of collapse it was widely felt that the peace had been a mistake.238 A. Thrush, ‘Parliamentary Opposition to Peace with Spain in 1604: A Speech of Sir Edward Hoby’, PH, xxiii. 301-15; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 93. However, by October his focus had shifted to purveyance, which was deeply unpopular because of the abuses committed by the officials employed to provision the royal household. The king was troubled that these abuses might sour the forthcoming session, and in October 1605 he congratulated Northampton on bringing to book a number of offenders.239 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 263-4. Northampton himself was confident that his efforts to stamp out corruption, and those of his fellow councillors, would ensure that the Commons had little to complain of when Parliament reassembled the following month. ‘We are about to take away the scandal raised upon purveyors and other such proling officers which were the subject of exception the last time’, he informed Sir Thomas Edmondes^‡ in mid October.240 Stowe 168, f. 169v.

Northampton evidently enjoyed special responsibility for dealing with this problem. This would certainly explain why a lengthy defence of purveyors, written that same month by Richard Fletcher, yeoman purveyor of the removes, was dedicated to him.241 HMC 5th Rep. 407-8. In receiving this special charge, Northampton had benefited from the failure of Salisbury who, during the 1604 session, had mismanaged the issue of purveyance by offering to surrender the crown’s rights in return for an annual sum only to develop cold feet, to the annoyance of the Commons. However, punishing a few errant purveyors was one thing; reforming the system of purveyance to avoid further complaints was quite another. Northampton seems to have tried to address this problem on 17 Oct., on which date a memorandum concerning the abuses of purveyors was drawn up. However, if this memorandum was indeed written by Northampton – and the fact that it includes a number of Latin quotations points to this conclusion - it is clear that he had no solutions. After asserting that dishonest purveyors ‘are like sponges of the commonwealth, which suck up the juice of good subjects’, he remarked simply that the problem of what to do ‘must be seriously thought on’.242 P. Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London, 1589-1608’, PH, iv. 20; SP14/15/88.

It was not only on the subject of purveyance that Northampton was confident of success in the forthcoming Parliament. He was also convinced that the Council had finally succeeded in reducing the costs of the royal household and curbing the king’s spending, which had been out of control over since his accession. James, he told Edmondes, was now so frugal that men would soon forget ‘the franchise of a Christmas at the first coming of our master, when he neither knew the strength or weakness of his estate’. The removal of this obstacle would clear the way for subsidies to be voted, and eliminate one of the key reasons for English hatred of the Scots, who were perceived as being the principal beneficiaries of the king’s open-handedness.243 Stowe 168, f. 170. See also CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 236.

There can be little doubt that Northampton worked hard helping to prepare for the second session; in mid October he informed the prebendaries of Peterborough Cathedral that ‘certain earnest and serious affairs ... at this present challenge all the time that I can spare’.244 Staffs. RO, D1287/18/2 P399/1. This is hardly surprising, as he had probably never been entrusted with such a responsibility before. However, he was less successful than he supposed in smoothing the way for the forthcoming meeting between the king and his subjects, as the problem of purveyance reared its ugly head again in 1606, as did the king’s financial recklessness. It took some time for this to become apparent, though, for when Parliament finally met it was almost immediately adjourned as a result of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. As the leading expert on the Catholic community on the Council, Northampton was naturally involved in investigating the Plot,245 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 513; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 301. the existence of which may have been something of a personal embarrassment. As has been seen, ever since the beginning of the reign he had been assuring James that the Catholics posed no threat to the state and deserved to be treated with moderation.

Northampton did not attend Parliament until it reconvened on 21 Jan. 1606, when he informed the Lords that Henry Berkeley^*, 7th Lord Berkeley and George Tuchet^*, 11th Lord Audley had licence to be absent. He was also appointed to a committee to consider whether the laws in force against Catholics were adequate.246 LJ, ii. 360b, 361a. Thereafter he missed the odd day, as well as three sittings in a row in mid March and four consecutive sittings in mid May, when he served as a commissioner at the installation of Salisbury as a knight of the Garter.247 Bodl., Ashmole 1108, f. 82v.

Six days after the session resumed it was again interrupted, this time for the trial of surviving Gunpowder plotters in Westminster Hall. During the course of these proceedings Northampton, as one of the trial commissioners, attempted to rebut the now widespread belief among English Catholics that the king had reneged on a promise to grant them toleration. James, he averred, ‘did ever seek to settle his establishment upon the faith of Protestants in generality’, despite having ‘found a number on the other side, as faithful and as well affected to his person, claim and interest as any men alive’.248 A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors ... (1606), sig. M[5].

On 3 Feb. 1606 Northampton was named to the committee for the bill to attaint the surviving Gunpowder plotters. Five days later, it fell to him to ask the committee to postpone its meeting, as several Jesuits and seminary priests named in the bill had not yet been examined, having only just been captured.249 LJ, ii. 367a, 370a. One of the conspirators who continued to evade capture, however, was the pro-Jesuit intelligencer, Hugh Owen, who resided in the Spanish Netherlands. Following an unsuccessful attempt to extradite Owen, the crown increased its support for the Dutch in their war with Spain. Northampton was naturally expected to play his part in this endeavour, despite his distaste for the Dutch, and so, as lord warden of the Cinque Ports, he ensured that vessels from the Low Countries within his jurisdiction were not inspected too closely. However, he had reservations about the Commons’ determination to cut off the supply of English recruits to the army of Flanders, in contravention of the 1604 peace treaty. Writing to Edmondes in early March, he dismissed the insistence of the lower House as the product of rash humours and claimed that, once the Commons realized how unpopular their demands were, both at home and abroad, they would ‘sound the retreat, and rather seek to serve the State’.250 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 55-6. Northampton was evidently unaware that it was actually Salisbury who was the driving force behind the Commons’ desire to cut the supply of English troops to the Spanish Netherlands.251 P. Croft, ‘Serving the Archduke’, PH, lxiv. 299; ROBERT CECIL. His ignorance was not entirely surprising. As the Venetian ambassador remarked in 1607, Northampton continued to display ‘great attachment to the Spanish crown’, which relied on him to prevent any decision being taken that was hostile to Spain’s interests. Under such circumstances, Salisbury would have been a fool to confide in him.252 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 486.

Although Northampton was kept in the dark by Salisbury regarding the latter’s plan to curb Spanish recruitment, he supported his colleague in February 1606, when Salisbury appealed to the Commons to help pay off the king’s enormous debts, which amounted to £734,000. His assistance may not have been entirely helpful, though, for during a meeting with representatives of the Commons on the 19th, he reportedly said that if James decided to exploit his prerogative powers, like other monarchs, ‘he should be as rich as Croesus’.253 CJ, i. 271b. On the size of the royal debt, see Bowyer Diary, 44. This tactless remark, which was little more than a thinly veiled threat, anticipated a warning issued by Sir Dudley Carleton^* (later Viscount Dorchester) more than 20 years later, that unless the Commons voted subsidies the king would be forced to adopt ‘new counsels’.

Following the trial of the surviving Gunpowder plotters, Northampton chaired his first Lords’ committee. It concerned a bill to confirm the letters patent granted to the grammar school at St Bees, in Cumberland, which he returned to the House, with amendments, on 27 February.254 LJ, ii. 374a, 384a. The nature of Northampton’s interest in this measure is uncertain, but it is probably significant that his nephew, Lord William Howard, was settled at Naworth Castle, 12 miles north-east of Carlisle, the county town of Cumberland. Another bill committee that Northampton may have chaired concerned a certain John Holditch, who had been disinherited as the result of a fine. Certainly he reported the bill from committee on 8 May. Holditch’s identity has not been established, but the man was probably already known to Northampton, for in December 1604 the earl sold some land in Norfolk to a member of the Holditch family.255 Ibid. 373a, 373b, 428a; C. Parkin, An Essay towards a Topographical Hist. of Norf. xi. 112-13.

The bills regarding St Bees grammar school and John Holditch were not the only measures before the Lords this session of personal interest to Northampton. The bill to confirm letters patent granting Cambridge University the right to maintain two lecturers in divinity fell into the same category, as Northampton, who was appointed to the committee on 3 Mar., was a former student and teacher at the university. The same can be said of the bill to allow free trade to France, Spain and Portugal, to which committee Northampton was named on 25 Mar., as the earl was a member of the newly re-founded Spanish Company, whose monopoly was directly threatened by this measure. A personal tie may also explain Northampton’s appointment to consider the bill to naturalize Sir David Foulis, a Scottish member of Prince Henry’s household whom Northampton would describe in 1611 as ‘my old friend’. Northampton’s inclusion on the committee for a bill concerned with a Chancery decree involving two Norfolk gentlemen on 14 Apr. can be explained by the fact that he was now a major Norfolk landowner, while his earlier nomination to the committee for the Welsh cottons bill presumably reflected the interests of his nephew Suffolk.256 LJ, ii. 386b, 399b, 401a, 408b, 414a; Harl. 7002, f. 115.

Not surprisingly, several of Northampton’s committee appointments stemmed from his concerns as a government minister. These included, for instance, a bill to create a royal entail, a measure which had first been debated towards the end of the 1604 session and which sought to prevent the king from giving away too much of the crown’s lands.257 LJ, ii. 341a, 413a. However, many of Northampton’s remaining committee nominations defy easy explanation, and may simply have come about because he was in the House at the time. Among those measures concerned were bills to avoid unnecessary delays in the execution of legal judgements, reduce the number of solicitors and attorneys and reform their abuses, and make the Thames navigable between Oxford and London. One measure in which Northampton may have taken a close interest, however, was a bill against blasphemy, a subject which he had first been asked to consider during the dying days of the 1604 session. Although he did not chair the bill committee, an honour that fell instead to Henry Wriothesley^*, 1st and 3rd earl of Southampton, he presented the House with a fresh text after the committee decided that the original bill was inadequate.258 Ibid. 340a, 365a, 368b, 379b.

Northampton’s service in Parliament was again interrupted in late March, this time by the trial of Henry Garnett, the superior of the English Jesuits, who was charged with complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. During the proceedings Northampton, one of the trial commissioners, attacked Garnett at some length, accusing him of ignoring the example of God, who had declined to destroy Sodom for the sake of a handful of innocents. This observation was not altogether tactful, since it could be taken to imply that Protestants deserved destruction, but it made the point that the plotters had been entirely indiscriminate in their planned use of violence. Northampton also expressed astonishment that Garnett and his fellow conspirators felt that they had anything to complain of regarding James’s treatment of Catholics, who were far more acceptable to the king than they had ever been to his predecessor. ‘Would the late queen, think you, have bestowed honour by laying the sword of knighthood upon the heads of so many Catholics as the king hath done since his entrance?’ he demanded. ‘Would the queen have allowed unto all or any of the recusants that free kind of access to her person, or to her court, which the king hath done?’ Was it, he asked, ‘any part of the late queen’s care to give order for the chastisement of informers and messengers that preyed upon the prostrate fortunes of recusants with harder measure than the justice of the State warranted?’259 True and Perfect Relation ... (1606). sigs. Aa2v, Ff1, Ff2.

These rhetorical questions were, of course, highly damaging to Garnett, who was subsequently convicted and executed. They also served to distance Northampton himself from Catholic treason, something which was probably necessary in light of his personal history. However, while Northampton was never accused of plotting against James, in the feverish anti-Catholic atmosphere of 1606 not everyone was convinced that responsibility for the Cinque Ports, one of the main points of entry to the kingdom, should remain in his hands. This would explain why, in mid May, as the Commons were about to consider legislation to compel those who passed overseas to take the oath of allegiance, Northampton offered to show the Commons’ representatives the instructions he had issued to the lieutenant of Dover Castle, Sir Thomas Fane, whose assiduousness in carrying out his duties he described as being ‘equal with the best’.260 Bowyer Diary, 162. The bill concerning those who passed overseas was given a first reading in the Commons three days later: CJ, i. 309b. His assurances seem to have given satisfaction, as no more was heard of the matter before Parliament was prorogued on the 27th.

The third session of Parliament, 1606-7

Following the prorogation, Northampton retired to Greenwich with the king and Council. There, for a while, he continued to transact business, seeking the right to nominate a burgess at Thetford from the mayor and corporation following the death of Sir Bassingbourne Gawdy^‡, and signing a letter (to himself!) requiring payment of the first instalment of the subsidies voted in the recent parliamentary session.261 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 285; Cott., Titus B.VII, f. 432. However, in late July, during the visit of king’s brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, he fell seriously ill. In view of his age – he was now 66 – it was widely expected that he would not survive. However, against all the odds he pulled through, and on 18 Aug. he was well enough to write to thank Thetford’s corporation for giving him permission to nominate Gawdy’s successor. However, he was gravely offended that not once during his weeks of sickness had he received a visit from the king, who, by contrast, had recently called on Salisbury after the latter spent only a day at home unwell.262 Norf. RO, MC98/1/1; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 86.

James’s lack of concern for Northampton’s health cannot be explained entirely by his preoccupation with his Danish guest. The second session of Parliament had ended in triumphant success for Salisbury, who had cleverly chosen to ride the wave of anti-popery in the Commons, for which he was now much fȇted. He had also succeeded, albeit by the narrowest of margins, in obtaining from the Commons a grant of three subsidies and three fifteenths, an unprecedented achievement in peacetime. By contrast, Northampton had nothing to show for his time in Parliament, and, in the Commons at least, he was widely distrusted for his religious views. It must have been obvious to Northampton that he had been entirely eclipsed by Salisbury. As soon as he was well enough, he therefore rejoined the king, who was on progress in Hampshire. Interestingly, when Salisbury (who remained in Whitehall) learned that Northampton had done so, he had the master huntsman, Sir Roger Aston^‡, keep close tabs on the correspondence received by his rival.263 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 251-2. On Salisbury’s protracted illness, and his successes in the second session, see ROBERT CECIL.

Whenever he had lost favour under Elizabeth, Northampton had invariably resorted to his pen. He did so again over the summer of 1606, this time preparing for publication an account of the trial of Henry Garnett. In so doing, he decided to expand the text of the speech that he himself had delivered at the trial, ensuring that the book contained extensive criticism of the pope’s claim to authority over princes in temporal matters. This was shrewd, as the Venetian republic was then deeply embroiled with the papacy over precisely this issue, and had received warm support from James. The book was finally published in late November, whereupon it was commended by James, who ordered it to be translated into French, Latin and Italian.264 Recs. of the Soc. of Jesus ed. H. Foley (1st ser.), i. 65; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 439. Northampton employed Sir Robert Cotton to assist him: Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 160. Northampton subsequently presented a copy to Prince Henry, an act which has been interpreted to mean that he hoped to enlist the support of the prince against Salisbury.265 T. Birch, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, 61-3; K. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 120.

The publication of Northampton’s book roughly coincided with the re-opening of Parliament. The main item on the agenda was the Union, consideration of which had been postponed last session by the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Towards the end of 1604 a framework for the Union had been drafted by various commissioners, among them Northampton, who had devoted much of his effort to sorting out the implications for trade between the two kingdoms.266 Add. 26635, ff. 6v, 9; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 163v. However, it quickly became apparent that the Commons were unimpressed with this document, for at a meeting between the representatives of both Houses on 25 Nov., Salisbury urged the lower House to avoid ‘base fear’ and ‘prejudice’. Salisbury’s pleas fell on deaf ears, and in mid December a conference on the Union lasting several days broke up ‘in storm and tempest’.267 Bowyer Diary, 192n; Carleton to Chamberlain, 94.

It is unclear what role Northampton played in these proceedings. He was certainly appointed to the joint conference on 25 Nov., and so was eligible to attend subsequent meetings with the Commons, held in December.268 LJ, ii. 452b, 463a. Moreover, in June 1607 one observer recalled that, during these meetings, Northampton assumed ‘a principal part upon all important occasions’.269 Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, iii. 360. However, formally at least, the Lords’ chief spokesmen were Salisbury and the lord chancellor, Lord Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton^*, later 1st Viscount Brackley). Behind the scenes, Northampton relied upon Sir Robert Cotton to provide him with notes on the origins of escuage, an ancient feudal tenure also known as scutage, which required tenants to perform military service against the Scots in time of war.270 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 149. This was presumably because, in early December, one of the chief opponents of the Union in the Commons, Nicholas Fuller^‡, mischievously suggested that to do away with escuage would necessarily result in the abolition of wardship, an outcome that would threaten a major source of crown income.

Although Northampton undoubtedly helped promote the Union in Parliament, responsibility for the project’s success ultimately lay with Salisbury. Consequently, when Parliament rose for Christmas, a furious James vented his anger not on the lord warden but on Salisbury. Over the course of the next few weeks and months, Salisbury desperately attempted to recover favour by means of a property exchange with James.271 ROBERT CECIL. Northampton, meanwhile, far from showing any sympathy for the king’s chief minister, rapidly moved to fill the void created by Salisbury’s sudden loss of standing. In February 1607 John Chamberlain reported that Northampton is ‘further in grace than ever, or than any man’, and that his friends in the City were threatening to overthrow Salisbury’s control of the lucrative great farm of the customs. In the event, Northampton’s allies failed to gain control of the customs farm, but only because Salisbury’s syndicate agreed to increase its rent to the crown.272 Chamberlain Letters, i. 243; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 23.

The Union continued to dominate proceedings after Parliament reassembled in February 1607. This time – and perhaps deliberately so – Northampton was more in evidence during meetings with the Commons. When Salisbury announced to the representatives of the lower House on 7 Mar. that the Lords ‘do endeavour a perfect Union, with restrictions’, he was seconded by Northampton.273 Bowyer Diary, 224. Seven days later, Northampton again supported Salisbury at a conference with the Commons, arguing that, irrespective of law and custom, ‘reason itself allows this Union’.274 CJ, i. 1032a. It may also have been at around this time that the lord warden delivered a lengthy speech, in which he told the representatives of both Houses that a union of England and Scotland had been the goal of many past English monarch and at least one Scottish king, David II.275 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 422v.3. However, even with Northampton’s help, Salisbury was unable to persuade the Commons to endorse the Union. Instead, he was outmanoeuvred by his former client, Sir Edwin Sandys^‡, who seized upon his use of the phrase ‘perfect Union’ to torpedo the project. James was furious, and blamed his Council for not explaining to him that accomplishing the Union was more complex than he had supposed.276 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 485.

During the midst of these debates, Northampton and Salisbury had a furious argument. It seems likely that Salisbury’s management of Parliament was the cause. When news of the quarrel leaked out, Northampton tried to damp down the speculation of a rift between himself and the chief minister. Writing to Sir Charles Cornwallis on 10 Apr., he declared that ‘matters were never more different nor affections more sound between any friends upon this earth than between him [Salisbury] and me’. However, he was forced to admit ‘that partialities of instruments and suspicions of amities, besides these ordinary emulations ... made something be mistaken that were perhaps not ill meant’.277 Bodl., Tanner 75, f. 264.

This quarrel was the culmination of ill feeling between Northampton and Salisbury that first surfaced over the winter of 1604/5, when Northampton had evidently put pressure on Salisbury to resign the secretaryship. However, neither man allowed their disagreement to spill over into the parliamentary arena. (Such behaviour had not been seen since the 1st Lord Paget had tried to topple Stephen Gardiner by opposing his heresy bill in 1554, and would not be seen again in English political life before the revival of impeachment in 1621.) On the contrary, Northampton continued to support Salisbury. On 11 June he seconded his colleague when the latter urged the Commons to pass a bill to abolish the laws on the statute book which regarded Scotland as an enemy.278 CJ, i. 382b. Four days later, with the session nearing its end, he and Salisbury again made common cause, this time after the Commons complained that English merchants trading to Spain had been mistreated. Although it was clear that Spain’s behaviour was designed to force English merchants to trade with Flanders and so provoke a quarrel with the Dutch, neither man showed much sympathy. Salisbury was still angry with the Commons over the Union, and neither he nor Northampton had any intention of taking action that might endanger the negotiations for a truce between Spain and the United Provinces.279 ROBERT CECIL. At a conference between the two Houses on 15 June, Northampton declared that the Commons were ‘not fit to handle matters of state’ except ‘when there is no remedy and when the king craves subsidy’. Were Parliament to petition the king, as the Commons desired, an aspersion would inevitably be cast on James. It would suggest that the king ‘sleeps soundly in a senseless contempt of common miseries as nothing can awake but the thunder of a Parliament’.280 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 444-5 (Northampton’s own notes on this speech); Bowyer Diary, 339; Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, iii. 360-1. Privately, however, Northampton used his influence with the Spanish ambassador to secure redress for English merchants.281 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 486.

Northampton attended more sittings of the upper House in 1606-7 than he had in either of the previous two. Indeed, he is recorded as having missed only seven days out of 102. Two of these absences – those of 3rd and 9th June - probably reflect the impact of the Midlands Rising, which dominated Council business in early June. A third absence, on 30 May, corresponded with the departure for France of the prince de Joinville, whom Northampton had befriended during the latter’s stay in England.282 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 5; Ambassades de M. de La Boderie, iii. 345. Joinville was the son of Henri, duc de Guise, leader of the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion and first cousin to Mary, queen of Scots. Northampton had greatly admired Joinville’s father, whom he described, at the time of his arrest in 1581, as ‘a rare and gallant gentleman’.283 Caney, 15-16.

As in the previous two sessions in which he had sat, Northampton was named to various legislative committees. Several of his appointments reflected the fact that he was a government minister. His membership of the committee for the bill to abolish the hostile laws governing relations between England and Scotland certainly falls into this category. So too do the committees on bills to confirm the validity of defective title deeds, as the fines arising from defective titles were an important source of royal income, and Northampton himself was one of the commissioners for their collection. Other bills with a bearing on the interests of the crown to which Northampton was named included the exchange of land for tithes between the archbishopric of Canterbury and the king; the exchange of Salisbury’s house of Theobalds for the king’s manor of Hatfield; and a measure to restrain Canons not authorized by Parliament.284 LJ, ii. 471b, 494a, 503a, 503b, 511a, 520b. A few of Northampton’s appointments, like the committee on the bill to allow the sale of lands belonging to the late Sir Francis Gawdy^‡ of Shouldam, reflected the fact that he was a Norfolk landowner. However, it is hard to see why Northampton should have been included on committees for bills to assure the title of lands in Leicestershire bought from All Souls’ College, Oxford by Sir William Smith^‡, and improve the provision of pasture in Herefordshire, unless it was to help make up the numbers.285 Ibid. 456b, 468a, 512b.

High office and naval reform, 1607-9

Northampton accompanied the king on progress over the summer of 1607. During this time he attempted to effect a reconciliation with the queen, Anne of Denmark, who, like him, was a closet Catholic. However, Anne was deeply protective of her children, particularly the young and sickly duke of York, and, unlike her husband, may never have forgiven Northampton for the jibes he had directed at her sons a few years earlier. Initial reports indicated that Northampton succeeded in placating Anne.286 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 325. By the end of the year, however, it was clear that the task was hopeless, for despite long labour, and the help of intermediaries, both Catholic and Protestant, the queen’s indignation remained ‘at the full’.287 HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 58. Northampton’s letter is calendared as 1 Jan. 1608, but this was presumably the date of its receipt, since internal evidence indicates that it was written before the death of Sir John Fortescue on 23 Dec. 1607.

If Northampton remained on bad terms with the queen, his relations with Salisbury were little better. In September 1607 there were signs of a thaw, for on the 12th, having retired to Greenwich, he begged the chief minister for a buck, and pledged to drink his health in return.288 HMC Hatfield, xix. 245. However, the kindly gesture was misleading, as Northampton was then in an uncommonly good mood, the king having granted him two thirds of the impost on starch for 12 years.289 E214/598. In fact, tension between the two men soon resurfaced, as Northampton remained restless. Since his appointment as lord warden, the only significant addition to his responsibilities had been in the realm of Irish affairs. (Following the death in April 1606 of Ireland’s lord lieutenant, Charles Blount^*, earl of Devonshire, he and several other councillors had been deputed to help Salisbury manage Irish business.)290 J. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, 28. See also Peck, Northampton, 89-90. He still greatly desired one of the leading offices of state.

By the beginning of 1608, Northampton’s eyes were fixed on the office of lord high admiral, which was held by his hated cousin, Nottingham. Under Nottingham, the Navy had gone to wrack and ruin, despoiled by its own dockyard officers, at great financial cost. During the first few years of the reign, Nottingham’s neglect had been overlooked, but following the flight to Flanders in September 1607 of Ulster’s leading Catholic peers, the earls of Tyrone [I] and Tyrconnell [I], the situation changed dramatically. Spain was being urged by the dissident earls to mount military operations against the English, and by February 1608 the Council were receiving reports of a build-up of Spanish naval forces in the Iberian peninsula. There were also rumours that Spain, angry at English incursions into the New World, was preparing to attack the newly established colony of Jamestown, in Virginia. In response to these alarming reports, Salisbury advocated that England strengthen her naval forces,291 HMC Hatfield, xx. 78, 99; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 228-9. while in late March the king ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the Navy.

It seems likely that Northampton played a key role in persuading James of the necessity of this commission, as he had most to gain by promoting reform. Salisbury, though keen to ensure England’s naval readiness, was probably ambivalent at best about an investigation that would inevitably undermine his ally, Nottingham. However, before this new body could convene, its existence was called into question. The commission, as drafted, gave leadership to Nottingham rather than Northampton, an arrangement calculated to ensure that Northampton’s path to the admiralty remained blocked. Not surprisingly, therefore, a question mark was raised over the commission.292 C181/4, unfol. (Mar. 1608); ‘Further Pprs. from the Commission of Enquiry, 1608’ ed. A.P. McGowan, Naval Miscellany V ed. N.A.M. Rodger (Navy Recs. Soc. cxxv), 5. Not until 30 Apr. was a fresh commission issued, one which placed Northampton rather than Nottingham at the helm.293 Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 2-4.

The reason James decided to bestow the headship of the Navy commission on Northampton rather than Nottingham probably lies in the events which followed the sudden death at the Council table on 19 Apr. of the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset. Hitherto, Northampton had concentrated on supplanting Nottingham as lord admiral; Dorset’s death opened up the possibility of obtaining the treasurer’s staff instead. The lord warden lost no time in making this clear. In pursuing this ambition, he was not without support on the Council. Among those who encouraged him to apply to the king was the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir Edward Coke^*, who hoped thereby to keep Northampton away from the lord chancellorship when that office finally fell vacant.294 Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, iv. 53. However, Northampton was opposed by Salisbury, who had long been closely involved in managing the royal finances. Salisbury, of course, already held two major offices, those of secretary of state and master of the Wards. He also exercised the duties of the lord privy seal, a position which, officially at least, had been in abeyance since 1598. Were he to become lord treasurer, he would add a fourth major office to this already impressive list. Behind the scenes, Northampton undoubtedly remonstrated with James. His lobbying was not entirely unsuccessful, even though James eventually decided to bestow the treasurership on Salisbury. This was because, on 27 Apr., the king deprived Salisbury of the keepership of the privy seal, which office was granted the following day to Northampton instead.295 HMC Downshire, ii. 57. In addition, on 30 Apr. Northampton was finally given permission to investigate the Navy, thereby holding out the hope that the office of lord privy seal might simply be the stepping stone to greater things.

The settlement reached at the end of April 1608 gave both Northampton and Salisbury everything they wanted. Salisbury had become lord treasurer at minimal cost to his authority, while Northampton had at last acquired a major office of state and permission to investigate the Navy, an inquiry which, if handled well, might pave the way for further advancement. For the time being at least, all signs of enmity between the two men vanished. In June the French ambassador declared that ‘il y a un parti formé entre le grand tresorier et le comte de Northampton’.296 Ambassades de M. de La Boderie, iii. 344. Salisbury may even have warmed to his old ally once again. In a note probably written at around this time, Salisbury acknowledged receiving from Northampton a letter thanking him for a small favour. In it he expressed the hope that ‘you will always be secure that I will be found your lordship’s assured friend’.297 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 188v. The note is badly damaged, but is signed ‘Salisbury’. It is accompanied with a fly-leaf that belongs to a letter addressed to Northampton as lord privy seal, but it is not clear that this fly-leaf and Salisbury’s note belong together: ibid. f. 187v.

Northampton quickly moved to assert his authority as lord privy seal. Indeed, when the patent creating George Carew^*, Lord Carew (later earl of Totness), master of the Ordnance, passed the great seal without his knowledge he swiftly complained.298 Chamberlain Letters, i. 261. He also soon became embroiled in a dispute with the clerks of the privy seal, whom he accused of concealing the true extent of their fees in order to deprive him of his share in the profits of office.299 CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 436, 456, 458; Peck, Northampton, 49. The outcome of this quarrel is unclear, but it is probably significant that in November Northampton was given a fresh grant of the starch farm at a much reduced rent, an arrangement which looks suspiciously like the product of a face-saving formula.300 A.F. Upton, Sir Arthur Ingram, 20; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 69.

Northampton acted with no less rapidity over the investigation into the Navy. On 7 May he had the commission read aloud in the Court of Wards. Thereafter he entrusted the task of gathering evidence to his friend and fellow commissioner Sir Robert Cotton, along with the purser John Clifton and the master attendant Thomas Norreys, Northampton’s two principal informants.301 Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 5; L.L. Peck, ‘Problems in Jacobean Admin.: Was Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, a Reformer?’, HJ, xix. 836. He evidently also took advice from the former treasurer of the Navy, Sir Fulke Greville^* (later 1st Lord Brooke), who had left office in 1604 after trying without success to bring about reform.302 For evidence suggesting that this was so, see Eg. 2975, f. 59v. The job of taking witness statements was nevertheless immense, and in June Northampton and his fellow commissioners obtained the Council’s permission to appoint five sub-commissioners who, being resident in north Kent, were better placed than them to take the depositions of witnesses in the Navy’s dockyards.303 HMC Laing, i. 110-11. Even with this additional help the commissioners struggled to interview all the Navy’s officials before June 1609, when the king heard them deliver their findings at Greenwich. Indeed, witnesses were still being interviewed at the time of the royal visit.304 Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 255.

Two months before the commissioners laid their findings before the king, Northampton was presented with a seeminly golden opportunity to inflict serious damage on his hated rival, Nottingham. In April 1609 the shipbuilder Capt. George Waymouth informed him that the Prince Royal, then under construction at Woolwich, was unfit for purpose. As large sums had been bestowed on this new vessel, which was modelled on the flagship of the Danish fleet,305 N.A.M. Rodger, Safeguard of the Seas, 386. he persuaded the king to dispatch Nottingham, together with the earl of Suffolk and Edward Somerset^*, 4th earl of Worcester, to investigate. However, the three peers quickly discovered that Waymouth’s complaint was groundless. Northampton was furious, and accused all three men of partiality, whereupon the king decided to look into the matter himself. On arriving at Woolwich dockyard on 8 May, James was greeted by Northampton, who attempted to usher him into his lodgings. However, Nottingham was then waiting at the dockyard’s main gate, and James declined to snub the lord admiral. During the ensuing hearing, the king satisfied himself that the measurements employed in building the Prince Royal were accurate and that Waymouth’s complaint was groundless. Northampton was so angry that he left by a back entrance, before the king, railing against those who had misled him.306 Autobiog. of Phineas Pett ed. W.G. Perrin (Navy Recs. Soc. li), 51-2, 58, 62-3, 67.

Although James had attempted to spare his blushes, praising him for his ‘great care and diligence’, there was no disguising the fact that Northampton had been humiliated. Indeed, the builder of the Prince Royal, Phineas Pett, subsequently went out of his way to traduce Northampton ‘in every tavern and ale bench’. Not surprisingly, therefore, when the king visited Greenwich one month later to hear the commission’s findings into the Navy’s administration, Northampton asked James to re-open the inquiry into the construction of the Prince Royal. However, he was rebuked by the king, who demanded that he refrain from insisting upon ‘that whereof his Majesty and the whole world were so sufficiently satisfied’.307 Ibid. 69.

Although Northampton had been misled over the construction of the Prince Royal, the findings of his commission into the Navy’s administration were far more secure and utterly damning. Over the course of three days, it was demonstrated to the king, in great detail, that corruption was widespread, and that most of the Navy’s chief officials were more interested in lining their own pockets than in serving the interests of the crown. At the end of this lengthy hearing, on 10 June, James announced that he would return to the matter in September, after his summer progress and before the start of the new law term. All those accused by the commissioners, he added, would be referred to the courts of justice for punishment. Northampton was naturally delighted with this outcome. In a letter to Cornwallis, written in July, he declared with some satisfaction ‘vincit veritas’ – truth always prevails.308 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 54-5.

Northampton’s sense of triumph was to be short-lived. Over the summer, James developed cold feet, perhaps because he now realized that Spain, far from wanting to provoke a conflict, was desperate to conciliate England in order to gain her help in negotiating a truce with the Dutch. In late July the Venetian ambassador remarked that the king was more concerned to provide for the future than to punish past offences.309 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 312. By the time James turned his attention to Northampton’s final report, at the end of September, Nottingham and his subordinates knew they were safe.310 For the date of the Hampton Court hearing, see HMC Downshire, ii. 146-7. For evidence that the Navy’s officials knew they were in the clear, see Eg. 2975, f. 48v. All that Northampton had to show for more than a year’s hard work was the removal of the admiral on the Irish station, Sir Thomas Button, who was exposed, during the course of the commissioners’ inquiry, as having consorted with pirates.311 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 77v, 81v; Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 60-3. Northampton must have been deeply disappointed, as there was now no longer any prospect of toppling the lord admiral. He nevertheless put on a brave face. Writing to Cotton after presenting his report to the king at Hampton Court, he remarked that ‘the work of reformation’ had been received ‘with the most gracious acceptance of the king and the applause of all my fellows’. Even Nottingham, he declared, now looked on the inquiry with an approving eye, a transformation which he described as ‘more than half a miracle’.312 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 154.

Following the reading of the commissioners’ report, James ordered Northampton to draw up a series of regulations, based on the report’s findings, to govern the Navy’s affairs in future.313 Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 6. However, Northampton now had little incentive to comply with this instruction, and so far as is known, no such ordinances were ever drafted. He nevertheless remained eager to undermine Nottingham, for just three months after presenting the commissioners’ report he complained to the king about the lord admiral’s failure to suppress piracy.314 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 568.

The parliamentary sessions of 1610

In the aftermath of the Hampton Court hearing, Northampton turned his attention from naval reform to the growing problem of private duels. This was not a moment too soon. In November 1609, six months after Viscount of Haddington [S] (John Ramsay^*, later earl of Holdernesse) issued a challenge to the king’s cousin the 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (Ludovic Stuart^*, later duke of Richmond), two popular young courtiers killed one another in a duel at Islington.315 CSP Ven. 1607-10, pp. 234, 390; Gent. Mag. lxx. 1019. As de facto head of the commission for the office of earl marshal, Northampton considered it his duty to take action. He persuaded Sir Robert Cotton to furnish him with a treatise on the crown’s historic attitude towards duelling, in which Cotton explained that it had always been within the king’s power to forbid private combat, and to authorize, in its place, trial by combat.316 Cott., Titus C.I, f. 165v. Members of the Soc. of Antiquaries, including Cotton, had considered the legality of duelling as early as 1601: Collection of Curious Discourses, ii. 172-215. In addition, he looked for advice to his ally Lord Chief Justice Coke who, on 3 Oc. 1609, presented him with a treatise on unlawful duels.317 Bodl., Ashmole 856, ff. 146-8. (Coke also penned ‘Duello Foiled’, dedicated to ‘my very good lord’, in which he explained how he had once prevented a duel between two of his friends.)318 Collection of Curious Discourses (1775) ed. T. Hearne, ii. 223-6. Finally, early in 1610 Northampton turned to John Finet, then in France, where the problem of duelling was, if anything, worse than in England. After reporting that a recent edict issued by Henri IV had proved remarkably successful, Finet advocated adopting a similar approach in England.319 A Letter from Paris written to a Nobleman upon the Subject of Duelling, Written by Sir John Finet ... (1720), 7-20. On the French edict, see M. Fougeroux de Campigneulles, Histoire des Duels Anciens et Modernes, i. 183-4.

Before Northampton could take action, Parliament, which had last assembled in 1607, reconvened. Northampton may have regarded this latest meeting as something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he probably shared the belief of Salisbury, that only a Parliament could restore the royal finances to health, but on the other he may have resented the king’s decision to cancel his starch monopoly, which had proved widely unpopular, in order to head off parliamentary criticism.320 Upton, 20. In the event, the king eventually decided to compensate him for his loss, awarding him an annual pension of £4,000 in June 1610.321 Arundel Castle, G 1/8, unnumbered item, 19 June 1610; CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 617.

As the main business of the session was the royal finances and negotiations with the Commons over the Great Contract, Northampton naturally attended the upper House assiduously. According to the Journal, he missed only eight mornings out of a total of 88 and two afternoon sittings out of seven. These figures may actually overstate his absenteeism: on the morning of 2 Mar., when he is not recorded as having been present, he brought a bill into the House. What lay behind most of Northampton’s absences is unclear. However, his failure to attend the chamber on the morning of 6 July may be attributable to the fact that, on that same day, he sealed a conveyance in which he acquired the chapel of St Mary Rounceval, in Charing Cross, from Sir Robert Brett^‡.322 C54/2044, unnumbered. Guerci misdates the conveyance to 1611: Guerci, 357, 373-4.

As in previous sessions, the crown’s chief spokesman was normally Salisbury. Northampton’s role, more often than not, was to support the lord treasurer. When Salisbury announced, on 24 Feb., that he was not prepared to discuss ‘retribution’ (meaning the prerogative revenues that the crown was willing to surrender) before ‘contribution’ (meaning the sum the Commons were willing to pay in return), he was seconded by Northampton, among others. Northampton also supported Salisbury on 20 Apr., when the lord treasurer urged the Lords to consult the judges, a course of action described by the lord privy seal as not only convenient but necessary.323 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 12-13, 211. Salisbury received similar support from Northampton six days later, when he informed the Lords that he intended to reject the Commons’ offer of £100,000 to buy out wardship, purveyance and other feudal incidents, as the king actually needed three times this sum.324 Ibid. 217. The earl of Huntingdon seems not to have understood Northampton’s meaning: ibid. 68. For the details of Salisbury’s demands, and the Commons’ offer, see ROBERT CECIL.

Northampton assumed the role of chief spokesman for the Lords on only a handful of occasions. The first of these was on the afternoon of 1 Mar., when he set out the case for supply at a meeting with the Commons. The royal cisterns were dry, he declared, and the state lacked the means to withstand invasion. Other kings, notably Richard II, had been heavily in debt and yet had received the assistance of their subjects. Indeed, under Richard, many parishioners had preferred to sell their church silver rather than allow the king to remain in debt. James merited similar generous treatment, having established peace, weeded out schismatics from the Church, reformed abuses in the Navy and suppressed piracy. Many Members of the Commons feared that James lacked the will to curb his spending. However, Northampton assured his listeners that henceforth the king would ‘limit himself within the bounds of judgement and moderation’.325 Procs. 1610, i. 21-3; Parl. Debates 1610 ed. S.R. Gardiner, 17-18.

It would be instructive to know what the Commons made of this speech, since it included elements that were unconvincing, to say the least. It was, for instance, straining the truth to claim that James had reformed abuses in the Navy, when in fact the malefactors had never been punished and no new ordinances had ever been drafted. Some aspects of Northampton’s performance may also have done more harm than good. Those whom the lord privy seal branded as ‘schismatics’ – ministers who had refused to subscribe to the Canons promulgated in 1604, for instance – were widely admired in the lower House, which repeatedly passed bills requiring all Canons to be confirmed by Parliament in future. It was also unhelpful to liken James to Richard II. Many of Northampton’s listeners cannot have been ignorant of the fact that Richard’s decision to raise taxes in time of peace had threatened the property rights of the subject, thereby helping to pave the way for his deposition.326 N. Saul, Richard II, 260-1.

Despite the obvious shortcomings of this speech, Northampton acted as spokesman for the Lords 11 days later, when he informed the Commons that the king had decided to allow them to offer to buy out wardship – described as ‘the fair Helen’ - as they had requested. After conveying this message, Northampton took the liberty to speak on his own account. It would be better, he warned, if Parliament helped the king now, ‘whilst he is able to concur with us’, rather than later, ‘when you must bear him more heavy, and ... he must crush you, for whilst we hold monarchy we must maintain the monarch’.327 Procs. 1610, ii. 54-5. The implied threat – pay up, or else – was unmistakeable, but its dramatic effect was probably lessened by the fact that Northampton had said much the same thing four years earlier.

Northampton’s belief that the king was entitled to resort to his prerogative powers to solve his financial problems marks him out as a royal absolutist, meaning that he was one of those who believed that the king could override any of the legal rights of his subjects in cases of necessity.328 J.P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots, 46. As an absolutist, Northampton probably agreed with the Cambridge-based lawyer Dr John Cowell, who claimed in his legal dictionary, The Interpreter (1607), that the power of monarchs was not fettered by human laws and that the king could, if he wished, make law without reference to parliaments. Such sympathies would certainly have done him no harm with the king, as James had expressed a similar opinion in print in 1598. However, Cowell’s book outraged the Commons, whose support the king needed if he were to obtain financial relief. James was therefore left with little choice but to condemn Cowell for presuming to discuss the royal prerogative without permission. In so doing, the king enjoyed Northampton’s support. When, on 8 Mar., Richard Bancroft spoke in defence of Cowell, his vicar general, he was reminded by Northampton that James had already declared that Cowell’s book should be suppressed. He also reassured his listeners that James ‘always ... doth maintain and commend the common law’.329 Procs. 1610, i. 30, 189. This claim was false, as James had little patience with the English common law, but it was necessary to make it to remain on good terms with the Commons.

Northampton’s clash with Bancroft indicates that there was little love lost between the lord privy seal and the archbishop, who was well aware that Northampton remained secretly wedded to the Catholic faith. Indeed, in July, Bancroft angrily denounced Northampton at the Council table, saying that the king could not trust either him or the earls of Suffolk and Worcester, as they were never at communion.330 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, I, 157. (He might have added that Northampton, along with a number of other Catholic peers, had recently voted against a bill requiring those naturalized or restored in blood to take the oath of allegiance.)331 Procs. 1610, i. 121-2. In the parliamentary arena, the two men also disagreed over a bill against pluralism and non-residence, which originated in the Commons. When this measure received a second reading on 30 Apr., Bancroft, supported by his fellow bishops, declared that it was ‘fitter to be committed into the uttermost pit of hell than anywhere else’. Northampton, by contrast, was one of a number of lay peers who thought the bill should not be cast aside before it had been examined in committee. This was despite having little sympathy with its objectives, as he later announced that non-residence was not in itself an evil: ‘if the absent man place a deputy that doth preach and live honestly as himself, I say it is all one’. Although he thought church livings ought to be increased, he was more exercised by the proliferation of free schools than non-residence. In his view, such places produced far too many scholars, who then went on to swell the ranks of the universities. These men, unable to find employment suitable to their training, inevitably became discontented, and ‘either run away overseas or go up and down breeding new opinions’.332 Ibid. 71-3, 78-9, 234-5.

The surviving records for this session indicate that, despite his sometimes heavy-handed approach with the Commons, Northampton, with his academic background and experience as a writer, brought an element of skill to proceedings in the upper House. His reports of conference proceedings were especially admired. On hearing Northampton summarize on 10 Mar. the conference on Dr Cowell’s book, Salisbury remarked that ‘I never yet heard a man deliver a better report, for ... my lord that spoke last hath delivered it in puris naturalibus’. Two days later, Northampton relayed to the upper House the king’s message giving the Commons leave to treat of wardship in a manner described by the clerk as ‘ very ample and apt’.333 Ibid. 34; LJ, ii. 565b. Northampton nevertheless had only a slender grasp of parliamentary procedure. On 17 Mar. he proposed that Salisbury deliver a message of thanks to the king, only to be reminded by Salisbury himself that this duty properly belonged to the lord chancellor, ‘our mouth’.334 Procs. 1610, i. 39, 193-4.

Aside from the major issues of the session, Northampton continued to take a close interest in legislation affecting Norfolk. At the second reading of a bill to establish a hospital at Thetford, he moved for the measure to be committed, on the grounds that it concerned both his native county, of which he was lord lieutenant, and the town where many of his ancestors were buried. He also observed that the foundation of Thetford hospital had been the express wish of one of his father’s allies. His request was granted, and he himself headed the list of those named to the committee. He subsequently proceeded to steer the bill through the House, obtaining permission for the committee to retire to consider the measure and bringing the amended bill into the House on 26 May.335 Ibid. 40; LJ, ii. 569b. For the background to the bill, see HP Commons, 1558-1603, ii. 162; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 285. Another bill with a bearing on Norfolk sought to allow lands belonging to Henry Jernegan to be sold to the Norfolk magistrate Sir John Heveningham^‡. As the latter’s father, Sir Arthur Heveningham, was one of Northampton’s deputy lieutenants, Northampton was, not surprisingly, appointed to the committee, which, like the Thetford hospital bill committee, he evidently chaired.336 Norf. RO, PHI 583, 578X4; LJ, ii. 571a. A third measure of concern to Norfolk, and therefore to Northampton, sought to authorize the drainage of certain marshes in East Anglia. The first-named member of the committee, Northampton returned the bill to the House without amendment.337 LJ, ii. 639a, 642b.

These three bills were not the only private measures in which Northampton took a keen interest during the session. He was the first-named member of the committee appointed on 25 June for the bill to revoke some conveyances made by Sir Robert Drury, one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber and, perhaps more significantly, joint gamekeeper for the king at Thetford.338 Ibid. 623a, 631a; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 118. He also chaired the committee for a bill to allow Charles Waldegrave to sell land, reporting on 1 May that the measure was unfit to proceed in its existing form and had therefore been replaced. Although the Waldegrave family were from Suffolk rather than Norfolk, Sir William Waldegrave^‡ (d.1554) had served under Northampton’s father against the Scots, while Sir Edward Waldegrave^‡ (d.1561) was a Marian councillor who had refused to conform on Elizabeth’s accession. Another legislative committee chaired by Northampton concerned the sale of lands belonging to William Essex. His interest in this bill, which he reported on 26 Apr., stemmed from the fact that he was one of the feoffees for Essex’s estate.339 LJ, ii. 570b; Procs. 1610, i. 215; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 562.

Kinship played an important part in some of Northampton’s legislative appointments. On 11 June he was named to consider the bill to allow his cousin the earl of Oxford to sell his main residence, a measure he returned to the House, with amendments, on 14 June.340 LJ, ii. 611a, 613b. A few weeks earlier, he returned from committee a bill to confirm two London livery companies, the Salters and the Brewers, in possession of their lands. The measure was opposed by the 1st Lord Arundell of Wardour (Thomas Arundell^*), a fellow Catholic, whom Northampton described as ‘cousin’.341 Ibid. 600a; Procs. 1610, i. 90; M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Eng. 89. Family connection may also have influenced Northampton’s membership of a committee to settle the lands of Edward Neville^*, 8th Lord Abergavenny, as his friend and kinsman Sir Francis Fane^* (later 1st earl of Westmorland) stood to inherit the Abergavenny estate in the event that the Neville family failed in the male line. However, in this case, Northampton, after questioning the right of Abergavenny to his title, put aside family loyalty and attempted to mediate an agreement between two opposing sides.342 Twelfth Part of the Reps. of Sir Edward Coke (1677), 69; LJ, ii. 595b; Procs. 1610, i. 87.

Family interest may help to explain Northampton’s addition to the committee for the bill concerning the administration of justice in the north,343 LJ, ii. 631a. as his nephew, Lord William Howard, was a major northern landowner. However, it is more likely that his appointment simply reflected his role as a government minister, as the bill originated with the king, who sought to allow the extradition of fugitive offenders to Scotland. Northampton was unimpressed with the quality of the bill’s draftsmanship, and complained at the report stage that the measure had come to the committee in a largely undigested state. He was particularly irritated at a proviso which repeated a commonly held view, that the eldest sons of noblemen were not peers. This belief was mistaken, he declared, as knights were never permitted to precede the eldest sons of peers who had not been knighted. However, as chairman of the committee, Northampton steered the bill, with the necessary amendments, through the House, and at the end of the session it passed into law.344 Procs. 1610, i. 122, 137, 140; B. Galloway, Union of Eng. and Scot. 1603-8, pp. 142-3.

The role played by Northampton over the bill to remand fugitives to Scotland undoubtedly helped reduce the workload of Salisbury, who might otherwise have been expected to step in himself. Salisbury had his hands full with the negotiations over the Great Contract, which reached their climax on the afternoon of 16 July, when the Commons offered to provide the king with an annual income of £180,000 in return for the surrender of wardship and purveyance. That evening, Northampton accompanied Salisbury and the earls of Suffolk and Worcester to Theobalds, where all four men considered the Commons’ offer with the king, which was considerably lower than the £220,000 James had demanded in late June.345 Procs. 1610, i. 145; ii. 285. In the event the two sides agreed to compromise, and an agreement in principle to accept £200,000 was reached on 19 July. All that remained now, aside from waiting to see whether there was an appetite for such a deal in the country at large, was to decide how to raise the money. Salisbury suggested that the new levy be raised upon land rather than upon ‘uncertain profits’. Northampton agreed, but before the Lords met the Commons’ representatives he wisely asked his fellow peers whether anyone else had any alternative ideas.346 Ibid. i. 152-3.

Towards the end of the session, on 19 July, Northampton was appointed to the committee for a bill to ensure the safety of the king, which had been drawn up in the wake of the assassination of Henri IV. Northampton naturally shared the desire of the bill’s draftsmen, but he was appalled by the clause which provided for the punishment of the children of offenders. As a law student at Cambridge, he had learned that moderation should be used when making new laws. His dismay was evidently shared by his fellow committee members, who thought the penalties laid down in the bill were likely to encourage rather than dissuade would-be assassins, who were apt to believe that the heavier the punishment the higher the heavenly reward.347 Ibid. 150; LJ, ii. 651a, 653a.

Like Salisbury, Northampton did not attend the Lords when Parliament reopened on 16 October. However, he had taken his seat by the time the House met again, two days later. He was again missing on the 22nd, when he was named in absentia to the committee for a bill to preserve and increase timber. On the 23rd he was appointed to a second committee, this time to consider a bill to prevent the export of iron ordnance (a perennial favourite), at which time Salisbury complained that the Commons had failed to discuss the agreement reached at the end of the last session. A conference with the Commons was subsequently sought, and Northampton was among those named to the committee. The Commons eventually resolved to break off the negotiations, a decision formally communicated to the Lords on 10 Nov., on which date Northampton was again absent. At around the same time, Northampton was named to two further bill committees, the first to consider ‘wills of land’, and the second to enable Prince Henry to makes leases.348 LJ, ii. 669a, 670a, 677a, 679a.

Northampton played no significant part in the Lords’ proceedings until 14 Nov., when Salisbury, desperate to salvage something from the wreck of the Great Contract, proposed that the Commons be asked to relieve the king. Such a request ran the risk of causing offence, as it was customary for the offer of supply to originate with the lower House, which might suspect that the Lords were trying to cheat them of the king’s thanks. However, when this was pointed out by the 1st Lord Knollys (William Knollys^*), it was dismissed by Northampton, who, like Salisbury, thought the Commons’ failure to supply the king thus far had placed the ball squarely in the Lords’ own court. It was subsequently agreed that, when the two Houses met later that afternoon, Salisbury, Northampton and Ellesmere ‘shall move the same in such sort as to their lordships shall seem fit’.349 Procs. 1610, i. 170-1, 254.

At the ensuing conference, Northampton attempted at some length to persuade the Commons to loosen their purse strings. Drawing upon his earlier speech to the Commons on 1 Mar., he asserted that prudence required the king to have a stock of money to pay for defence and that James was no longer profligate, having learned from his past mistakes. However, he avoided any further tactless references to Richard II. Instead, he laid great stress on James’s heavy financial commitments, among them Ireland, where there had recently been a minor rebellion, and pointed out that ‘the pretence of poverty hath ever been and ever will be an excuse for an unwilling mind’. Just as he had done on 12 Mar., he reminded the Commons that while there was a monarchy they were obliged to maintain the monarch. His words fell on deaf ears, however, as the Commons swiftly rejected Salisbury’s offer of a watered-down version of the Great Contract. Beyond reporting the bill to enable Prince Henry to make leases on 17 Nov., Northampton played no further recorded part in the session before the prorogation on 6 December.

Alliance with Robert Carr and pursuit of the treasurer’s staff, 1610-13

Since the beginning of James’s reign, Northampton had made a point of currying favour with handsome young men popular with the king. These included, in 1605, his own kinsman by marriage, the 21year-old Sir Philip Herbert^* (later 1st earl of Montgomery and 4th earl of Pembroke).350 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 104. By the time he became lord privy seal in 1608, Northampton had helped position many young men near the king, among them Lord Hay (James Hay^*, later 1st earl of Carlisle).351 Ambassades de M. de La Boderie, iii. 344. Northampton evidently developed a close friendship with Hay, for it at had been at his suggestion that Hay, a Scot, was granted an English peerage in 1606 (though one without the right in the English Parliament).352 ‘Camden Diary’ (1691), 12. However, by the end of 1607 the rising star at Court was not Hay but a young Scot named Robert Carr^* (later earl of Somerset). Carr, who was knighted and made a gentleman of the bedchamber in December 1607, had come to England in 1603 in the train of George Home, subsequently earl of Dunbar [S]. It is sometimes supposed that Dunbar was solely responsible for Carr’s rise to prominence, but it seems likely that Northampton, a friend of Dunbar, also had a hand in Carr’s emergence as favourite.353 Bellany, 28. Northampton was grief-stricken when Dunbar died in Jan. 1611: Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 121. Carr was the son of Thomas Kerr, laird of Ferniehurst, whose loyalty to Mary, queen of Scots had led him to protect Northampton’s brother-in-law, the 6th earl of Westmorland, after the latter fled to Scotland in 1569 following the rebellion of the northern earls.354 Bellany, 28; CP, xiib, 558.

Northampton’s decision to transfer his affections to Carr naturally upset Hay, who turned to Salisbury. The lord treasurer shared Hay’s alarm at the growing influence of Carr, and at the latter’s attachment to Northampton, whom he continued to regard with suspicion. During the dying days of the winter session of Parliament in 1610, Salisbury and Hay therefore hatched a plan to drive a wedge between Northampton and Carr. Unfortunately for Salisbury, the details were overheard and relayed to Northampton, who alerted Carr.355 CUL, Dd.iii.63, f. 22. Rather than wait to discover the nature of this scheme, the favourite struck first. He spread a rumour that the Commons were planning to present James with a petition blaming the Scots for his overspending and calling for them to be sent home.356 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 264-5. His aim was to bring about an immediate end to the Parliament in order to undermine Salisbury, who was still trying to obtain a vote of supply.

Northampton was dismayed at Parliament’s failure to grant the king supply,357 HMC Portland, ii. 22. but he was undoubtedly delighted at the censure heaped upon Salisbury by the king following the dissolution. At his suggestion, in January 1611, Salisbury surrendered to James his profits as master of the Wards in order to help the ailing royal finances.358 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 135. However, his satisfaction was probably short-lived. Before long, Northampton found himself the target of the king’s displeasure, after James learned from friends of the lord admiral that he intended to pardon the disgraced vice admiral of Devon, Sir Richard Hawkins^‡. Northampton protested that he had been left with no choice, as the king’s own lawyers had concluded that Hawkins’ patent could not be suppressed unless Hawkins were first convicted in a court of law. He also observed, with some justice, that Nottingham was hardly in any position to accuse him of shielding a delinquent, since the Navy was teeming with corrupt officials. Over the course of the last eight years, he added, no member of the Council had done less harm than himself:

Your Majesty hath heard no outcry against any wrongs or oppressions done by me upon spleen, passion or pride. I never committed any man, setting aside priests and him that stole your deer at Greenwich ... since I was sworn your councillor. I never informed you of cause that did not prove true, nor against persons that was innocent. I have been always in your care more apt to qualify than to aggravate ...

He also claimed that he had never before displeased James. In light of the offence his remarks about Prince Charles had caused the king and queen some years earlier, this remark should probably be taken with a large pinch of salt.359 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 76-81. For other contemporary reaction to Northampton’s intention to pardon Hawkins, see Cott., Titus B.VII, f. 471r-v.

How far Northampton’s lengthy and spirited defence went towards pacifying the king is unclear. However, as late as June an unsettled Northampton sought to win affection by declaring, in a letter to James, his ‘inestimable love’ for Carr, now Viscount Rochester, whom he recommended for a seat on the Council.360 Bellany, 48. Over the next few years, Northampton came to rely upon Carr, whom he invariably described as ‘sweet lord’, to defend him before James. This first became apparent shortly after Carr’s ennoblement, when Northampton quarrelled violently with his former friend Lord Hay. In his capacity as lord privy seal, Northampton had stopped a grant from being issued to Peter Bland, the king’s serjeant furrier, who answered to Hay as master of the great wardrobe. Bland alleged that Northampton had halted his grant because it was supported by Hay, but Northampton maintained that he prevented its passage solely because it included a pension unwarranted by precedent. In the garden at Hampton Court, Northampton confronted Hay, who retorted that, were it not for the fact Northampton was a councillor, he would make him repent his words. At this affront, Northampton, forgetting that he had been instructed by the king to put an end to private duelling, offered to go through the garden door with Hay ‘and there to try my life like a gentleman’. Northampton subsequently related the details of this quarrel to Rochester,361 CUL, Dd.iii.63, ff. 21-2v. On Bland, see CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 432; 1611-18, p. 76; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 350. probably in the hope that the favourite would persuade the king to reprimand Hay. James, however, merely sought to reconcile the two peers. In the cold light of day, Hay certainly favoured a reconciliation, for, as Northampton noted bitterly, he feared that the lord privy seal might otherwise examine his accounts, ‘which are at this day the most desperate leeches, that suck the life blood out of the king’s fortune’. Reluctantly, Northampton agreed to bury the hatchet, for he ‘would rather die than displease the king’. However, as he told Rochester, his pleasantries would be for show only.362 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 123-4v.

By June 1611 Northampton claimed to be working eight or nine hours every day on government business.363 Harl. 7002, f. 115. Among those schemes with which he was closely associated was the sale of a newly created, heritable honour, that of baronet. The authorship of this project has been attributed to Salisbury, but in fact the credit more properly belongs to Northampton’s friend and ally, Sir Robert Cotton, who laid a paper before the Council advocating just such a scheme at the beginning of 1611.364 Nichols, ‘Institution’, 195-7; Sharpe, 123-4. Northampton was one of the principal members of the commission responsible for selling the new honour, for being a commissioner for the office of earl marshal he was well placed to determine the suitability of candidates. His leading role helps to explain why many Catholics were among the first purchasers of baronetcies.365 Nichols, ‘Institution’, 343; P. Croft, ‘Catholic Gentry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Bts. of 1611’, Conformity and Orthodoxy ed. P. Lake and M. Questier, 262. Croft plays down Northampton’s role: ibid. 267.

In the short term, the sale of baronetcies provided the crown with a much needed windfall. However, the creation of a new title of honour also raised doubts about the precise status of their holders in the social order. Were the latter superior to the younger sons of barons, for instance, and was a baronet the same as a banneret, a title that had once been bestowed on the field of battle? These questions were first raised in December 1611, at which time Northampton declared that it had never been intended to allow the new baronets precedence over the younger sons of barons.366 Nichols, ‘Institution’, 452. However, many of the purchasers of the new title remained dissatisfied and appealed to the king, who heard their complaints before the Council in April 1612. Among the malcontents was Sir William Twysden^‡, for whom Northampton had provided a parliamentary seat in 1607.367 HMC 13th Rep. IV, 135. Twysden indirectly accused his patron of sending Cotton into the country so that the latter would not be on hand to produce documents necessary to prove the baronets’ case. When Northampton denied the allegation, it was revealed that Cotton, on being contacted, had revealed that he had been instructed to come up ‘with a tan-tara’ only if sent for by the lord privy seal.368 Chamberlain Letters, i. 345. What happened next is unclear. According to John Chamberlain, Northampton was required by James to explain his transparent falsehood, whereupon the lord privy seal replied that ‘he could say no more but that he was glad to understand that his friend the antiquary was become so good a trumpeter’. However, another account, written by a well informed source more than three weeks earlier than Chamberlain’s, suggests that Northampton gave a rather less jocular response. In this version, Northampton went down on his knees before the king and declared that he would ‘right himself ... against anyone who should so traduce him’. When Twysden pointed out that he had not named Northampton as the culprit, James is said to have replied that this was like denying having named Judas after referring to the man who betrayed Christ.369 HMC 10th Rep. IV, 10-11.

Following the death of Salisbury in May 1612, it was rumoured that Northampton would soon be appointed lord treasurer. This was despite a report, which circulated a few months earlier, that he had agreed to step aside in favour of Ellesmere.370 HMC Downshire, iii. 306; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 338. In fact, Northampton was reluctant to become lord treasurer until he knew the full extent of the king’s financial difficulties. Indeed, it was probably for this reason that the treasury was placed in commission, to which Northampton was named on 16 June.371 Chamberlain Letters, i. 359.

The treasurer’s office was not the only post vacated on Salisbury’s death, as Salisbury had been chancellor of Cambridge University. Northampton naturally hoped to secure this prestigious position for himself, but many within the university reacted with horror at the news of his candidacy, as in their eyes the lord privy seal was ‘no better than a church papist’. They decided to nominate in his stead the king’s youngest son, Prince Charles. In the ensuing election, Northampton carried the day. However, on learning that he had been put in competition against the prince, a horrified Northampton immediately resigned. It was only after the king informed the university that Charles, being a minor, was incapable of serving, that the way was cleared for Northampton to be re-elected, this time unopposed.372 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 21; C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. iii. 49-51; Chamberlain Letters, i. 360-1.

Although initially reluctant to succeed Salisbury at the Exchequer, Northampton soon had the treasurer’s staff in his sights. Most of the allies of the late lord treasurer opposed him, with the notable exception of his nephew Suffolk and the crypto-Catholic earl of Worcester. This was probably because Northampton lost little time in joining the chorus of condemnation directed against Salisbury, whom he accused of putting the interests of his friends in the great farm of the customs before the financial needs of the king and of adopting ‘bedlam courses’. He also told Rochester that he approved of one of the libels criticizing Salisbury which appeared following the latter’s death.373 Bellany, 48; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 150; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 108. In order to prevent Northampton from obtaining the treasurer’s staff, the lord privy seal’s enemies used every weapon at their disposal, including ‘his religion, his love to his friends, and his hatred of his enemies’. In this fight Northampton had few supporters, but significantly they included the favourite, Rochester, who would become master of the horse if Northampton became lord treasurer. (Northampton intended to relinquish the office of lord privy seal to the current master, Worcester).374 HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 40-2. By the end of July Rochester was, not surprisingly, at loggerheads with one of the late lord treasurer’s most loyal supporters, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke.375 Birch, Jas. I, i. 191.

By the summer of 1612 the court was bitterly divided. For Northampton, it was imperative to retain the goodwill of the king if he was to achieve his goal. Unfortunately for him, James’s confidence in his judgement had recently been undermined by his handling of the Hawkins affair. His cause was further damaged in early August, when he was again rebuked by the king after the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands banned the import of English cloth. The details of the case are now obscure, but Northampton angrily complained that the fault lay with the late lord treasurer, who had so monopolized foreign policy that neither he nor the rest of the Council realized that relations with the Spanish Netherlands had deteriorated so far. He was dismayed that James, who perhaps suspected that he was more interested in pleasing Spain than in attending to the needs of England’s merchants, was unhappy with his written explanation. ‘God is my judge’, he declared, ‘I cannot for my life conceive what should displease the king in all this, nor in what point he should rest dissatisfied’.376 Peck, Northampton, 126. He thought he deserved approval rather than censure, and urged Rochester to let him know the extent of James’s anger against him, which ‘did much grieve me at the first’. He also urged Rochester to resist coming to terms with Pembroke, who desired to be reconciled to the favourite.377 SP14/70/46. Northampton clearly realized that, without Rochester’s support, any chance he still had of becoming lord treasurer would soon evaporate.

In order to mollify the king, Northampton turned for advice to Lionel Cranfield^* (later 1st earl of Middlesex), to whom he had previously sub-let his farm of the duties on starch. Cranfield pointed out that, by banning English cloth, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands would inflict more damage on their own economy than on England. Northampton was delighted, and instructed Cranfield to explain this to James, who was then on progress, in the hope that the king ‘will be satisfied ... or at the least ... that he will impose no more blame on me than I deserve’.378 SP14/70/49; Peck, Northampton, 127-8. As Northampton hoped, Cranfield’s intervention had a salutary effect, for by the fourth week in September reports were again rife that Northampton was about to be appointed lord treasurer.379 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 148; HMC Downshire, iii. 374; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xii), 26.

Soon after he dispatched Cranfield to James, Northampton, now confident in the king’s favour, turned to James for assistance. The cost of building Northampton House had virtually bankrupted him, and therefore he badly needed to lay his hands on the annual pension of £4,000, granted him in June 1610 in return for surrendering the farm of the duties on starch. Unfortunately, due to the crown’s poverty, this pension was two years in arrears. Rather than demand full payment of the £8,000 he was owed, Northampton offered to accept just £6,000. He was also willing to surrender his annuity in return for a pension of £3,000, payable out of the Irish customs, thereby saving the king £1,000 a year. In making these offers, Northampton was not being entirely altruistic, of course, since he was obviously hoping to demonstrate to the king his concern for the state of the royal finances as well as to lay his hands on a large sum of ready money. However, James readily agreed to this arrangement, and in October the appropriate warrants were issued.380 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 145-6; Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 617; SO3/5, unfol. (Oct. 1612).

By the autumn of 1612, it looked as though it was simply a matter of time before Northampton finally acquired the treasurer’s staff. In October the Venetian ambassador termed Northampton ‘lord treasurer in petto’, and the following month another well informed newsletter-writer declared that James intended to bestow the white staff upon Northampton when he visited the earl of Suffolk at Audley End.381 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 438; HMC Downshire, ii. 414. However, over the autumn George Abbot^*, newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury, accused Northampton, at the Council table and before the king, of having secretly advised the Catholic polemicist, Cardinal Bellarmine, to disregard his book attacking Henry Garnett, as it had been written merely to please the king and placate the people. This charge, if proven, would ensure that Northampton was never appointed lord treasurer.382 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 27; Chamberlain Letters, i. 394; State Trials, ii. 864.

Abbot’s accusation was absurd; Northampton himself described it as ‘almost above belief’. It called into question not only the motives of the lord privy seal but also the judgement of the king, who, if Abbot was correct, had ‘made a very ill choice’ in selecting Northampton to help examine Garnett and the other Gunpowder plotters.383 Peck, Northampton, 81. Crypto-Catholic though he was, Northampton had enthusiastically supported James’s right to the throne and had never had the least sympathy with the plotters, whose resort to violence had seriously undermined his repeated claim that most Catholics were the king’s loyal subjects. A majority on the Council were only too eager to believe Abbot’s wild accusation, however, and throughout the third week of November they busied themselves in examining the archbishop’s witnesses, to the consternation of many outsiders, who ‘marvel that such a matter should be taken so heinously’. The result was that, for several days, Sir Edward Coke replaced Northampton as the gossip’s favourite for the post of lord treasurer.384 Chamberlain Letters, i. 394.

It quickly became apparent that the accusations against Northampton – which also included the charge that the number of Jesuits and papists entering England had markedly increased since Northampton had become lord warden of the Cinque Ports – were baseless, having originated with a rumour begun by two English fugitives at Livorno [Leghorn], in northern Italy. Doubtless to the relief of Northampton, those responsible for spreading this malicious gossip were tried and convicted in Star Chamber in early December.385 State Trials, ii. 863-6. Having emerged triumphant, Northampton could afford to be magnanimous, at least publicly. At his request, the punishments inflicted on those found guilty by Star Chamber were remitted.386 Egerton Pprs. 457.

Shortly after the Star Chamber case, in January 1613, Northampton was appointed to head a fresh inquiry into the Navy. The remit of this new commission, whose members also included Northampton’s ally, Rochester, was to examine the evidence gathered by the 1608/9 inquiry and gather fresh material.387 SO3/5, unfol. (Jan. 1613). One possible explanation for this development is that Northampton had concluded that, despite his recent court victory, he now had only a slender chance of obtaining the treasurer’s staff, and therefore decided to revive his earlier strategy of trying to gain the office of lord admiral. Another is that the new Navy commission was a calculated act of revenge. Several of those convicted in Star Chamber of slandering Northampton belonged to the lord steward’s department, including Sir Richard Cox, one of the members of the board of Green Cloth. Although the office of lord steward had long been vacant, its duties had been performed during the first Jacobean Parliament on a temporary basis by Nottingham. If Northampton detected the hand of his old enemy Nottingham behind the rumours circulated by Cox and his associates, it would also explain why, in the spring of 1613, he opposed the proposed appointment of Nottingham’s eldest son as lieutenant of the admiralty, on the grounds that Nottingham was incompetent, his son lacked integrity and the office itself was needless.388 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 106v.

Whatever Northampton’s motives may have been, the news that there was to be a fresh inquiry into the Navy caused consternation among its senior officials. The Navy’s treasurer, Sir Robert Mansell^‡, sought legal advice with an eye to undermining the new commission, an act of presumption which led him and his lawyer, Sir James Whitelocke^‡, to be arraigned before the Council. Both men were soundly rebuked, but not before a modified version of the commission, restricted to examining abuses committed since 1609, was issued in April.389 Liber Famelicus of Sir J. Whitelocke, 37, 39-40; APC, 1613-14, pp. 211-17; SO3/5, unfol. (Apr. 1613). At around the same time, Mansell’s colleague Sir Peter Buck, clerk of the acts, re-ignited the rumours about Northampton’s unreliability in religion. Buck, who had been accused of embezzling large quantities of timber during the previous inquiry, told a customs official at Dover that Northampton and several other Catholic peers had begged the king to grant Catholic toleration. The custom officer’s wife proceeded to share the letter with all her friends. Buck was arrested in late January, and three months later he and a naval purser were hauled before Star Chamber and convicted of slander.390 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 168; Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton ed. L. Pearsall Smith, ii. 22-3; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 224-5; Chamberlain Letters, i. 453. On Buck’s embezzlement, see Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 26, 100, 210. News of Buck’s accusation, and the earlier rumours circulated by Sir Richard Cox and his associates, may explain why, at Easter, one of the king’s chaplains chose to condemn from the pulpit church papists and flatterers. Northampton was understandably furious, and demanded to know of the chaplain concerned whether he had ‘any particular meaning to him’.391 P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Court, 128, 175.

In view of the series of attacks to which he was subjected, Northampton could be forgiven for thinking that there was a concerted campaign against him. Not surprisingly, his health soon began to suffer. He developed a fever and found it hard to muster the strength to eat. In early March he failed to accompany to Cambridge Prince Charles and the king’s new son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, even though he was the university’s chancellor, and in mid April he retired to Greenwich to recuperate.392 Add. 64875, f. 92; Hacket, i. 24. His illness was compounded by the fact that, by the spring of 1613, his two key allies at court, Rochester and Suffolk, were at one another’s throats.393 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ii. 19. Unless he pacified them, Northampton might eventually be forced to take sides, thereby weakening his already limited support on the Council.

The rise of Somerset, 1613-14

It was Northampton’s good fortune that, by 1613, the basis for peace between Rochester and Suffolk already existed. Suffolk’s daughter, Frances, was conducting a secret affair with Rochester, and wished to divorce her existing husband, the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux^*), in order to marry the favourite. It is not clear when Northampton first became aware of this liaison, but he certainly encouraged it and may even have helped bring it about.394 A Somerset, Unnatural Murder, 115; Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, i. 74, 90; Secret Hist. of Ct. of Jas. I, i. 377-8. However, the affair greatly alarmed Rochester’s close friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, who hated the Howards and Northampton in particular, the lord privy seal having once denounced him to his face as ‘base’, a ‘liar’ and ‘a rascal’. Overbury feared that if Rochester became too attached to Frances he would lose the king’s favour and ruin himself. For Northampton, and for Frances herself, it was necessary to remove Overbury from the scene as soon as possible. In order to accomplish this, the king, presumably at Northampton’s suggestion, offered an ambassadorial posting to Overbury, who was thereby placed in a position not dissimilar to the one in which Northampton had been put in 1582, when Leicester and Walsingham had tried to pack him off to Germany. Overbury was understandably angry at this attempt to separate him from Rochester, and, like Northampton before him, declined the offer. However, whereas Northampton’s refusal had been accepted by Elizabeth, James was so incensed that in April 1613 he sent Overbury to the Tower.395 Somerset, 113-14, 124-5, 128-31.

In the short term, Overbury’s imprisonment paved the way for Northampton to forge an alliance between Rochester and Suffolk. It also enabled Suffolk to seek a commission to nullify Frances’ marriage on the grounds of non-consummation, Northampton having first impressed James that the union between Frances and Essex was ‘unnatural’.396 A. Wilson, Hist. of Great Britain (1653), 67-8. James was only too willing to agree to this request, as a marriage alliance between Rochester and Suffolk would bring peace to the court and bind his favourite to one of the most powerful families in the kingdom. However, the task of chairing the new commission was entrusted to Archbishop Abbot, who had grave misgivings about annulling Frances’ marriage. This was unpromising, but in September James achieved the outcome he desired by appointing some additional members to the commission’s ranks. Northampton was delighted, and not only with the verdict, for as he had hoped, over the course of the summer Rochester and Suffolk, united in a common cause, had grown affectionate towards one another.397 D. Lindley, Trials of Frances Howard, 85. For a detailed account of the annulment proceedings, see ROBERT DEVEREUX. The end of their hostility meant that Northampton was now in a far stronger position than he had been for many months, and in June 1613, even before the ruling of the commissioners, it was again rumoured that he would be appointed lord treasurer.398 Birch, Jas. I, i. 248.

Ten days before Abbot’s commission reached its decision, Overbury died, having been slowly poisoned at the instigation of Frances Howard and Rochester. Northampton was almost certainly complicit in this crime. It is suggestive, to say the least, that, shortly after Overbury’s imprisonment, the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Waad^‡, was dismissed after being criticized by Northampton for ‘using too much favour to Overbury’. It is also damning that Waad was replaced with Sir Gervase Elwes^‡, who paid Northampton £1,400 for his appointment and was later hanged for failing to protect Overbury, and that Overbury’s killer, Richard Weston, became Overbury’s gaoler on the recommendation of Northampton and Frances Howard. However, perhaps the key piece of evidence against Northampton is that in August he told Elwes that it would be better if Overbury, who was then gravely ill, never recovered. It is also suspicious that, after Overbury’s death, Northampton wrote to Elwes urging him to ensure a speedy burial.399 Somerset, 176, 223, 447-8; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 481-2. Precisely why Northampton, Rochester and Frances resorted to murder has never been clearly established. However, it seems likely that they feared that, while he lived, Overbury might compromise the reputations of Frances and Rochester. The good standing of his niece certainly seems to have been uppermost in Northampton’s mind, for in August 1613 the lord privy seal held out the prospect of release to Overbury in return for a written apology for the latter’s past discourtesies towards Frances.400 Somerset, 224. For a slightly different version of events, see Bellany, 54-5. Of course, Northampton presumably never had any intention of honouring his side of the bargain.

Over the summer of 1613, Northampton, blithely unaware that he had helped sow the seeds of Rochester’s downfall, turned his attention to examining the king’s immense expenditure on the Navy. By November he had concluded that widespread pilfering in the yards, which had already cost the king £100,000 since the 1608/9 naval inquiry, could only be prevented if the wages of the Navy’s seamen were paid regularly.401 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 30; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 208. How far Northampton got in formulating plans to reduce the charge of the Navy is unclear. However, a document headed ‘A Project of reducing his Majesty’s Navy to a lesser charge’, endorsed with the date ‘1614’, is, perhaps, his handiwork. This hitherto unnoticed paper seems to be a working draft, as several figures in the manuscript have been adjusted by its author to produce a lower annual charge.402 Hants RO, M51/636, no. 20.

Although Northampton had turned his attention once more to naval reform, much of his time was now taken up with writing a tract against duelling, which subject he had first investigated in 1609. He commenced work on this project in February 1613, and completed the first part at the end of April, shortly after recovering from his lengthy illness. However, before he could complete the second part, which was begun on 21 July,403 For these dates, see Cott., Titus C.I, ff. 206, 247, 248. the king grew alarmed at an upsurge in duelling resulting from quarrels between the partisans of the earl of Essex on the one side and those of Frances Howard on the other. In October James issued a proclamation forbidding the publicizing of any duels and requiring any man aggrieved at rumours of his conduct to complain to the commissioners for the office of earl marshal.404 Stuart Royal Proclamations, I, 295-7. For details of the challenges issued at this time, see HMC Downshire, iv. 190-1; Chamberlain Letters, i. 474-5; CUL, Dd.iii.63, f. 37. The latter clause was probably added at Northampton’s insistence; Northampton and his fellow commissioners were certainly shown a draft of the proclamation before it was printed.405 A. Stewart, ‘Purging Troubled Humours’, Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parl. ed. S. Clucas and R. Davies, 83; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 125. Following publication, Northampton told the king’s private secretary, Sir Thomas Lake^‡, that he had completed his tract and that he was simply waiting for the country at large to digest fully the contents of James’s edict before bringing his own piece ‘upon the stage’.406 Stewart, 87. In point of fact, he was probably still gathering information, as his notes show that he did not finish part two until 20 Feb. 1614.407 Orig. Letters Illustrative of Eng. Hist. ed. H. Ellis, iii. 108; Cott., Titus C.I, ff. 312v, 372r-v.

One reason why Northampton may have found it difficult to complete his tract sooner was that he was embroiled in a dispute with the queen. His relations with Anne, always bad, deteriorated sharply over the summer of 1613 after Rochester, without any prompting, procured for Northampton a grant of the stewardship of the manor of Greenwich, vacant since the death of Salisbury. Anne was incensed, for although Northampton already held the tower at Greenwich she wanted the stewardship for herself. Northampton was taken aback by this demand, for as he explained to Rochester, the stewardship ‘is no office for a woman, neither did ever any queen since the Conquest ask for a bailiwick’.408 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 95v. However, fearing that if he offended the queen any further, Anne would make trouble with the king, he resolved not to pass his grant, dated 4 June. This decision left the town of Greenwich without any form of government, so that before long it was overrun with beggars. It also meant that there was no one to pay the park keepers and gardeners, whose wages Northampton felt morally obliged to meet out of his own pocket. Under these circumstances, it is not entirely surprising that, in September, while the queen was absent at Bath, Northampton relented and passed his grant.409 Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 114-15v. For the grant, see Arundel Castle, G 1/8. For Anne’s stay at Bath, see Chamberlain Letters, i. 477.

On learning that the grant had passed the great seal, Anne vowed to expel Northampton from the park. A terrified lord privy seal thereupon offered to surrender his patent to the king. His offer seems to have been taken up, as the record of his grant in the signet office docket book was subsequently cancelled.410 SO3/5, unfol. (25 May 1613). However, Anne was nothing if not vindictive, and threatened that unless Northampton quit his beloved tower, on which he had spent more than £2,000 in improvements, she would boycott the forthcoming marriage of Rochester to Frances Howard.411 Somerset, 244. On Northampton’s spending on the tower, see CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 214; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 95v. It took the personal intervention of the king to ensure that she moderated her behaviour. In return for the addition of Greenwich to the queen’s jointure, Northampton was granted the right to exercise the stewardship until the office could be filled on a permanent basis and was confirmed as keeper of Greenwich Park.412 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 209, 212, 215, 216.

Shortly after weathering this violent storm, Northampton had the satisfaction of seeing his plans for Rochester and Frances Howard come to fruition. On 26 Dec. the couple were married, thereby uniting the royal favourite, now earl of Somerset, to the Howards. Northampton was naturally one of the bridesmen, and gave the couple plate worth £1,500 and a sword valued at £500.413 Chamberlain Letters, i. 497. However, the expectation at court that the event would be celebrated by his appointment as lord treasurer was not fulfilled. On the contrary, shortly before the wedding it was rumoured that Sir Edward Coke was once more in the running.414 HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 56; Chamberlain Letters, i. 493.

Northampton’s failure to obtain the treasurer’s staff at a moment of triumph demands an explanation. One possibility is that James never had any real intention of advancing Northampton at all. Although Archbishop Abbot’s attempt to discredit the lord privy seal had come to grief, it was plain that Northampton was feared and distrusted by many of his colleagues on the Council. Another possibility is that by the end of 1613 it was plain to the king that Northampton, now in his 74th year, had little time left. Northampton acknowledged as much himself at the height of his quarrel with the queen, when he told Rochester with some bitterness that, before long, he hoped to give complete satisfaction to Anne, as ‘my health grows much worse than it hath been’.415 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 115v.

The impression that Northampton’s star was now fading was confirmed in January 1614, when the earl retired to Greenwich to take physic, emerging only occasionally, as when he sat in judgement on a would-be duellist and his second in Star Chamber.416 HMC Cowper, i. 81; Stewart, 84-5. Before long, it was believed that the lord privy seal was ‘not in that grace and favour that he hath been’.417 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 270. Northampton himself dismissed this popular rumour as ‘strange conjects and fantasies’, but it was not without foundation, as Northampton’s withdrawal to Greenwich cleared a path for Suffolk who, according to one well-informed observer on 7 Jan., ‘now guides the rudder of the state’.418 Peck, Northampton, 38; HMC Downshire, iv. 285. Suffolk was every bit as ambitious as his uncle, and wished to be lord treasurer himself. At Audley End later that month he struck a deal with the earl of Pembroke, to whom he offered his office of lord chamberlain in return for the latter’s support. For Northampton, who was not present, this agreement with a man he considered ‘odious’ must have seemed unpalatable, to say the least. As recently as August 1612 he had blamed Pembroke for rioting in the forest of Dean, and in October 1613, after learning that Pembroke’s officers were felling timber in the forest reserved for the king, he urged Rochester to impress upon James that the fault lay with Pembroke personally.419 C. Hart, Forest of Dean: New Hist. 1550-1818, pp. 7-8; Cott., Titus C.VI, ff. 126r-v, 127-8v. On the Council’s order to prevent further felling, see APC, 1613-14, pp. 279-80; B. Sharp, In Contempt of all Authority, 195.

Northampton is unlikely to have welcomed Suffolk’s ambition for the treasurership. Indeed, after his death it was said that his decision to leave Suffolk only his house at Charing Cross reflected his anger on the subject.420 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ii. 40; Secret Hist. of the Ct. of Jas. I, i. 327. However, he may have regarded his nephew’s alliance with Pembroke as a necessary evil. For some time the king, desperate to solve his financial difficulties, had been negotiating a marriage alliance with France in the hope of securing a large dowry. As a partisan of Spain, Northampton firmly opposed a French alliance, and advocated instead a marriage with Savoy, which was still perceived, incorrectly, as a Spanish satellite.421 Add. 31111, f. 39; Narrative of the Spanish Marriage Treaty ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. ci), 111n. He was supported by Suffolk and also, to a limited extent, by Pembroke, who preferred a Protestant bride for Prince Charles. In order to persuade James to abandon the French negotiations, Suffolk and Pembroke offered to manage a Parliament for the king. Between them they, and their supporters in the House of Commons, would ensure a large grant of supply, thereby obviating the need for a dowry.422 A Thrush, ‘French Marriage and the Origins of the 1614 Parl.’, Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parl. 28-30.

Northampton had recovered sufficiently by the middle of February 1614 to take part in the Council’s deliberations on whether to advise James to summon a Parliament.423 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 223; Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 107. Whether he shared Suffolk’s confidence in a fresh meeting between the king and his subjects is unknown. However, now that France was on the brink of civil war and James was not yet prepared to countenance a Spanish marriage, it was difficult to see what other course lay open to the king. Northampton certainly made every effort, despite his ill health, to secure as many seats in the Commons as possible for his friends. He had far more electoral influence than in 1604, for now he was not only lord warden of the Cinque Ports but also chancellor of Cambridge University and steward of several parliamentary boroughs. In all, he managed to obtain 12 places for his allies and servants,424 Sir Robert Brett (Dover); William Byng (Winchelsea); Sir Lionel Cranfield (Hythe); Sir George Fane (Dover); Thomas Gibb (Stafford); John Griffith (Portsmouth); Sir Edward Hales (Hastings); Thomas Hitchcock (Bishop’s Castle); Sir Arthur Ingram (New Romney); Sir Miles Sandys (Camb. Univ.); Sir Thomas Smythe (Sandwich); Sir William Twysden (Thetford). compared with just six in 1604. This was an impressive haul, since it was far more than most peers could manage, but Northampton had hoped for even better results, having applied without success for the right to nominate burgesses at Dartmouth and Totnes.425 HMC 3rd Rep. 347; Devon RO, SM 1989, f. 20.

Shortly before the writs summoning a Parliament were issued, Northampton attended Star Chamber to witness Sir Stephen Proctor prosecuted for libel. Proctor claimed that Northampton had prevented the truth about the Gunpowder Plot from being revealed in its entirety.426 HMC Cowper, i. 81; Chamberlain Letters, i. 508. His allegation was rightly dismissed as absurd, for as Sir Edward Coke observed, no one had been more diligent than Northampton on the commission for investigating the conspiracy.427 Wentworth Pprs. ed. J. Cooper (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xii), 58, 60. Like Sir Richard Cox and his associates 15 months earlier, Proctor failed to comprehend that Northampton’s Catholic sympathies did not automatically make him an accessory to the Plot. However, instead of punishing Proctor, Star Chamber acquitted him of the charge of libel by the narrowest of margins, after Lord Chancellor Ellesmere – a close ally of Northampton’s enemy Archbishop Abbot – exercised his casting vote.428 Letters of John Donne ed. E. Gosse, ii. 34.

At around the same time as the Proctor trial, the king issued a second proclamation against duelling. Attached, as an appendix, was Northampton’s mammoth treatise on the subject. Aside from the fact that it represented the culmination of several years labour by Northampton, the proclamation is chiefly significant because it gave the lie to the popular belief that Northampton’s influence was dwindling. Against the wishes of the attorney general, Sir Francis Bacon^* (later Viscount St Alban), who thought offenders should be tried in Star Chamber, it assigned to the commissioners for the office of earl marshal the right to hear cases and determine disputes.429 Stuart Royal Proclamations, I, 302-8; Stewart, 87.

Final months, February – June 1614

By February 1614, Northampton seems to have been in no doubt that he was dying.430 Chamberlain’s claim that Northampton did not realize he was dying until the day before his death is unpersuasive: Chamberlain Letters, i. 541. See Cott., Titus, C.VI, f. 112. He secretly arranged for the Spanish ambassador to send him a priest to hear his confession. After unburdening his soul, he asked, ‘with deep tears and devotion’, to be formally reconciled to the Catholic Church.431 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II, 39. Between late February and early May, Northampton was so sick that he was unable to leave his house at Charing Cross where, during the last week of Lent, he was visited by the king.432 Chamberlain Letters, i. 517, 539. Consequently, when Parliament opened on 6 Apr., he was well enough to attend only one meeting, on 8 April. Indeed, he played almost no formal part in its proceedings until the final day, when he served as one of the commissioners for the dissolution.433 LJ, ii. 688b, 717a.

Northampton returned to Greenwich at the start of May. There, on 4 June, he received another visit from the king, who sought his advice, as Parliament was then on the point of collapse, the Commons having refused to vote supply unless impositions were abolished. What counsel Northampton gave to James cannot now be known for certain. However, he probably advocated an immediate dissolution. One reason for supposing this to be the case is that, one month into the Parliament, Northampton’s old friend, Sir Robert Cotton, completed a treatise on the reign of Henry III in which parliaments were condemned as a waste of time: ‘Parliaments, that before were ever a medicine to heal up any rupture in the prince’s fortune are now grown worse than the malady, since malignant humours began more to rule in them than well composed tempers’.434 S. Clucas, ‘Robert Cotton’s “A Short View of the Life of Henry the Third”, and its Presentation in 1614’, Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parl. 182. Cotton might not have penned such a provocative statement unless he believed that it encapsulated the view of his patron, Northampton. (However, as the chief target of Cotton’s treatise was Northampton’s main ally at court, the earl of Somerset, the point is perhaps debatable.) A second reason for supposing that Northampton advised a dissolution is that he almost certainly had a hand in wrecking the Parliament.

Northampton’s agent in this mischief was his longstanding friend, Sir Charles Cornwallis, the former ambassador to Madrid. In the elections to the 1614 Parliament, Cornwallis helped Northampton find candidates suitable for the seats under his control. One of the beneficiaries of Cornwallis’ patronage was the lawyer Thomas Hitchcock^‡, who was elected for Bishop’s Castle. During the Parliament, Hitchcock defended the king’s right to levy impositions, a position which reflected Northampton’s own absolutist views. In the dying days of the Parliament, Cornwallis asked Hitchcock to deliver a speech highly critical of royal policy. When Hitchcock refused to do so, Cornwallis turned instead to one of the Members for Hereford, John Hoskins^‡, who proceeded to deliver, on 3 June, perhaps the most inflammatory speech of the session.435 HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 711-12; HMC Hodgkin, 37. There is, of course, no direct evidence that Cornwallis acted on Northampton’s instructions. However, when Northampton returned to London on the morning of 7 June to help dissolve the Parliament later that day, the only man to accompany him in his coach was Cornwallis.436 HMC Portland, ix. 139; Chamberlain Letters, i. 541.

If, as seems likely, Northampton helped to sabotage the Parliament with the aid of Cornwallis and Hoskins, it was because he believed that failure of the Parliament would leave the king with little alternative but to seek a Spanish marriage for Prince Charles. It is certainly significant that, immediately after his visit from the king, Northampton wrote to the Spanish ambassador, Sarmiento. This letter has never been found, but Sarmiento considered it so important that he sent it to the king of Spain in his next dispatch.437 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II, 38.

By the time Northampton returned to London on 7 June, he was in great pain. Over the course of the new few days, his right thigh swelled up alarmingly. After initially supposing the swelling to be merely a ‘rheum’, his surgeon diagnosed a ‘tumour’ and decided to lance it - a serious mistake.438 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 129v; HMC Portland, ix. 139. The ‘tumour’ was, in all likelihood, a spontaneous haematoma which had formed in a muscle in the thigh. Its appearance was unsurprising given that, for some months, Northampton seems to have been suffering from exhaustion caused by lack of food and water and a corresponding wasting of the muscles. (In February 1614 he complained that ‘I am weak, sick and faint, without appetite, without rest’.) Left alone, such swellings, caused by blood leaking into surrounding tissue, naturally subside.439 Cott., Titus C.VI, f. 118. We are grateful to Frederick Holmes, emeritus professor of medicine at the university of Kansas, for his expert medical opinion. However, the operation resulted in bacterial infection, gangrene and sepsis.440 Chamberlain Letters, i. 541. Aware that the end was now imminent, Northampton wrote a final letter to Somerset on 14 June. Declaring that he had loved the favourite for his ‘virtue’ and not his fortune, he asked Somerset to ‘stay with all the power you can’ the bestowing of the lord wardenship on either Pembroke or the latter’s kinsman, Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle.441 CUL, Dd.iii.63, f. 16r-v. Although undated, the letter was written on a Tuesday – which clearly points to the 14th.

Northampton drew up his will that same day. After announcing that ‘I die a true and constant servant of ... the Catholic and apostolic Church’ (a statement not in itself incompatible with membership of the Anglican Church), he instructed his executors to complete two hospitals which he had recently started to build, one at Castle Rising and the other at Greenwich. The executors were to ensure that both hospitals, together with a third he had already erected at Clun, in Shropshire, were properly founded and incorporated. He asked his friends to forgive him for failing to leave them any legacies, ‘for that my debts are great and my servants many to be remembered’. However, he bequeathed £2,000 to his nephew Lord William Howard, on the grounds that the 4th duke of Norfolk had intended to convey the manor of Clun – which Northampton now owned – to Lord William. Northampton named Lord William as one of his executors, along with the earls of Suffolk and Worcester.442 Archaeologia, xlii. 375-8. All three may have received instructions not included in the will, for after Northampton’s death it was rumoured that a newly built college of Benedictine friars at Louvain was expecting to receive some money from his estate.443 HMC Downshire, v. 143.

Northampton asked to be buried in the chapel at Dover Castle, although as recently as December 1613 he had expressed the wish to be interred at Greenwich.444 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 214. Sir Henry Wotton^‡ regarded the choice of Dover Castle as evidence of the high regard in which Northampton held the office of lord warden of the Cinque Ports. It seems more likely, however, that Northampton chose Dover because, as Sarmiento observed, it was as close as he could get to Catholic soil.445 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ii. 41; Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II,40. Prior to his death, Northampton conveyed most of his estate, valued by one contemporary observer at around £120,000, to his great-nephew, the earl of Arundel.446 ‘Wilbraham Jnl.’ ed. H. Spencer Scott, Cam. Misc. X (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, iv), 114. The latter also became responsible for Northampton’s debts, thought to amount to £6,000.447 HMC Downshire, iv. 434.

Northampton died shortly before midnight on 15 June at his house in Charing Cross.448 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ii. 138; HMC Downshire, iv. 428. He was buried 11 days later in the south aisle of the chapel at Dover Castle, where a canopied monument, costing £500 and created by the finest workman of his age, Nicholas Stone, was subsequently erected. Regrettably much of this monument is now lost, having been partly destroyed by workmen in 1812. What survives is now at the royal hospital at Greenwich, to which Northampton’s remains were removed in 1696.449 Top. and Gen. ii. 455; W.L. Spiers, ‘Notes on Life of Nicholas Stone’, Walpole Soc. vii. 4, 38-9; Drake, 91.

Few mourned the passing of the lord privy seal which, according to Viscount Lisle, was more lamented in Brussels than in London.450 HMC Downshire, iv. 433. On the other hand, Northampton was spared the torrent of abuse that had followed Salisbury’s death two years earlier. However, Northampton’s part in helping to sabotage the 1614 Parliament soon became common knowledge.451 ‘Wilbraham Jnl.’, 114. So too did his role in poisoning Overbury, the discovery of which would almost certainly have led to his disgrace had he lived.452 Birch, Jas. I, i. 381; HMC Downshire, v. 371; Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, v. 282.