HOWARD, Thomas (1585-1646)

Famous in his own lifetime as a connoisseur and collector,106 ‘Far-famed’ is how Joachim Sandrart described him: G. Parry, Golden Age Restor’d: the Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603-42, p. 117. Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel has long been recognized for his remarkable contribution to English cultural life. He it was who brought to England Daniel Mytens in 1618, Sir Anthony van Dyck in 1620, and Wenceslaus Hollar in 1636; who patronized the greatest English architect of the early seventeenth century, Inigo Jones^‡, and the celebrated mathematician William Oughtred; and whose ancient Roman and Greek artefacts and extensive collection of artwork, second only in size to that of the king,107 Evolution of English Collecting ed. E. Chaney, 55. dazzled many of his contemporaries. It was also Arundel – the ‘evangelist of the world of art’ as Rubens called him - who inspired Charles I and George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham, to collect on a grand scale, who sought to persuade others to spend more time in the company of art, and who dabbled, albeit in an amateurish fashion, with the paint brush himself.108 R.A.M. Stevenson, Rubens, 25; M.F.S. Hervey, Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 391, 398. Yet, for all his accomplishments in the cultural sphere, the ‘collector earl’ was also the leading representative of England’s ancient nobility; in 1639 he described himself as ‘chief of the Howards’ and ‘first earl’.109 Coll. of Arms, Heralds VI, f. 477. A central figure in the parliaments of the 1620s, he can, with some justice, be considered the founding father of procedure in the modern House of Lords.

Early life, 1585-1605

Thomas Howard was born in 1585, when his family’s fortunes were at a low ebb. His father, Philip Howard^†, a life-long Catholic and godson to Philip II of Spain, had recently been imprisoned for attempting to flee England on the eve of war with Spain.110 J.M Robinson, Dukes of Norfolk, 68. This was not the first time the Howards had been suspected of treason, as 13 years earlier Thomas’s paternal grandfather, the 4th duke of Norfolk (Thomas Howard^†) had been executed for plotting to marry Mary, queen of Scots. Further misfortune befell the family in 1589, when Philip Howard, who had been prevented from inheriting the dukedom of Norfolk, was attainted. Most of the family’s remaining estates were forfeited, and Philip’s titles – he was both earl of Surrey and earl of Arundel (the latter honour having come to him on the death of his maternal grandfather in 1580) – were extinguished. The queen subsequently offered to restore him in return for his conformity to the established Church, but Philip clung doggedly to his faith and died of dysentery in the Tower in 1595 without having ever set eyes on his son.111 Ibid. 68, 77.

Over the next nine years, young Thomas Howard was formally known by the courtesy title of Lord Maltravers, but within Catholic circles he was addressed as earl of Arundel.112 E. Walker, Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions (1705), 210; Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 142. Responsibility for raising him fell to his mother, Anne, a committed Catholic like her late husband. According to her grandson, William Howard^†, Viscount Stafford, she was left virtually penniless by her husband’s attainder,113 Hervey, 10, 11, 463; Recs. of the English Prov. of the Soc. of Jesus ed. H. Foley, iv. 57. but being one of the coheirs of her late brother George Dacre^†, 5th Lord Dacre of Gilsland, she certainly had property of her own. In 1599, with Maltravers old enough to attend university, she raised money by selling land in four counties, and in 1602 she established a trust from among her Catholic friends in order to pay back, from the revenues arising from her remaining estates, the ‘great sums’ she had borrowed.114 Arundel Castle, G 1/9, unnumbered items, conveyance of 4 Aug. 1599 and indenture of 1 June 1602. In this way, Anne somehow managed to finance Maltravers’ education at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge - an education at Westminster under William Camden probably helps to explain how Maltravers came to develop a love of antiquity, as Malcolm Smuts has observed115 Oxford DNB, xxviii. 440. - and also to send her son on a tour of France and the Low Countries.

During his teenage years, Maltravers met Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, who predicted that, if he survived, he would one day achieve greatness.116 Walker, 210. Perhaps at around the same time, he also encountered Lucy, countess of Bedford, wife of Essex’s ally, Edward Russell^*, 3rd earl of Bedford. Years later, in 1626, he wrote to Lucy ‘to renew in your remembrance the name of an old servant’. He did not specify when he had been Lucy’s ‘servant’, but it had been at a time when ‘I had no other matter but myself, and my fruitless oblations’. Lucy is now best known for her patronage of poets such as Ben Jonson, but Maltravers - or Arundel as he had by then become - recalled her pleasure in arranging ancient coins and medals. These remarks hint at the possibility that it was not only Camden who helped nurture and encourage the future earl’s antiquarian interests.117 Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe (1740) ed. S. Richardson, 583.

On the accession of James I in March 1603, Maltravers hoped that his fortunes and titles might soon be restored. After all, his grandfather Norfolk had lost his life in the cause of James’s mother, and others who had been out of favour under Elizabeth – among them Bedford and his wife – soon received political rehabilitation. As early as 25 Apr., when James was en route to London, he obtained an audience with the new king at Burghley House, presumably to plead his case.118 HMC Hatfield, xv. 58. However, news of this interview alarmed Maltravers’ half-uncle Lord Thomas Howard^*, soon to be ennobled as earl of Suffolk, who had retained the queen’s favour following the imprisonment of his elder half-brother Philip in 1585. Lord Thomas had his eye on the former Howard properties himself, and together with Lord Henry Howard^* (later earl of Northampton), younger brother of the 4th duke of Norfolk, he secured possession of the lion’s share in late June. To add insult to injury, another kinsman, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham, obtained in August a grant of his family’s former London residence, Arundel House, in the Strand.119 HMC Var. ii. 249; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 17, 31.

Although denied his ancient patrimony by his own kin, Maltravers was now welcome at court, where he helped to create more than 430 new knights at the coronation in July 1603.120 L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 76. He appears to have fitted in to this new world without difficulty, and if anything was rather too voluble.121 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii. 247. Under such circumstances it was easy to forget that his father had been attainted; in December 1603 one Protestant observer actually referred to him as ‘lord of Arundel’.122 Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 48. However, Maltravers was not officially restored to the earldoms of Arundel and Surrey until 1604. Shortly after the first Jacobean Parliament opened in March, Maltravers asked the king to lay legislation before Parliament. A bill subsequently passed through both Houses, though not before a minor imperfection spotted by the Lords’ legal assistants was amended, and the Commons were assured, after doubts were raised, that Maltravers conformed to the Protestant religion.123 Coll. of Arms, WQ f. 17-r-v; LJ, ii.266a, 267b, 269b, 281b; CJ, i. 160b, 162a, 168a. It received the Royal Assent on Maltravers’ 19th birthday, and was preceded by a grant to Maltravers of Arundel manor and several other properties in Sussex that had previously belonged to his father.124 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 129. The lands involved represented little more than a drop in the ocean when compared with the large estates that the king had recently handed over to Suffolk and Northampton. However, their return was an essential part of the new earl’s restoration, for ever since 1433 possession of the earldom of Arundel had been tied to ownership of Arundel Castle.125 CP, viii. 231n.

Although Arundel had recovered only a fraction of the lands that had once belonged to his family, his fortunes were now on the mend. Under such circumstances it was not surprising that, over the summer of 1604, he began looking for a suitable bride. As early as June there was talk of an impending marriage with an unnamed lady at court. These negotiations soon ran into difficulties,126 Gawdy Letters ed. I.H. Jeayes, 145-6, 148. and in the following spring Arundel turned his attentions instead to Aletheia Talbot, daughter to Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury, one of the wealthiest peers in England. Like Aletheia’s other recent suitors, Richard Sackville^* (later 3rd earl of Dorset), and Henry Danvers^*, Lord Danvers (later 1st earl of Danby), Arundel initially made little progress. By November 1605 he was so disheartened that he decided to pursue the daughter of a prominent French nobleman instead.127 Carleton to Chamberlain, 74.

Arundel attended the banquet held to honour the constable of Castile in August 1604. Three months later it was rumoured that he would accompany his kinsman Nottingham to Madrid to ratify the recently signed peace treaty with Spain. In the event he did not do so,128 W.B. Rye, Eng. as seen by Foreigners, 119; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 195; NLW, Carreglwyd ms I/699. either for lack of funds or because he could not bear to wait on the man who had snatched Arundel House from his grasp. Arundel’s ill-feeling towards his Howard kinsmen did not, however, extend to the earl of Northampton, whom he accompanied to Windsor in May 1605 on the occasion of the latter’s investiture with the Garter.129 Add. 34218, f. 87. Like him, Northampton still clung to the old religion. He also provided Arundel with a tangible link to the 2nd earl of Essex, who had been executed in 1601, as Northampton had advised Essex during the latter’s brief term as earl marshal.130 R. Cust, Chas. I and the Aristocracy, 1625-42, p. 18. Perhaps the most important consideration for Arundel, however, was the fact that Northampton was concerned for his well being.131 CUL, Dd. iii. 63, f. 7v. Unlike Nottingham and Suffolk, who had helped themselves to Arundel’s patrimony for selfish reasons, Northampton, being both childless and Arundel’s closest living male relative, saw himself as a protector of his great-nephew’s interests. Certainly, on his death in 1614, he conveyed most of his estates to Arundel.

Parliamentary apprenticeship, 1605-10

Despite having not yet attained his majority, Arundel was summoned to the second session of James’s first Parliament, which assembled in November 1605. His intention to attend dismayed the group of militant Catholics who plotted to blow up the king and Parliament at the formal opening ceremony, and led them to discuss the possibility of wounding Arundel beforehand to prevent him from appearing.132 M. Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, 67; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 258. In the event, however, Arundel attended the Lords without hindrance. Like many of his fellow peers, who were shocked by the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, he did not take his seat when the House met again on 9 Nov., on which day both Houses were adjourned until January.133 LJ, ii. 355a, 356a.

As a result of the disruption caused by the Plot, Arundel was not formally introduced to the upper House until 23 Jan. 1606, two days after Parliament reconvened.134 Ibid. 462a. There he occupied pride of place on the earls’ bench. This may seem surprising, for although he was unusual in holding two earldoms, his father had only acquired the Arundel title in 1580, and his family’s tenure of the earldom of Surrey dated back only to 1483. However, it was one of the peculiarities of the earldom of Arundel that, being tied to ownership of Arundel Castle, it was capable of being transmitted through the female line. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Thomas Howard was the latest holder of an earldom whose forebears stretched back in unbroken line to at least the late thirteenth century. Indeed, he was regarded as the kingdom’s ‘premier earl’ and the leading representative of the ancient aristocracy.135 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 438. Consequently, the modern tendency to describe Arundel as the 2nd earl, and his father Philip as the 1st,136 E.g. Evolution of English Collecting ed. E. Chaney, 40. is seriously misleading.

For the rest of the session Arundel was most conspicuous for the gaps in his attendance. At first he was absent from the chamber on odd days only (30 Jan. and 15 Feb. 1606), but thereafter the absences became longer and more frequent. According to the Journal, Arundel was not in the House either on 19 or 20 Feb., and between 24 Feb. and 1 Mar. he missed five consecutive work days. Further lengthy periods of absence occurred over the next few months: between 18 and 25 Mar. four consecutive days were missed, while eight days in a row were skipped between 26 Apr. and 7 May. What lay behind these repeated and protracted periods of absence is unclear. It seems likely that Arundel was prevented from attending the chamber in mid March because he was practising for the Accession Day tilt, in which he had never before participated.137 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 218. However, his other absences may suggest that he was already suffering from periodic bouts of ill health. Certainly, as early as May 1605 he was reported to be ‘heavily diseased by sickness’.138 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 149. His son, Viscount Stafford, later claimed that he suffered from ‘consumption’, which probably indicates tuberculosis, a disease widespread in early Stuart England. He was clearly plagued with a chronic chest infection, for after one particular bout of illness, early in 1608, he was described as looking very thin and of having developed a sore throat caused by a ‘vehement distemper’.139 Hervey, 46, 465; F. Holmes, Sickly Stuarts, 15.

Despite his ill health, Arundel attended the Lords several times in 1606, and was appointed to a number of committees. On 2 Mar. he was named to two legislative committees, one to enable Sir Christopher Hatton^† to sell lands and the other to provide for two readers in divinity at Cambridge. On 7 Mar. he was named to the committee for a bill to restrict both the number of buildings in and around London and their residents, and the following day he was appointed to consider a measure to prevent retailers of beer from brewing. He received no further nominations until 31 Mar., when he was instructed to help examine a bill to repeal an act of 1572 regulating the length of kerseys. Despite well-founded doubts about his religion, on 29 Apr. he was placed on a committee to consider two bills on recusancy. Aside from these legislative appointments, Arundel was also required to attend conferences with representatives of the Commons to discuss the shortcomings of existing legislation designed to preserve the Protestant religion, and ecclesiastical matters more generally. He was also appointed to a conference to discuss the major issues of the session, namely purveyance, the Union and free trade.140 LJ, ii. 367b, 386a, 386b, 389a, 390b, 404b, 410b, 419b. His membership of the last mentioned conference committee is inferred from ibid. 413a and Bowyer Diary, 116-17.

Arundel missed the final two days of the parliamentary session, but shortly thereafter participated in a tilt at Greenwich.141 LJ, ii. 442a, 444b; Nichols, ii. 50; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 224 (miscalendared 1605). A little later, earlier setbacks having now been overcome, he married Aletheia Talbot. Although she was no great beauty, Aletheia brought with her a substantial dowry and the prospect of a considerable inheritance (she and her two sisters being coheirs to their father’s estate). However, these material considerations were of secondary importance, as Arundel’s marriage was first and foremost a love match.142 Walker, 211. This is perhaps surprising, as Arundel was later characterized by Edward Hyde^†, 1st earl of Clarendon, as a man who ‘did not much love anybody else’. Yet during the early years of their marriage, when duties at court caused them to be separated, Arundel habitually wrote to Aletheia even when he had no news to relay. She occupied his thoughts when they were apart ‘without intermission’, for she was ‘the infinite happiness and only contentment of my life’.143 Hervey, 45, 48; Clarendon, Hist. of the Rebellion, i. 178. This love endured even after the first bloom of his marriage had faded. In 1617 Arundel declared that Aletheia had ‘given me more true happiness and comfort than ever to any man with such a wife’, and he declared that ‘I never knew in any creature so much wit, so much integrity, so much modesty, so much honour, and so much virtue meet’.144 J. Newman, ‘Draft Will of the Earl of Arundel’, Burlington Mag. cxxii. 694. Prior to the early 1630s, when he and wife grew apart, Arundel seems never to have regretted his decision to marry for love rather than money. When, in 1626, his eldest surviving son Henry Frederick Howard^‡, Lord Maltravers (later 22nd/15th earl of Arundel) asked to marry a woman of negligible means, Arundel chose to put personal affection ahead of fortune.

Arundel was present when Parliament reconvened in mid November 1606. However, as in the previous session, he was not regular in his attendance. In December, for instance, he was recorded as absent on four consecutive days of business, and a similar gap occurred during the fourth week in April 1607. Many of these absences may have been occasioned by illness, but preparation for the Accession Day tilt was perhaps what kept Arundel from the chamber on 20 and 21 March.145 Nichols, iii. 1076. The birth of his first child - a boy christened James – probably explains Arundel’s absences from the House during the fourth week in June.146 On the birth of his son, see Hunter, 96. Irregular attendance explains why Arundel’s committee appointments were relatively thin on the ground. They included a bill to limit the construction of new buildings in and around London and Westminster, a measure similar to the one he had been asked to consider nine months earlier. They also included bills to assure the possessions of Ferdinando Stanley, the late 5th earl of Derby and to abolish the hostile laws between England and Scotland. In March 1607 Arundel was appointed to the committee for a bill to repress drunkenness, but it is unlikely that he attended its first meeting, as he was reportedly absent the following morning, when the committee was due to sit. Midway through the session Arundel was given his first taste of chairing a bill committee: on 11 Mar., after being appointed to the committee for a bill to restrain the sale of beer and ale to unlicensed alehouse-keepers, he took custody of the measure, which he reported to the House 15 days later. During the course of the session Arundel was appointed to attend just one conference with the Commons, on the subject of the Union.147 LJ, ii. 480a, 487a, 489a, 495a, 520a. His views on this contentious subject have gone unrecorded, but, according to the French ambassador, he was among those peers who incurred the king’s displeasure in April 1607 for excusing the behaviour of the Commons, many of whom had expressed vehement opposition to the Union.148 Ambassades de M. de La Boderie (1750), ii. 199-200.

Arundel’s new-born son was baptized in July 1607 in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, at which ceremony the king stood as one of the godparents.149 Chamberlain Letters, i. 245-6; HMC Cowper, i. 63. Now that he had started a family of his own, Arundel was keen to purchase his family’s former house in the Strand, which he leased from his distant kinsman Nottingham. Helped by Salisbury and the earl of Suffolk, who also acted as a godfather to Arundel’s son and was anxious to heal the rift with his young kinsman, he persuaded Nottingham to part with Arundel House for £4,000. Arundel considered this sum exorbitant, and was forced to borrow heavily, both to obtain this property and also (in the following year) some of the lands previously granted to Suffolk, doubtless using his wife’s dowry as security.150 Illustrations of Brit Hist. iii. 209; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 337, 478-9; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 390, 468; Arundel Castle, G 1/87, letters patent, 22 Nov. 1608; Hervey, 471n.

Arundel was now a permanent fixture at court. In May 1607 he threw a great feast for the king and queen, and in February 1608 he performed in the masque held to celebrate the marriage of John Ramsay^*, Viscount Haddington [S] (later earl of Holdernesse).151 Ambassades de M. de La Boderie, ii. 264; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 223; Nichols, ii. 186. He also entered the orbit of the 14-year old Prince Henry who, in August, became one of the godparents to his second son, Henry Frederick, as did the queen and Salisbury .152 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 178; R. Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, 26. Quite how Arundel managed to inveigle himself into the prince’s circle is unclear, for unlike most of Henry’s companions, and despite the assurances given to the Commons in 1604, he remained wedded to the Catholic faith. However, shared interests may have helped bridge the religious divide. In December 1609 Henry, now old enough to tilt, chose Arundel to act as one of his fellow challengers in a special tournament arranged to celebrate the New Year.153 Nichols, ii. 270. Arundel was immensely proud of his subsequent participation in Prince Henry’s ‘Barriers’, and had a full length portrait of himself in tilting armour painted to commemorate the occasion. He also presented Henry with ‘a great picture’, the first painting that the young prince is known to have acquired.154 Strong, 25, 142. Before long Henry had begun to build up an art collection, probably with the help of Arundel, whose recently deceased great uncle, John Lumley^*, Lord Lumley, had owned more than 250 paintings.155 D. Howarth, Lord Arundel and His Circle, 10. Certainly, Henry looked to Arundel for expert advice.156 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 39.

Arundel played a largely inconspicuous role when Parliament recommenced in February 1610. Twice appointed to help confer with the Commons, once over supply, and once to debate Dr John Cowell’s controversial legal dictionary, the Interpreter, he played no recorded role in the negotiations over the Great Contract, except that on 18 Apr. he was sent to help discover whether James would accept proposals offered in respect of feudal tenures.157 LJ, ii. 550b, 557b, 579b. Along with several other peers with Catholic sympathies, such as Northampton and the 4th earl of Worcester (Edward Somerset^*), Arundel voted against the bill to require those peers like himself, who had been restored in blood, to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.158 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 121-2.

Among Arundel’s legislative appointments were six bills that reflected his landed interests in East Anglia. One sought to enable Charles Waldegrave to sell lands to pay his debts and provide portions for his younger children; another aimed to permit the establishment of a hospital in Thetford, Norfolk; while a third sought to authorize the draining of marshland in Norfolk and Suffolk. In all three cases Arundel’s fellow committee members included the earls of Northampton and Suffolk. A fourth bill was intended to allow the sale of lands by Sir Thomas Hyrne^‡ to his Norwich neighbour Sir John Heveningham^‡, which measure was committed only after a division in which Arundel himself acted as a teller. Two remaining bills concerned the estate of Sir John Wentworth^‡ of Somerleyton, Suffolk, and Sir Robert Drury^‡ of Hawstead, Suffolk, who wished to confirm the revocation of a trust.159 LJ, ii. 553b, 569b, 571a, 579b, 600a, 623b, 639a; Procs. 1610, i. 196; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 121.

During the course of the session Arundel may have exercised his influence as an electoral patron for the first time, as vacancies occurred in both the boroughs of Arundel and Chichester, which were filled with men connected to the earl, albeit indirectly.160 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 406, 409. The highlight of the session was the investiture in Parliament of Prince Henry as prince of Wales. As a close member of the prince’s circle, Arundel, who had discharged a similar function at the recent Garter ceremony at Windsor, was entrusted with the task of bearing the ceremonial sword.161 Bodl., Ashmole 1108, f. 85v; Procs. 1610, i. 97. He subsequently also participated in the tilt that was held to celebrate the prince’s creation.162 HMC Downshire, ii. 317. A short while later Arundel performed a further ceremonial duty, for when the king arrived in the upper House on 23 July to assent to bills and prorogue the Parliament he was led in by Arundel, bearing the cap of maintenance, and three other peers.163 Procs. 1610, i. 166.

Arundel’s attendance that session was hardly more impressive than it had been in the two previous sessions in which he had sat, and during the final session of the Parliament, which convened in October 1610, he was absent for much of the time. Indeed, after attending the opening on 16 Oct. he did not reappear until the 25th, and thereafter missed the next three days of sitting. Not surprisingly, therefore, Arundel barely features in the records of this brief meeting, being named only to attend a conference with the Commons regarding the Great Contract and a committee concerning a bill to avoid lawsuits over land bequeathed in wills.164 LJ, ii. 671a, 675a. He was nevertheless present on the final day of the session, when he was one of the commissioners who prorogued the Parliament.

Midway through the session Arundel became embroiled in a quarrel with Nottingham and the Venetian ambassador over the wreck of a Venetian ship carrying currants off the Sussex coast. The ambassador wanted the cargo recovered from the vessel turned over to the merchant owners, while Nottingham, as lord high admiral, claimed it for himself as a legitimate perquisite of his office. Arundel, however, had seized the currants for himself, claiming that they belonged to him as lord of the manor of Arundel. To the annoyance of the king, he refused to climb down, with the result that in February 1611 James was forced to arrange a compromise, whereby Arundel surrendered the currants in return for an ex gratia payment by the merchants.165 CSP Ven. 1610-13, pp. 74, 80, 103, 113, 123.

Arundel’s intransigence annoyed James, but it had not seriously damaged his standing. Indeed, on 24 Apr. he was elected to the order of the Garter alongside the king’s youngest son, the duke of York (Charles Stuart^*, later prince of Wales), and the royal favourite Robert Carr^*, Viscount Rochester (later earl of Somerset). This was a remarkable honour, for while it was normal for the king’s sons to be admitted to the order from an early age, Arundel was not yet 26, while Rochester was even younger.166 HMC Downshire, iii. 64; Bodl. Ashmole 1108, f. 86; CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 142. Meanwhile, Arundel’s favour with Prince Henry remained as high as ever. Early in May he and his father-in-law the earl of Shrewsbury accompanied Henry to Chatham, where the prince inspected the Navy’s ships.167 Autobiog. of Phineas Pett ed. W,G. Perrin (Navy Recs. Soc. li), 89-90. Twelve months later, in May 1612, Henry and the duke of York were feasted with dried and candied fruit at Highgate, where Arundel and his wife had recently bought a house.168 Hervey, 64; LCC Survey of London, xvii. 49.

Italian tours 1612-14

Over the course of the past five years Arundel’s wife had given birth to no less than five sons, and although two of them – Thomas and Gilbert – evidently died in infancy Arundel could be reasonably confident that he had secured his family’s succession. By the summer of 1612, therefore, he felt free to take the advice of his doctors and visit one of the hot springs on the Continent in the hope of a cure for his consumption, which was now so serious that it led Northampton to remark that ‘the world will not long have use of him’.169 Hervey, 465; CUL, Dd. iii. 63, f. 7v. In July, the king having granted him a three-year travel pass, he set out for Spa, in the small principality of Liège.170 SO3/5, unfol. (14 July 1612); Chamberlain Letters, i. 372; HMC 10th Rep. I, 598. However, Arundel experienced little relief there, but travelled instead to Padua, in the Venetian Republic, where, in September, he hired a house and availed himself of the renowned hot springs at Abano, in the nearby Euganian hills.171 HMC Downshire, iii. 362. As the waters there proved far more soothing and the doctors more capable than those in England, he determined to remain in Padua over the winter.172 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 438; Hervey, 67. In the event, his plans were wrecked by his wife, who announced her intention to join him.173 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 150, 151. Anxious to prevent Aletheia from undertaking a long winter journey, Arundel decided to return home immediately, even though he was now thin and weak.174 Hervey, 67; M.A. Tierney, Hist. and Antiquities of the Town and Castle of Arundel, 421. After a brief sojourn in Paris, where he took in the sights, and after braving winter storms in the Channel, he reached London in January 1613.175 HMC Downshire, iii. 447; iv. 10, 20; Chamberlain Letters, i. 412.

Arundel returned to find matters much changed at court. Prince Henry, whom he had left in rude health, had died suddenly in November 1612 of typhoid fever, while the king’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was on the point of marrying the young Elector Palatine, Frederick V. Arundel naturally took part in both the wedding ceremony and the ensuing celebrations (14/15 Feb. 1613), but he remained wholly preoccupied with Italy.176 Hervey, 67. After receiving instructions to accompany Elizabeth and Frederick to Heidelberg, he obtained permission to return to Padua, this time with his wife.177 HMC Buccleuch, i. 242; Chamberlain Letters, i. 431; HMC Downshire, iv. 68; CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 524; SO3/5, unfol. (19 Apr. 1613).

Arundel departed England with the royal couple in late April and, in mid June, after a decent interval at Heidelberg, where he hunted with the Palsgrave, he and his wife took their leave of Frederick and Elizabeth and headed south, travelling via Strasburg, Basle and Milan, where they were treated very shabbily by the local governor. They arrived in Padua the following month, and took a villa two miles from the city.178 Nichols, ii. 620; HMC Downshire, iv. 154; Hervey, 75; HMC Cowper, i. 78; CSP Ven. 1613-15, pp. 12, 16; Winwood’s Memorials ed. Sawyer, iii. 473, 482. However, Arundel did not remain there long. After spending some time in neighbouring Venice, where he was handsomely feasted by the doge and senate, he set out incognito to explore the rest of Italy with the classically-influenced architect Inigo Jones, whom he had probably first encountered in Prince Henry’s household.179 HMC Downshire, iv. 189; Hervey, 79; CSP Ven. 1613-15, p. 45; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 915. In so doing, he emulated his father-in-law, the earl of Shrewsbury, who had himself toured northern Italy in 1570 to view the local art and architecture.180 Howarth, 15. He also lent credence to a report that he had come to Italy not for his health, which was now improved, but for ‘recreation’.181 CSP Ven. 1613-16, p. 37.

After briefly visiting Vicenza, Arundel and Jones braved foul weather and headed south for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, where they explored Florence and Siena.182 Hervey, 80-1. Finding the mountain air at Siena conducive to his health, Arundel informed the English ambassador in Venice, Dudley Carleton^* (later Viscount Dorchester), and Rochester in England, that he would spend the winter in the city.183 Ibid. 82; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 484, 487. However, in January he and Jones surreptitiously journeyed to Rome, which Englishmen were normally prohibited from visiting. News of this trip soon became known to Carleton who, fearing that it had been undertaken for religious reasons, made inquiries. Beyond establishing that Arundel had met two notorious English Catholics, Tobie Matthew^‡ and George Gage, though, he failed to uncover anything incriminating. Indeed, he concluded that the journey had been undertaken merely for ‘the satisfying of curiosity’ about the city’s rich cultural heritage. Whether this was accurate is unclear, but while in Rome Arundel certainly uncovered a series of statues, said to depict a Roman consular family, which he sent back to England.184 Hervey, 84.

Arundel’s unauthorized visit to the Holy See deepened suspicions about his true purposes in travelling to Italy. In January 1614 his mother informed him that his failure to undertake a course of medical treatment had not gone unnoticed at court. Arundel, of course, had obtained permission to return to Italy on the strength of his ill health, and to justify his continued stay he had led Carleton to believe as late as December 1613 that he was too unwell to travel. In fact, as he informed his mother at precisely the same time, he was in fine fettle.185 Carleton to Chamberlain, 153; HMC Cowper, i. 80.

Even before it became known that he had visited Rome, Arundel was urged by his mother to return to England. The matter was of the utmost urgency, she said, for not only had his deception about his health been revealed but also the earl of Northampton had fallen gravely ill and ‘is very earnest for your return’.186 HMC Cowper, i. 80-1. However, Arundel had not yet completed his tour, and over the spring he and Jones travelled to Naples, despite having promised to return to England. Consequently, he failed to sit in the Addled Parliament (ahead of which his wife presumably exercised his electoral interest on his behalf). The two men returned to Rome in May, at around the same time that Gage and Matthew – who soon became a close friend - were ordained into the Catholic priesthood by Cardinal Bellarmine.187 Hervey, 85; Chaney, Evolution of the Grand Tour, 183, 209; HMC Montagu, 89. Not until July, when he heard that Northampton had died leaving him an estate worth £3,000 or £4,000 p.a., did Arundel heed his mother’s advice.188 HMC Cowper, i. 84 (document misdated 4 June); CSP Ven. 1613-15, p. 174; Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton ed. L. Pearsall Smith, ii. 40; Nichols, iii. 6. He arrived in London in November 1614, having travelled via Turin, where was presented with a pair of Spanish horses by the duke of Savoy, and Paris, where he and his wife were warmly received by the king and queen of France.189 HMC Downshire, v. 35, 46, 61; CSP Ven. 1613-15, p. 268.

Shortly after Arundel returned to England, George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury, revealed that he had received intelligence from William Cecil^*, 16th Lord Ros, concerning Arundel’s ‘entertainment and conversation’ in Rome. Ros made no secret of his own Catholicism, and his intelligence, described as ‘malignant’ by one informed observer, probably did much to reinforce the belief of the Spanish ambassador, that Arundel’s real purpose in going to Italy had been to live publicly as a Catholic. However, Arundel reportedly gave ‘good satisfaction’ to the king.190 Chamberlain Letters, i. 568-9; Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, II: 1613-24 ed. A.J. Loomie (Cath. Rec. Soc. lxviii), 39. Indeed, shortly thereafter he joined James at Newmarket. He also participated in the Accession Day tilt in March 1615 and was appointed lord lieutenant of Norfolk in April.191 Tierney, 423; Chamberlain Letters, i. 590; Sainty, 28.

Aside from casting an unwelcome spotlight on his religious leanings, the chief outcome of his recent tour of Italy was to inspire Arundel to expand his art collection, which had already grown larger during his travels.192 F.F. Warner, Cat. of the Mss and Muniments of Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift, Dulwich, 170. Having inherited the bulk of Northampton’s estate, he now had the means to do so. In 1616 he bought from Carleton 12 pictures that had originally been intended for the now disgraced earl of Somerset. Carleton also supplied him with several ancient statues, as did Lord Ros, who was anxious to make amends for his earlier mischief-making.193 Orig. Unpublished Pprs. ed. W. Noel Sainsbury, 270, 272-3. Some of these Arundel positioned in his garden at Arundel House, in the Strand, along with those he had already acquired in Rome. In building up his collection, Arundel displayed a ruthlessness that dismayed even his friends: in 1618 the countess of Bedford complained to Lady Jane Cornwallis ‘of a trick my lord of Arundel put upon me yesterday to the cozening me of some pictures promised me’.194 Pvte. Corresp. of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, 50. However, such deception was necessary to ensure that Arundel obtained the choicest pieces, for there was fierce competition to secure rare objects and paintings, even among those who were on otherwise good terms. On learning in 1619 that Sir Thomas Roe^‡ had returned from the Indian sub-continent, Arundel urged his wife to acquire quickly whatever items Roe had brought back with him, ‘for I fear my lord chamberlain’.195 Tierney, 435. This was a reference to none other than William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, brother-in-law to Arundel’s wife and one of Arundel’s closest political allies. For Arundel, however, the ends justified the means, for he was immensely proud of his collection. In drafting his will in 1617 he instructed his eldest son never to part with any of his statues or pictures, as he had acquired them with ‘so much travail and charge’. His heir was also ordered to allow ‘all gentlemen of virtue or artists’ to view them.196 Newman, 695.

Conversion to Protestantism, 1615-18

Although Arundel suffered no loss of favour after returning from Italy, he failed to secure any significant advancement. In the summer of 1615 he celebrated his thirtieth birthday and yet, despite being the premier earl of England, he was still not a member of the Privy Council. Following the death of the earl of Shrewsbury in May 1616, this unsatisfactory state of affairs was thrown into sharp relief. Arundel was now much wealthier as a result of his father-in-law’s death, and might reasonably have expected to take Shrewsbury’s place at the Council board. However, James was determined to withhold membership of the Council from Arundel unless the earl agreed to conform publicly to the Church of England, as he had done at around the time his bill of restoration had passed through Parliament in 1604. James had clearly been much more disturbed by Arundel’s unauthorized visits to Rome than he had been willing to admit, and, while prepared to turn a blind eye to Catholic sympathies among his councillors, he could not tolerate failure to conform in public. James’s stance placed Arundel on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand he was eager to assume what he considered to be his rightful place in government, many of his ancestors having held high office. On the other, he did not wish to abandon the faith for which his father had lost his life. In the event, he, like his great-uncle Northampton before him, chose office over religious scruples, being sworn a councillor on 16 July 1616, after promising to be ‘a true Christian’ and to take the Anglican communion.197 HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 64. Arundel’s addition to the Council was timely, for in September war erupted in northern Italy, threatening not only to embroil England but also to cut across James’s plan for a Spanish marriage alliance. Among those councillors to whom the king turned for advice was Arundel, whose recent travels made him an expert on Italian affairs.198 CSP Ven. 1615-17, p. 332.

Despite having now agreed to conform, Arundel was in no hurry to do so. James evidently realized this, just as he also knew that Arundel aspired to be earl marshal of England, the office which the dukes of Norfolk had held on a hereditary basis between 1483 and 1572.199 For Arundel’s belief that he was rightfully hereditary earl marshal, see Hervey, 463. Over the autumn he therefore dangled before Arundel a further carrot. In early November, having recently appointed him to the commission for the exercise of the office of earl marshal in place of the recently deceased Shrewsbury, he allowed Arundel sole exercise of the duties of earl marshal during the ceremonial creation of Prince Charles as prince of Wales.200 Orig. Unpublished Pprs. 273; Harl. 5176, ff. 222v, 225; Carew Letters ed. J. Maclean (Cam. Soc. lxxvi), 54. Arundel’s friends were delighted at this development, and many of them hoped that the earl would be allowed to continue in this capacity indefinitely.201 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 32. However, once the festivities had ended Arundel reverted to his former status as one of several commissioners. The message that this brief glimpse of high office conveyed to the earl could not have been clearer, and on Christmas Day 1616 Arundel took communion in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall.202 Ibid. 47; ‘Camden Diary’ (1691), 22.

Protestant observers at the time were convinced that Arundel’s conversion was genuine. ‘There is no doubt but he is as firmly settled in our religion as may be wished’, wrote the 1st Lord Carew (George Carew^*) to a friend, while Arundel’s old tutor, William Camden, confided to his diary that Arundel had converted because he had grown to detest ‘the abuses of the Catholic religion’. Arundel himself was eager to reinforce these impressions, and in conversation with the king was heard to be ‘sharp against the papists’.203 Carew Letters, 70 and n; ‘Camden Diary’, 22-3. On Accession Day 1617, he accompanied the king and other members of the nobility to St Paul’s to hear John Donne^† preach.204 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 67. Eight months later he attended a sermon delivered by the renegade archbishop of Spalato, a Protestant convert, in the Mercers’ Company chapel.205 Annales (1631) ed. E. Howes, 1028. Arundel also cultivated the friendship of Samuel Harsnett^*, bishop of Chichester, who described him in December 1617 as ‘my most honourable patron’.206 Tierney, 431. So convinced was the archbishop of York, Tobie Matthew^*, of the genuine nature of Arundel’s conversion that in April 1618 he pressed the earl to use his influence with his son to bring about the latter’s own conversion to Protestantism.207 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 291-2.

It nevertheless seems likely that Arundel’s conversion was purely nominal.208 Evolution of English Collecting, 41. During his time in Rome, Arundel had befriended a Capuchin priest named Angelo Englis, who subsequently placed his sister in Arundel’s household. In April 1619, after his sister had committed some misdemeanour or other, Englis reassured Arundel that he had not asked him to take in this young woman to exasperate him but

to provide for her good as well spiritual as corporeal, that hereby she might have better and freer means to be established in the Catholic faith, for I full well know your house to be so far removed from any persons of suspected religion, and your family so Catholicly given ... that you abhor and detest all other religions as impious and pernicious doctrines introduced by the devil to the perdition of men’s souls.209 HMC Cowper, i. 84, 105.

Had Arundel undergone a genuine conversion to Protestantism, it would be difficult to explain either this letter or why Englis allowed his sister to remain in Arundel’s household.

This does not mean that Arundel’s friendship with committed Protestants such as Harsnett was somehow insincere. Arundel thought highly enough of the anti-Calvinist Harsnett to entrust him with the education of his youngest surviving son, William.210 T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. ed. J. Freeman, 181; Hervey, 169. On the contrary, it indicates that, for Arundel, religious differences between Christians were rather unimportant. It is significant that in 1641 Arundel opined that the supporters of the dispossessed Elector Palatine should not ‘prattle of religion but be quiet’ and allow ‘everyone charitably [to] exercise his own’.211 CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 572. The original adds nothing to the calendar. It was probably because he adopted this laissez-faire approach that Clarendon characterized Arundel as a man ‘thought not to be much concerned for religion’.212 Clarendon, i. 87. For a modern echo of this view, in which Arundel’s passion for collecting is seen as a substitute for religion, see Parry, 131. However, in an age of religious bigotry, irreligion was an easy jibe to hurl at Arundel who, though he continued to practise his Catholic faith in private,213 CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 256; Autobiog. of Thomas Raymond ed. G. Davies (Cam. Soc. xxviii), 33. See also CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 22. clearly saw merit in toleration. In subscribing to the view that each man should follow his conscience in matters of faith, Arundel was- as in his attitude towards marriage - ahead of his time.

The search for office, 1617-21

Early in 1617 Arundel’s house at Greenwich was destroyed by fire. Arundel had inherited this property from Northampton, and on his return from Italy he had employed Inigo Jones to alter its appearance.214 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 47; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 915; Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 195. Fortunately for him, however, the picture gallery escaped unscathed.215 Carew Letters, 74-5.

In the wake of this disaster, Arundel accompanied the king to Scotland, providing James with hospitality en route at his house in Worksop, which had come into his possession through his wife.216 Hervey, 124-5. In June he was admitted to the Scottish Privy Council, but only after this honour had first been bestowed upon the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, earl (and later 1st duke) of Buckingham. The following month Arundel temporarily parted company with the royal entourage and travelled to Dublin to purchase some land in Ireland for one of his younger sons. There he was not only feasted and entertained by the lord deputy but also admitted to the Irish Privy Council, which meant that he had now succeeded in securing membership of the councils of all three of James’s kingdoms, an honour of which not even Buckingham could boast.217 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 91; Lismore Pprs. ed. A.B Grosart (2nd ser.), ii. 92, 94-5; CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 481, 482.

Following the elevation of Buckingham to a marquessate in January 1618 it was rumoured that Arundel, along with the royal favourite and Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] and 1st earl of Richmond, would soon be raised to an English dukedom.218 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 518; Beaumont Pprs. ed. W.D. Macray, 41. Although this gossip was apparently unfounded, its circulation reflected a widespread belief that James would not long permit Buckingham, the son of a minor country gentleman, to outrank either his own cousin Lennox or Arundel, claimant to the dukedom of Norfolk. Arundel himself may have felt aggrieved at being superseded in the peerage by the upstart Buckingham, but he could not afford to alienate the favourite if he wished to obtain high office. Besides, in 1618 both men shared a common enemy in the form of the earl of Suffolk. Although Suffolk was godfather to his eldest son, Arundel had never really forgiven him for depriving him of most of his patrimony at the beginning of James’s reign. He also resented the fact that Northampton had left Suffolk his splendid house at Charing Cross.219 Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxi), 74-5. For his part, Buckingham was determined to destroy Suffolk for attempting to replace him in the king’s affections with the 18-year-old William Monson^‡. In mid July the struggle at court between the supporters of Buckingham and those of Suffolk came to a head with Suffolk’s dismissal as lord treasurer on grounds of corruption. Arundel undoubtedly played a key role in the downfall of his half-uncle, for he was a member of the seven-strong commission appointed nine days earlier to investigate irregular payments made by the Exchequer.220 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 552; Add. 29974, pt. i. f. 64.

It is not clear why Arundel was omitted from the commission appointed on 21 July to take over the running of the treasury. However, the management of his own finances may offer a clue. Despite having inherited a large part of his father-in-law’s estate, and the lands of the earl of Northampton, Arundel complained in March 1617 that his fortune was small and ‘miserably overrun with debts’.221 Newman, 695. To some extent, his financial difficulties may have been largely unavoidable, as he had been forced to borrow heavily in order to buy back large parts of his patrimony. Moreover, Northampton had left him not only his lands but also his debts, which reportedly amounted to about £6,000.222 HMC Downshire, iv. 434. However, there was considerable truth in Clarendon’s observation that Arundel’s expenses were ‘without any measure, and always exceeded very much his revenue’.223 Clarendon, i. 86. It is certainly striking that at the same time as he complained of his poverty, Arundel was expecting to take delivery of fresh consignments of pictures and statues.224 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 453; HMC Cowper, i. 94.

Although not included on the treasury commission, Arundel was appointed to another body established four days later to regulate new building work in and around the capital. The remit of this commission was much better suited to Arundel’s talents and interests for, as his patronage of Inigo Jones demonstrates, he was an enthusiastic exponent of Palladian architecture. He favoured the replacement of London’s many wooden buildings with stone structures and wished to clear away the houses that clustered around places like St Paul’s to create open civic spaces along Italian lines. He threw himself into this new role with enthusiasm, and before long was regarded as the commission’s chief member.225 Walker, 222; Hervey, 168-9; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 528. Indeed, when in February 1621 the corporation of London considered drafting a parliamentary bill to regulate new buildings within the City, they instructed their representatives to attend Arundel first.226 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/039, f. 155. Arundel was also appointed to a commission to improve Lincoln’s Inn Fields, then little more than waste ground. Although he could scarcely afford to do so, he contributed £100 towards the creation of walks intended to enhance the beauty of the capital as well as provide a source of recreation for its inhabitants.227 Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 109.

In January 1619 Arundel tried to save the Banqueting House at Whitehall when it caught fire, organizing the fire-fighters. Two months later he rushed to the king’s bedside at Royston when James fell gravely ill. He sat up all night watching over the king who, believing himself to be dying, commended Arundel, amongst others, to Prince Charles.228 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 201-2, 225; Hervey, 154. Although James recovered, the queen died later that month, and at her funeral in May, Arundel flanked the coffin.229 Harl. 5176, f. 237. That summer Arundel contemplated returning to Scotland. In the event, he remained in England,230 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 250-1, 257; Annales (1631), 1033. where he began to shower attention on Buckingham in the hope of being appointed lord treasurer. However, he faced an uphill task, as his competitors were numerous and his finances were so parlous that he was in no position to raise the enormous sums needed to buy Buckingham’s favour. By February 1620 he had therefore entered into negotiations with the elderly earl of Worcester to purchase instead the office of lord privy seal, a position of considerably less value than the treasurership but undoubtedly more affordable. However, despite being hungry for advancement, and also a close friend of Worcester’s youngest son Sir Thomas Somerset^‡, Arundel came away with only the reversion to this office.231 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 272, 289; Add. 72254, f. 17. On Arundel’s friendship with Somerset, see Tierney, 423; Hervey, 155.

During his long quest for office, Arundel bade farewell to his wife and children, who, in the autumn of 1619, journeyed to Italy,232 Tierney, 444n. where they remained for the next three years. It seems likely that the purpose of the countess’ extended sojourn abroad was to enable her and her children to practise the Catholic religion openly for, unlike Arundel himself, Aletheia had never converted to Protestantism. However, Arundel naturally felt the loss of his sexual partner, and soon found solace in the arms of Anne Brett, second wife of his friend and creditor, Sir Lionel Cranfield^*, master of the Court of Wards (later 1st earl of Middlesex), and first cousin to Buckingham.233 Early Stuart Libels online, libel entitled ‘Heaven Bless King James our Joy’.

Arundel escaped in March 1620 with only minor scratches and a torn cloak when the floor at the entrance to the great chamber at Whitehall gave way as he escorted the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar, to an interview with the king.234 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 133; HMC Var. viii. 19. At the Accession Day tilt 12 days later, he once again served as temporary earl marshal (being now considered too old to participate in the jousting himself), but was ‘every way so poorly accoutred’ that one observer thought he did neither himself nor the office much honour.235 Chamberlain Letters, i. 298. His depleted finances received a welcome fillip that spring when the king granted him an impost of 2s.2d. on every hundredweight of imported currants, a duty that had formerly been enjoyed by his disgraced half-uncle, the earl of Suffolk.236 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 151. As a result, perhaps, he was able to afford to contribute £1,000 – the same sum as Buckingham, Pembroke and Lennox – to the defence of the Rhenish Palatinate following the Spanish invasion that summer.237 SP14/117/2.

The spring sitting of the 1621 Parliament

The raising of voluntary donations was intended as the prelude to the summoning of Parliament, and in the ensuing elections Arundel secured seats for seven or eight of his friends and clients in five boroughs where he exercised influence: Castle Rising and Thetford in Norfolk, and Horsham, New Shoreham and Arundel, in Sussex. Those returned on his interest included his secretary John Wilson^‡ and Sir Thomas Holland^‡, chief steward of the Howard family’s East Anglian estates, and. He also engineered the returns of Thomas Cornwallis^‡; Sir Lionel Cranfield; Sir John Morley^‡; Henry Spiller^‡; Robert Spiller^‡; and perhaps also Sir John Leedes^‡, who was certainly replaced, on his ejection from the Commons in mid February, by the earl’s client Inigo Jones^‡.238 For the identification of Wilson as his secretary, information missing from the latter’s entry in HP Commons, 1604-29, vi. 800, see V. cl. Gulielmi Camdeni et illustrium vivorum ad G. Camdenum Epistolae (1691) ed. T. Smith, 353. However, he failed to obtain for his clients either seat at Steyning, Sussex, where he had recently become lord of the manor.

Despite his poor showing at the 1620 Accession Day tilt, Arundel performed the duties of the earl marshal when Parliament opened in January 1621 instead of Worcester, who had discharged this function in the previous two assemblies. These duties included ordering the ceremonial procession to Parliament, in which Arundel himself paraded carrying his wand of office.239 SP14/119/46; ‘Camden Diary’, 67; Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, i. 170. Arundel’s appointment was clearly intended as a consolation prize, for in December 1620 the lord treasurership had finally been bestowed on the lawyer Sir Henry Montagu^* (later 1st earl of Manchester), who paid Buckingham £20,000 for the privilege. However, Arundel probably hoped that before long this temporary appointment would become permanent.

At the beginning of the Parliament, Arundel was appointed by the king one of the triers of petitions from England, Scotland and Ireland, a largely honorific role.240 LJ, iii. 7a. Over the course of the next four months, aside from a three-week stint in the Tower, he assiduously attended the Lords. Before the Easter recess, only four absences are recorded in the Journal, and of these two appear to be erroneous (16 and 17 February). This regularity in attendance, which contrasts starkly with his poor track record during the first Jacobean Parliament, reflected Arundel’s improved health. However, it may also indicate a determination to make Parliament part of his strategy for obtaining high office. It is certainly noticeable that at the very start of the meeting Arundel donned the mantle of a reformer, the generally accepted guise of those eager for advancement.

On 5 Feb., the first day of parliamentary business, Arundel proposed that the House of Lords create a committee for privileges. An equivalent body had long existed in the Commons, but the Lords had hitherto not considered it necessary to establish such a committee themselves. Arundel argued that this body was now needed because ‘there are many privileges belonging to us, and divers orders which were anciently observed in this House, that by disuse and want of putting in practice are now almost lost’.241 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 7.

There was certainly some truth behind this observation. Many peers arrived at Westminster incensed that the law courts had recently required noblemen to give their testimony upon oath rather than upon honour. Others still, particularly those of baronial rank, were no less angry that recent sales to fellow Englishmen of Irish and Scottish viscountcies had caused them to be eclipsed on local commissions. Arundel’s claim that the ancient procedures of the upper House were in danger of disappearing was also well founded. Peers were required to remain seated in the chamber, yet they commonly walked about, ‘to the hindrance of others that sit near them and [the] disorder of the House’. They were also expected to arrive at conferences with the Commons ‘in a whole body’, but all too often they filed into the Painted Chamber singly, which ‘takes from the gravity of the Lords’.242 HMC Lords, n.s., x. 4-5. These problems were likely to become more acute unless they were quickly addressed, as the number of new and inexperienced members who entered the Lords in 1621 was on a scale not seen in living memory. No less than 53 per cent of the House’s members at the start of the Parliament had little or no experience of sitting in the Lords. The number of new members among the episcopate was particularly acute: 14 of the 24 bishops who attended were parliamentary novices, more than half of the 26 strong episcopal bench.243 For further discussion, see the Survey volume.

The House responded to Arundel’s suggestion by establishing a 32-man committee for privileges, which was ordered to meet immediately. The new committee, which consisted mainly of seasoned parliamentarians like Arundel himself, acted with lightning-like rapidity. It not only agreed to investigate ‘what privileges peers have’, but also drafted a series of procedural orders to regulate the conduct of members, which was presented to the House just three days later, on 8 February. Entitled ‘Remembrances for order and decency to be kept in the upper House of Parliament by the Lords when His Majesty is not there ...’, these new rules were, in effect, adopted immediately after Arundel brushed aside the objections of the 4th Lord Hunsdon (Henry Carey^*, later 1st earl of Dover), who wanted to wait until the committee had completed its work.244 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 1; HMC Lords, n.s., x. 1-5. They quickly became integral to the smooth running of the House. On 27 Mar. 1621, eight weeks after the Parliament assembled, the Lords instructed the new ‘Standing Orders’ to be enrolled in parchment, along with the House’s other acts and judgements.245 LJ, iii. 74a.

How far Arundel himself was responsible for drafting the Standing Orders, the first written code of conduct of its kind, is a matter for conjecture. At least one of the new orders – regarding the punishment of officials who incorrectly drafted writs of summons - appears to have owed its inception to the 3rd Lord North (Dudley North^*). (Following the House’s decision to create a committee for privileges, North had complained that the writs issued to men of baronial rank contained numerous errors.)246 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 7. However, many of the remainder probably originated with Arundel himself, a stickler for correct procedure. When, on 22 Mar., certain peers were observed talking together while one of their colleagues addressed the House, it was Arundel who remarked that such behaviour ‘was against the ancient orders of the House’. It was also Arundel who, on 19 Apr., pointed out that the proposal of the 3rd Lord Sheffield (Edmund Sheffield^*, later 1st earl of Mulgrave) to send a copy of the House’s objections to the informers’ bill to the Commons ‘would not stand with the orders of the House’.247 LJ, iii. 63b, 79a; LD 1621, p. 8. Arundel is certainly known to have played some part in the formulation of new procedural rules. When the House faced the prospect of investigating a large number of witnesses, Arundel moved to create a procedure for dealing with delinquents, whom he thought should be examined at the bar without the benefit of counsel. He further proposed that the legal assistants should first sift through the material to see if anything was worth the House’s consideration.248 LD 1621, pp. 1, 4. All of this suggests that it was Arundel who was the principal author of the Standing Orders.

Although the Standing Orders probably originated with him, Arundel played a less prominent role in the associated hunt to establish the privileges of the peerage. Indeed, he was not a member of the nine-strong subcommittee appointed on 14 Feb. to search the records.249 LJ, iii. 17a, 17b. However, when Hunsdon complained on 17 Feb. that the judges, who served as legal assistants in the Lords, had declined to list and describe the privileges of peers, Arundel proposed that they be given until the following Saturday ‘to give satisfaction in those things we required’.250 ‘Hastings 1621’, pp. 21-2. Moreover, when the judges proved reluctant to comply, fearing that by defining the privileges of peers they might weaken the royal prerogative, Arundel expressed surprise, saying that the Lords merely wanted the judges to provide them with a list of their privileges rather than an opinion.251 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, pp. 9-10.

As well as supporting his colleagues against their own legal assistants, Arundel also helped his fellow peers try to persuade the king to uphold their right to swear on their honour rather than on oath in courts of law. Indeed, on 12 Mar. he commended Buckingham for privately arguing their case before James.252 Ibid. 16-17. However, Arundel distanced himself from those who wanted to petition the king to allow English barons to take precedence on local commissions over Englishmen who had purchased Scottish and Irish viscountcies. On the face of it this was surprising. The previous year Arundel had quarrelled with Buckingham over the sale of peerages, which he claimed undermined the ancient nobility, of which he was the leading member.253 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 286. However, Arundel was not prepared to throw his weight behind a petition which struck publicly at the king’s right to bestow honours as he saw fit. He therefore aligned himself with Prince Charles and Lord Chancellor St Alban (Francis Bacon^*) who, on 20 Feb., opposed reading the petition, which had been formulated outside the chamber, on the grounds that it had nothing to do with the business of the House.254 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p 10.

Another reason why Arundel opposed the petition against ‘foreign’ titles was that it implicitly criticized Buckingham, the individual most closely associated with the sale of honours, whose support Arundel would need if he were transform his temporary appointment as earl marshal into a permanent position. During the Parliament, Arundel went out of his way to avoid offending the favourite, even at the cost of a certain inconsistency. On 12 Mar. he criticized the lord chancellor and lord treasurer for speaking at a recent conference with the Commons without the House’s permission, but the following day, after Buckingham committed the same fault, he stressed the need to set rules for the future to avoid discord.255 Ibid. 18-19, 22. Arundel trod no less warily where the dubious activities of Buckingham’s elder half-brother, Sir Edward Villiers^‡, were concerned. On 17 Apr. he proposed that no-one should be examined in connection with Villiers’ conduct as a monopolist because no charges had been laid against him, a motion which attracted the support of Buckingham’s friend Prince Charles.256 LD 1621, p. 3. He subsequently claimed that Matthias Fowles, one of Villiers’ partners in the gold and silver thread monopoly, knew nothing of the deceits practised in the manufacture of thread, a statement which was immediately contradicted by two of Buckingham’s chief antagonists in the House, the 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton (Henry Wriothesley^*) and the 8th (or 2nd) Lord Saye and Sele (William Fiennes^*, later 1st Viscount Saye and Sele).257 Ibid. 27-8.

It was not only Buckingham whose favour Arundel was eager to cultivate. On 26 and 27 Mar., after the Lords had passed sentence on the absentee monopolist Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, Arundel proposed that four bronze statues, two of the king and two of Prince Charles, then sitting in the upper House for the first time, be erected at the cost of both Houses. Since no-one in the Lords knew more about statuary than Arundel, it was agreed, on Buckingham’s motion, that Arundel should set the work in hand himself.258 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, pp. 48, 49. In the short term, Arundel failed to act upon this instruction, probably for lack of funds, but years later, in 1638, he commissioned Hubert Le Sueur to create two bronze equestrian statues of James and Charles, the latter of which still survives.259 W.H. Carpenter, Pictorial Notices, consisting of a Memoir of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, 188-90.

The deference shown towards James, Charles and Buckingham was not a courtesy Arundel extended to the lord chancellor. After Bacon proposed that more time be allowed for making the arms of the kingdom serviceable, on the grounds that nothing should be done to impair the ability of the king’s subjects to pay subsidies, he was contradicted by Arundel, a lord lieutenant of two counties, who observed that Bacon had rather missed the point, since the bill concerned only required arms to be replaced once they became unserviceable.260 ‘Hastings 1621’, pp. 11-12. Three days later Arundel again corrected Bacon after the latter announced that he would address the king that afternoon on behalf of the upper House only if his colleagues wished, as he was perfectly willing to let them choose another spokesman and to allow the Commons to employ the services of their own Speaker. Seconding Pembroke, Arundel pointed out that the lord chancellor always acted as spokesman for both Houses on such occasions.261 Ibid. 15-17.

These disagreements with Bacon demonstrate that Arundel’s stature in the Lords had grown significantly since 1610, when he had last sat. It is certainly telling that it was to Arundel that the incoming clerk of the parliaments, Henry Elsyng, looked for protection in March 1621 against the lord great chamberlain, the 18th earl of Oxford (Henry de Vere).262 E.R. Foster, Painful Labour of Mr. Elsyng, 9. This enhanced status helps to explain why Arundel became chairman of one of the three committees established by the Lords to investigate obnoxious patents in mid March. His committee was charged with the complex task of examining the patent concerning gold and silver thread, in which, as has been noted already, Sir Edward Villiers was intimately involved.263 LD 1621, 1625, and 1628, p. 26; LJ, iii. 47a, 62a, 62b. Over the next few months, Arundel played a leading role in this and several other major inquiries. These included the investigation into the ecclesiastical judge Sir John Bennet^‡, who was accused by the Commons of having demanded large bribes. On 25 Apr. Arundel proposed that Bennet, a wealthy man, put in a substantial bond for his appearance, as many of his victims were demanding restitution. He was subsequently appointed to the committee for examining the charges against the judge.264 LD 1621, pp. 22-3; LJ, iii. 104b.

One of the principal investigations in which Arundel was involved concerned Bacon, who was exposed as having taken bribes from suitors in Chancery. Arundel helped take the examinations of some of the chief witnesses in the case, among them Sir George Hastings^‡ and Sir Richard Young^‡. On 18 Apr. he defended the integrity of this investigation after Buckingham, who tried to aid his former client the lord chancellor, queried whether the witnesses had in fact combined to give false testimony. At the risk of offending the favourite, Arundel replied that each witness had set down their evidence in his presence and that of his colleagues on the committee.265 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 31; LD 1621, pp. 8-9. Following Bacon’s condemnation, Arundel was one of four senior members of the Lords sent to fetch the great seal from the disgraced former minister.266 LD 1621, p. 54.

Another key investigation in which Arundel was involved concerned the former attorney general, Sir Henry Yelverton^‡, who had been dismissed from office and was accused, inter alia, of imprisoning several silkmen for refusing to enter into a legally binding promise not to manufacture gold and silver thread. Arundel had little sympathy for Yelverton, mainly, perhaps, because Buckingham hated him, but also because Yelverton had accused him the previous year of entrapment, of which charge Arundel had been cleared by his fellow privy councillors.267 APC, 1619-21, pp. 201-2. Not surprisingly, therefore, Arundel attacked Yelverton when charges were laid against him in the Lords on 18 April. Yelverton, he declared, had signed the warrants ordering the imprisonment of silkmen even though the silk thread patent was a monopoly that he himself had advised the king to call in. When it was subsequently discovered that no charges could be brought against Yelverton for putting pressure on various innkeepers to buy licences sold by Sir Giles Mompesson, Arundel expressed dismay, asking instead whether ‘some indecent matter may be examined and the party charged by us with it’.268 LD 1621, p. 5.

Yelverton was afforded the opportunity to defend himself on 30 Apr., when he laid all the blame for his misfortunes on Buckingham, whom he likened to Hugh, Lord Le Despenser^†, the hated favourite of Edward II. This unflattering comparison necessarily cast James I in the role of a king widely regarded as having been a tyrant. Among those who proceeded to denounce Yelverton for impugning the honour of both James and Buckingham was Arundel, who called upon one of the House’s legal assistants to compile a list of Yelverton’s accusations. Moreover, when Buckingham’s enemy Lord Sheffield denied that Yelverton had said anything detrimental to the king’s honour, Arundel pointed out that, by accusing Buckingham of assuming regal powers to place and displace the king’s officers, Yelverton had necessarily implied that James had allowed the reins of power to pass to another. Arundel remained unmoved after Southampton, North and Saye claimed that Yelverton’s remarks had been directed at Buckingham rather than James. Indeed, he countered that all three men should be ‘tender of the king’s honour’.269 Ibid. 52.

Yelverton’s fate was the main battleground over which the supporters and opponents of Buckingham in the Lords fought in the spring of 1621. Another source of friction between the two sides was the nature and extent of the punishment to be inflicted upon Bacon, who was dismissed from office on 1 May. Arundel, of course, had played an active part in the investigation into Bacon’s corruption, describing the former lord chancellor’s offences as ‘foul’. However, when, on 3 May, Saye proposed that Bacon should be stripped of his noble status, Arundel sided with Buckingham, who won the ensuing vote by a narrow margin.270 Ibid. 62; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 371.

Tension between the enemies and partisans of Buckingham helps to explain subtle differences in emphasis that were revealed in the Lords after it was learned that the Commons had attempted to punish on their own authority a Catholic barrister named Edward Floyd. Most members of the upper House, Arundel among them, were astonished that the Commons had presumed to encroach upon the Lords’ judicial authority. On 7 May, having listened to the arguments produced in their own behalf by the Commons, Arundel declared bluntly that the Lords should inform the lower House that ‘we find ourselves wronged by them in this point of judicature’. The uncompromising nature of this remark contrasts starkly with the more conciliatory tone adopted by Buckingham’s enemy Southampton, who enjoyed a significant following in the Commons. He observed that this rebuke should be delivered in a friendly fashion, ‘as with brothers’.271 LD 1621, pp. 69-70.

The following day, the open warfare between Buckingham and his enemies resumed. Buckingham was delighted that Yelverton, in his recent appearance before the House, had succeeded only in condemning himself, and saw no reason to give the former attorney general a second hearing. By contrast, the favourite’s enemies were adamant that Yelverton should be allowed to rebut the criticisms levelled against him, particularly the accusation that he had slighted the king. Consequently, on 8 May a motion to grant Yelverton a further hearing was made by the 1st Lord Spencer (Robert Spencer^*), only to be opposed by Arundel, now regarded as Buckingham’s lieutenant in the House. Arundel declared that there was no need to hear Yelverton again, as ‘we have his words’. Spencer expressed surprised at this response, pointing out that two of Arundel’s own ancestors, the poet earl of Surrey and the 3rd duke of Norfolk (Thomas Howard^†), had been condemned without a hearing. Arundel, however, was not about to be lectured on his family’s history by a man whose membership of the peerage dated only from 1603, and retorted that ‘my ancestors ... did serve the crown and kingdom abroad when the lord’s ancestor’s [sic] that spoke last were keeping sheep at home’. This reply was not only gratuitous but also deeply offensive, and not surprisingly several peers, led by his estranged kinsman Suffolk, demanded that Arundel be called to the bar.272 Ibid. 71-3; Diary of Richard Hutton ed. W. Prest (Selden Soc. suppl. ser. ix), 36; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 150; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 375; CSP Ven. 1621-3, p. 53.

In the short term, Arundel’s ill chosen remark was set to one side, as the House had more important matters to occupy its attention. The quarrel over Yelverton had still not been settled, and on 12 May a fresh attempt to obtain a second hearing for the former attorney general was made, this time by Sheffield and the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (Thomas Morton^*). Once again, Arundel was in the vanguard of those who opposed the motion. The House was not attempting to condemn Yelverton without a hearing, he declared, as Yelverton had both addressed the chamber and been given sufficient time in which to explain himself. They should turn their attention instead to consider whether Yelverton had impugned the king’s honour.273 LD 1621, pp. 77-8. In the end, it was Southampton and his supporters who prevailed, for on 14 May Yelverton was once again brought before the House. However, theirs was a hollow victory, for on the following day Yelverton was pronounced guilty as charged. A last minute attempt to help Yelverton was mounted on the 16th by Sheffield, Suffolk and Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset, but their motion to allow witnesses to be heard before sentence was passed was successfully opposed by Arundel, who observed that Yelverton was trying to introduce new material.274 Ibid. 85, 86, 89.

Now that Yelverton had been condemned, the Lords were free to turn their attention to the jibe Arundel had earlier hurled at Lord Spencer. On 17 May, the matter having been raised by the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux^*), Arundel told the House that he had assumed that Spencer’s words conveyed an ugly meaning. He now conceded that he had been mistaken, but still maintained that Spencer’s words were ‘somewhat harsh’. He added, rather less convincingly, that he had not intended to tax Spencer’s ancestors ‘with any lack of gentility or baseness, but with frugality and looking well to their private estate when his ancestors were in public service and chargeable courses of expense’. Following this speech, which one listener described as ‘good’, Arundel and Spencer withdrew to separate rooms while their colleagues committed to paper the words they had uttered. On their return the offending speeches were read out, whereupon Arundel denied ever having mentioned ‘sheep at home’, the very words which formed the basis of the complaint against him. He also declined to apologize to Spencer, despite being given three opportunities to do so. In view of his stubbornness, the House was left with little choice but to send him to the Tower.275 LD 1621, p. 91; Diary of Richard Hutton, 36; Add. 72299, f. 47.

In the aftermath of these events, Lucy, countess of Bedford expressed astonishment that Arundel had ‘not played the part of so wise a man as for his noble lady’s sake I wish he had’.276 Pvte. Corresp. of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, 78. To a degree, her surprise was understandable. Having previously championed procedural propriety, Arundel had not only hurled an insult at one of his opponents but also refused to apologize for doing so. By contrast, only three months earlier, he himself had been very vocal in his criticism of the 1st earl of Berkshire (Francis Norris^*) after Berkshire shoved the 11th Lord Scrope (Emanuel Scrope^*, later 1st earl of Sunderland). Indeed, he had called for severe punishment to be inflicted, on the grounds that the dignity of the House had been damaged.277 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 8. However, Arundel’s angry reaction to Spencer was not really as surprising as the countess of Bedford supposed, as the earl had a highly developed sense of his own personal honour and of his family’s standing. When the mayor of Chester failed to greet him in 1634, Arundel summoned the offender, snatched his staff of office from his hand, and angrily told him that ‘I will teach you to know yourself, and attend peers of the realm’.278 G.W. Eustace, Arundel Bor. and Castle, 139. Nor was Arundel’s conduct as ill considered as the countess of Bedford suggested. By insulting Spencer and refusing to apologize, Arundel had demonstrated to Buckingham that no-one in the Lords was more loyal to the favourite than himself. Not surprisingly therefore, Arundel was ‘very much visited and courted’ while he was in the Tower by Buckingham ‘and all the grandees of that side’. This show of support afforded him ‘much ease and rest’, as did the fact that his friend, the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton^‡, brought him reading matter, included ‘a book of the accounts of the rich hangings in Henry VIII’s time’.279 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 375; HMC Portland, ii. 120; Cott., Julius C.III, f. 208.

Arundel had, in fact, played his cards rather well, for despite his incarceration it now seemed only a matter of time before he would be granted high office. One possibility under consideration was that he would become lord chancellor in succession to Bacon.280 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 51. After all, he was already one of the commissioners for the great seal, having been appointed to serve in this capacity in early May. Alternatively, Buckingham perhaps contemplated bestowing the office of lord chamberlain on Arundel in place of Pembroke, who had long coveted the lord treasurer’s staff.281 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 381. However, this was never very likely, despite a rumour to that effect, as Pembroke wanted to resign the lord chamberlainship to his brother, the earl of Montgomery (Philip Herbert^*, later 4th earl of Pembroke). Whatever promotion Buckingham had in store for Arundel, it was clear that it could only take effect once Arundel had been released. The wheels for doing so were set in motion on 2 June, when the king announced that he was irritated that the Lords had imprisoned such an important personage as Arundel without consulting him first. He also said that he had instructed Prince Charles to reconcile the earl with Lord Spencer, and required Arundel to be freed once the earl had apologized to the House.282 Diary of Sir Richard Hutton, 39. That same day, Arundel wrote to the Lords promising to obey their commands in future, and explaining that his earlier disobedience had arisen because ‘time was short for advice’. Later that morning the Lords appointed Arundel to a committee to attend the king that afternoon with a number of petitions, implying that he had now been released.283 HMC Hastings, ii. 60; A. Wilson, Hist. of Gt. Britain (1653), 163-4; LJ, iii. 155a. However, it was not until two days later, just as Parliament rose for the summer, that Arundel resumed his seat, having privately apologized to Lord Spencer and publicly admitted that he had given ‘just cause of offence’.284 Add. 72254, f. 35; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 150. It cannot have been easy for the proud Arundel to issue these apologies, but he was acting under a strong incentive, as ten days after his release it was reported by one well informed source that he would soon be made earl marshal.285 Cal. Wynn Pprs. 150. See also Diary of Walter Yonge ed. G. Roberts (Cam. Soc. xli), 40; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 260. Sure enough, on 15 July, Arundel was handed the marshal’s baton by the king.286 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 389.

Appointment as earl marshal, procedural innovation in Parliament and conflict in the college of arms, 1621-2

The office of earl marshal carried with it an official salary of only £20 p.a. Since there were few opportunities for the occupant to enrich himself through the normal course of his duties, the king proposed that Arundel should receive an addition to his farm of the impost on currants. However, this proved impossible, and therefore it was decided to bestow upon Arundel an annual pension of £2,000 from the revenues arising from the Alienations Office.287 Ibid. 389, 395, 397; SO3/7, unfol. (Aug. 1621). The grant authorizing payment of this pension was sealed, with great reluctance, on 1 Sept. by the new lord keeper, John Williams^*, bishop of Lincoln, who, like Arundel, was a client of Buckingham. Writing to the favourite that same day, Williams observed that this was no time to bestow such a large pension, as Parliament, which had risen for the summer but was soon to reassemble, ‘is very like to take notice thereof’. However, Williams’ principal concern was not with Arundel’s pension but with the scope of his patent. Dated 29 Aug., this too lay on his desk awaiting the application of the great seal. The powers bestowed on Arundel were greater ‘by many dimensions’ than those previously enjoyed by the commissioners for the office of earl marshal. Were his patent to pass unaltered, the court of the Verge, which had recently sat in Westminster Hall under the auspices of the lord steward for the first time after a long interval, might well be swept away. At the very least, the lord steward would find himself subordinated to the earl marshal, a situation that the present incumbent, the king’s cousin the duke of Lennox, was likely to consider intolerable. Williams also observed that Arundel’s patent subsumed the authority of the marshal of the household, an officer whose powers had customarily been regarded as separate and distinct from those of the earl marshal.288 Cabala Sive Scrinia Sacra (1663), 285-6. On the revival of the court of the Verge in April 1620, see ‘Camden Diary’, 56. In view of these grave reservations, Williams declined to affix the great seal to Arundel’s grant.

Williams’ concerns may well have been genuine, but contemporary observers could be forgiven for contrasting Williams, the Calvinist bishop, with Arundel, who, as many now realized, was only nominally Protestant. The law student Simonds D’Ewes^‡ certainly noted that, by refusing to seal Arundel’s patent, Williams ‘stood as much as possible he durst for religion’.289 Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. E. Bourcier, 89. Whatever Williams’ real motives may have been, Arundel was clearly taken aback by the lord keeper’s refusal to seal his grant, and behind the scenes a furious row erupted. Eventually, however, it was decided to issue a fresh patent, in which the excessive powers previously granted to Arundel would be removed. According to one observer, Arundel thereby lost not only his authority over the lord steward and the marshal of the household but also the right to command naval expeditions. It was also rumoured that a clause restoring to Arundel’s family hereditary possession of the earl marshalship was deleted.290 Add. 72254, f. 55. The new patent passed the great seal on 29 Sept., but Arundel, impatient to assume his new role, began exercising the duties of earl marshal one week earlier, using his staff of office as his authority and feigning disregard for Williams in the process.291 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 291; 1640-1, p. 124.

Arundel threw himself into his new role with considerable energy. One of the first tasks he set himself was to replace the ceremony of investing newly created peers in the king’s house with one that involved Parliament. Investiture of new peers in one of the royal residences had been commonplace up until 1611, but in recent years this practice had been largely abandoned, in part, perhaps, because the inflation of honours during the second half of James’s reign had undermined its solemnity. From May 1617, when the 2nd Viscount Brackley (John Egerton^*) was created earl of Bridgwater, new patents of nobility often included a clause which dispensed with the need for formal investiture. Only a few newly-created peers, such as Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, clung to the old ritual. Since investiture was no longer popular at court a new, simpler ceremonial form was needed. At some point, Arundel probably became aware that investiture in the king’s house was of relatively recent origin, and that prior to 1421 most peers were created in Parliament. He was certainly familiar with the ceremony that had been in use since at least 1589 for barons summoned to Parliament by writ. (These peers, who had never been subject to formal investiture, were led into the chamber between two supporters.) Armed with this information, Arundel devised a new ceremony, which he laid before the Lords when Parliament reconvened on 20 November. He proposed that five new peers, all of whom had been created by letters patent rather than by writ, be led into the upper chamber by two of their fellow peers and shown to their seats ‘according to the ancient ceremonies of this House’. At the same time, Arundel evidently also proposed that new peers hand their patents of creation to the lord keeper. Arundel’s fellow Members agreed with these suggestions, and immediately thereafter all five peers were formally introduced along the lines proposed by the earl marshal. This new procedure, which combined the ceremonies of investiture and seat-taking, quickly became established, and thereafter the practice of investing new peers at court was all but discontinued when Parliament was sitting.292 A. Wagner and J.C. Sainty, ‘Origins of the Introduction of Peers in the House of Lords’, Archaeologia, ci. 119-34; LD 1621, p. 93; LJ, iii. 162b, 163a.

Arundel had now demonstrated for a second time his belief that the dignity of the peerage was best preserved by the House of Lords. On the first occasion, in February 1621, he had proposed that the Lords create a committee for privileges to establish and preserve the rights and privileges of the nobility. Now he had succeeded in transferring to the upper House the ceremonial creation of new peers, a ritual which, left to the king, might otherwise have vanished entirely. In so doing he had further helped shape the procedures of the House, which he had already done so much to codify.

Although the dignity of the peerage loomed large in Arundel’s mind, so too did the royal prerogative. During the recess, papers belonging to the lawyer John Selden^‡ had been seized by the king, and although most had been returned some were still missing. These included documents relating to peers’ privileges, a subject on which Selden’s aid had been sought by the Lords’ subcommittee for privileges. Although the business of the upper House was disrupted by the loss of these papers, Arundel was in no doubt where his duty lay. Speaking on 30 Nov., he declared that the king’s right to seize papers for reasons of state was ‘not to be questioned’; Selden would have to fill in the gaps himself. It only remained for the subcommittee for privileges to establish whether any of the missing papers had been removed ‘maliciously’. A similar thread ran through Arundel’s remarks on the monopolies bill, which had been drafted by the Commons and received its third reading in the Lords on 1 December. Declaring that he shared the bill’s objectives, Arundel nevertheless declared that he would not vote for the measure as it stood because it trenched upon the king’s prerogative. Rather than pass sweeping legislation which diminished the power of the king, Parliament, he announced, should fashion a bill directed at those individual monopolies which had led to complaints. He was subsequently appointed to a committee for drawing up the heads of a new bill.293 LD 1621, pp. 101, 102; LJ, iii. 179a.

In early December, Arundel was afforded an opportunity to exact his revenge on Lord Keeper Williams for having earlier withheld the great seal from his patent as earl marshal. A disgruntled litigant, Sir John Bourchier^‡, submitted a petition against the lord keeper, who was accused of reaching a judgement in Chancery without giving Bourchier a full hearing. However, rather than attempt to embarrass Williams by supporting Bourchier, Arundel actually seconded Prince Charles, who observed that, since haste rather than injustice was involved, the matter was too trivial to merit consideration. Indeed, Arundel added that, were the Lords to give Bourchier’s petition a hearing, there would be ‘no end’ of similar suits. In the event, the House decided to examine Bourchier’s complaint anyway, only to discover that it was groundless. Like Charles, Arundel called for Bourchier to be punished, reminding his colleagues of this matter on 12 Dec. and helping to draft Bourchier’s apology.294 LD 1621, pp. 107, 108, 118, 119, 120. Although Arundel chose not to exploit Bourchier’s petition for his own ends, this did not mean that he had forgiven Williams, for in May 1622 he and Pembroke attacked the bishop’s authority as dean of Westminster at the Council table.295 Harl. 7000, f. 94. Rather, it suggests that he put his respect for Prince Charles before his resentment towards the lord keeper. This desire to please the prince helps to explain why the only bill committee Arundel chaired during the winter sitting concerned Charles’s recent purchase of Kenilworth Castle, in Warwickshire.296 LJ, iii. 173b, 182a.

Throughout the sitting, Arundel remained vocal in upholding the honour and dignity of the House. When the House began to investigate the abuses associated with letters of protection distributed by certain peers to their servants, he not only spoke on the subject of forged letters but also proposed that the subcommittee for privileges be instructed to explain what they proposed to do about the matter. On 15 Dec. Arundel’s friend the 1st Lord Houghton (John Holles^*, later 1st earl of Clare) asked the House to settle the question of whether a peer was entitled to swear on his honour in a court of law, whereupon Arundel recommended that the matter be referred to the privileges committee, ‘it being a matter of so great consequence’. Arundel remained, as always, the guardian of correct procedure. When George Abbot requested on 3 Dec. that the newly amended informers bill be signed by the clerk, Arundel declared that the archbishop’s proposal ‘stands with the ancient orders of the House’.297 LD 1621, pp. 96-7, 105, 118, 123.

Following the collapse of the Parliament, Arundel journeyed to Theobalds to brief the king.298 Harl. 1580, f. 171v. Early in the New Year he was one of the privy councillors chosen to question the former lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir Edward Coke^‡, who was imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of having fomented discontent in the Commons. Arundel was particularly animated in his interrogation of Coke, accusing him of ‘so speaking in Parliament as tended to stir up the subjects’ hearts against their sovereign’.299 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 418; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 284. This expression of sympathy for the king was undoubtedly genuine, as Arundel had a horror of disorder, but there may have been an element of fellow feeling about it too, as Arundel’s own authority as earl marshal was then in the process of being undermined by two members of the college of arms. The chief culprit was Ralph Brooke, York herald, who, in conjunction with his colleague Robert Treswell, claimed that Arundel did not have the authority to hold an earl marshal’s court in the absence of a lord high constable. Brooke was engaged in a dispute over fees with several of his fellow heralds, and believed that he would only obtain a favourable outcome if his case were heard in Chancery and Common Pleas rather than by the earl marshal.300 G.D. Squibb, High Ct. of Chivalry, 44. He may also have been motivated by personal ill feeling towards Arundel, for in October 1621 the new earl marshal had given permission to the Stationers’ Company to print Brooke’s catalogue of the kings and nobility of England only if errors relating to the ancestry of the nobility contained in an earlier, unauthorized version were corrected.301 L. Campbell and F.W. Steer, Cat. of the Mss in the Coll. of Arms, i. 271.

Arundel acted quickly to crush Brooke and Treswell, both of whom had a track record of causing trouble. In 1620, for instance, they had accused the commissioners for the office of earl marshal, of whom Arundel was perhaps the leading member, of incorrectly organizing the procession at the funeral of the queen, Anne of Denmark, while Treswell had to be rebuked for installing his family in the office of arms, in defiance of the commissioners’ orders.302 Cust, 38; Add. 6297, ff. 220, 221, 228; Coll. of Arms, ms I.25, f. 51. On Brooke’s mischief making, see also A. Wagner, Heralds of Eng. 219. In December 1621 the two heralds were committed to the Marshalsea for deriding Arundel’s right to hold an earl marshal’s court, and the following spring Arundel instructed the Stationers’ Company to prevent the sale of Brooke’s book.303 APC, 1619-21, pp. 99, 100; Campbell and Steer, i. 270. In June 1622 the Privy Council, acting on the king’s instructions, ordered the lawsuits begun by Brooke in Chancery and Common Pleas to be stayed on the grounds that they infringed the jurisdiction of the earl marshal’s court. However, Brooke had seriously unsettled Arundel, who refrained from exercising judicial authority until Sir Robert Cotton, employed for the purpose, established the nature and extent of his rights.304 APC, 1621-3, pp. 267-8. By the end of July 1622 the king was satisfied that Arundel was entitled to hold a court of chivalry, notwithstanding the lack of a lord high constable. However, to avoid further controversy he issued to Arundel, on 1 Aug., a special patent authorizing him to proceed.305 Cat. of the Earl Marshal’s Pprs. at Arundel ed. F.W. Steer (Harl. Soc. cxv and cxvi), 42. To make doubly sure, James handed Arundel in April 1623 the staff and seals of the lord high constable, which office had long remained vacant. A few weeks earlier, Brooke was released from prison, having acknowledged his former error.306 APC, 1621-3, p. 450; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 559; Squibb, 47.

Arundel nearly did not live long enough to exercise his new rights. On 29 July 1622, while travelling between Highgate and London, he was forced to leap from his carriage after his horses bolted and his coachman was thrown from his seat. Catching one of his spurs in the door, he was dragged a considerable distance before being run over by his own vehicle. Spurting ‘abundance of blood, both out of his head and stomach’, and lying ‘speechless an hour and a half’, his life was saved by careful medical treatment, and by mid August he was ‘in a fair way of recovery’.307 Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 88-9; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 324, 328; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 164-5; Add. 72254, f. 132v; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 449.

The Spanish Match and the 1624 Parliament

Following the sudden departure for Spain of Charles and Buckingham in February 1623, Arundel was appointed to help negotiate a marriage treaty with the Spanish ambassadors, as it was fully expected that Charles would soon return home with the infanta as his wife. It was subsequently rumoured that the earl marshal was being considered for command of the fleet that was to be sent to fetch home the prince and his new bride. In the event, however, Buckingham’s father-in-law, Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland, was chosen instead.

It seems likely that the decision to appoint Rutland rather than Arundel was intended as a snub to the earl marshal who, two years earlier, had tried to have command of all naval expeditions included in his patent of appointment. It is certainly striking that, at around this same time, the countess of Arundel, then on the Continent, was forbidden from travelling to Madrid to offer her services to the infanta. Many of the other leading ladies at court, particularly those most closely connected to Buckingham, were anxious to serve the prospective princess of Wales themselves and did not wish to find that, by the time the infanta reached England, Aletheia, who had never converted to Protestantism, had already established for herself a position of dominance in the infanta’s Catholic household. Arundel, however, was angry that his wife had been thwarted and that he himself had been left without employment.308 CSP Ven. 1623-5, pp. 612, 631; HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 157. It cannot have escaped his attention that, in both cases, he had been undermined by the partisans of Buckingham.

Arundel’s relationship with Buckingham continued to deteriorate over the spring and summer of 1623. In May the king elevated Buckingham to ducal rank, whereupon Arundel grew so annoyed that he soon became ‘a great stranger at the court’.309 CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 28; Cabala, 129. He himself wished to be restored to the dukedom of Norfolk, but James would not countenance this, as restoration would have given Arundel seniority over both Buckingham and Lennox, who was created duke of Richmond. Further friction between Arundel and Buckingham developed after the favourite learned, while he was in Spain, that James had bestowed on the earl marshal the staff and seals of the lord high constable in order to ensure that Arundel encountered no legal objections to holding a court of chivalry. The office of lord high constable was the highest in the land, enjoying semi-regal power. Although it remained in abeyance, Arundel’s grant so alarmed Buckingham that in June 1623 he began to seek the constableship for himself.310 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 498, 502-3; K. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 138. At around the same time, there was a heated quarrel at court between Pembroke, Arundel’s kinsman by marriage, and James Hay^*, 1st earl of Carlisle, one of Buckingham’s close friends and allies. Arundel was forced to step in to prevent blows from being struck.311 Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 140.

Arundel was among those peers who travelled to Southampton in early June to make preparations for receiving the infanta.312 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 596; HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 171; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 403. However, he was unhappy at having been relegated to a minor role in the negotiations for a marriage treaty with Spain. Unaware that Charles and Buckingham had now agreed terms, in mid July he asked to be excused from serving on the commission for the Spanish Match on the grounds that Prince Charles was in Spain, ‘and we cannot but treat upon disadvantage’.313 Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 146. Although this request was refused, Arundel’s wish to take no further part in the marriage proceedings was granted, as the earl now received news that his eldest son, James, Lord Maltravers, who was returning to England with his mother, had been struck down by smallpox at Ghent. After obtaining leave of absence from the king, he rushed over to Ghent with a physician, but his journey was in vain, as his son died shortly thereafter.314 CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 20; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 412; Harl. 1580, f. 311; CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 80; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 508-9, 511. Arundel’s sudden departure, at the very moment when members of the Privy Council were about to swear to uphold the terms of the marriage treaty negotiated by Charles and Buckingham, excited considerable adverse comment at court.315 CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 33; CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 90. However, for the time being at least, Arundel was past caring. Overcome with grief, he not only set aside all business on his return but also avoided the court.316 Cabala, 249; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 81.

Arundel had regained his composure by early October, when he greeted Prince Charles at York House on the latter’s return to England.317 Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 162. The following month the High Court of Chivalry sat for the first time since 1598. Its appointed place of meeting was the Painted Chamber, in the palace of Westminster, which served as the venue for conferences between both Houses when Parliament was in session. Arundel opened the proceedings by announcing that he intended to revive that which had ‘lain long in the dust’ while also avoiding encroaching upon the jurisdiction of other courts.318 Squibb, 48-9.

At around the same time that the Court of Chivalry was revived, Arundel took his seat on the 12-strong council for foreign affairs.319 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 527-8. As Charles had returned home without the infanta, there was now an opportunity for Arundel to play a more meaningful role in the Spanish marriage negotiations than hitherto. However, over the winter of 1623-4 a gulf opened up between the king on the one hand and Charles and Buckingham on the other. James was determined to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion at all costs, whereas the prince, supported by Buckingham, was unwilling to proceed unless Spain first promised to restore the Palatinate, which had now been entirely overrun. In this battle of wills, Arundel initially sided with the prince. Indeed, shortly before Christmas the Venetian ambassador observed that the earl marshal was in some danger from the king. Arundel responded to this threatened loss of favour by adopting a low profile, for one week later it was observed that he had ceased to attend the Council frequently.320 CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 178; Add. 72299, f. 126v. However, early in the New Year Arundel switched sides and joined the hispanophiles on the Council, among them his old friend Lionel Cranfield, now lord treasurer and earl of Middlesex. Rather than support Buckingham and Carlisle, he voted to proceed with the Spanish Match.321 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 542. In so doing, he aligned himself publicly with the enemies of the duke.

One of the main consequences of Prince Charles’s disenchantment with the Spanish marriage negotiations was that a Parliament was summoned. Charles and Buckingham both reasoned that if Spain would not restore the Palatinate to Charles’s sister and her husband, it would have to be recovered by force, for which a generous vote of parliamentary supply would be needed. During the ensuing borough elections Arundel again secured seats for six or seven of his friends and clients, including John Borough^‡, a kinsman of Sir Robert Cotton and recently appointed a herald by the earl marshal. However, as in 1621, he failed to obtain places for his nominees at Steyning.322 Others elected on his interest were Thomas Bancroft (Castle Rising); George Chaworth (Arundel); Sir Thomas Holland (Norfolk); Henry Spiller (Arundel); and Robert Spiller (Castle Rising). Sir Thomas Edmondes may also have relied on him for his seat at Chichester. HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 273, 276, 406, 408, 418.

Following the opening of Parliament on 19 Feb., Arundel was again appointed a trier of petitions (by the king) and a member of both the committee and the subcommittee for privileges.323 LJ, iii. 208a, 215a, 215b. However, he may not have been present on the afternoon of 24 Feb. to hear Buckingham present a decidedly partisan account of the recent history of the Spanish marriage negotiations to both Houses, as he did not attend the Lords that morning.324 Ibid. 216b; Add. 40087, f. 19. The attendance list in the Journal records his presence on the 24th, but the ms minutes make it clear that the clerk inadvertently transposed the attendance records for the 23rd and the 24th. His absence was not entirely surprising, for as a member of the committee for foreign affairs he must already have been familiar with Buckingham’s views. He resumed his attendance of the House immediately thereafter, and on the 26th was appointed to a committee on a bill to continue hospitals. The Spanish ambassadors took grave offence at Buckingham’s ‘Relation’, claiming that the duke had traduced their royal master. Arundel, despite not hearing the offending comments himself, perhaps, was named to the committee appointed on 1 Mar. to confer with the Commons about clearing Buckingham from the Spaniards’ accusations.325 LJ, iii. 219a, 238a.

In light of the information laid before both Houses by Buckingham, Parliament had to decide whether to advise James to break off the marriage negotiations. On 28 Feb., during a debate on this matter, Arundel suggested that a committee to search for precedents be established. This proposal was adopted, and Arundel himself was named to the committee. By 5 Mar. both Houses were ready to lay their reasons for breaking off the negotiations before the king. It was decided that these should be presented by a 12-strong committee, and initially Arundel himself was named to this body. However, for reasons that remain unclear, both his name and Buckingham’s were removed from the committee list.326 Add. 40087, ff. 38v, 39v, 52.

Another urgent matter before the Parliament was the military readiness of the kingdom, for if the marriage negotiations were terminated on the grounds that Spain had been deceitful it was inevitable that war would ensue. On 1 Mar. the earl of Southampton, a professional soldier, called for the country’s magazines to be inspected. Arundel, wearing his hat as a lord lieutenant, concurred, but added that inquiry should be made of the manner in which arms and munitions were stored. He also recommended that a survey be taken of the kingdom’s forts. A committee was subsequently appointed, to which he himself was named.327 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 14; LJ, iii. 237b.

It may have been with one eye on the military readiness of the kingdom that on 9 Mar. Arundel tried to undermine a bill to ensure the better observation of the Sabbath. He suggested that the Lords take the advice of the judges on whether the bill would outlaw the exercise of arms on Sunday afternoons, which had only recently received official sanction in the form of a royal proclamation (the so-called Declaration of Sports of May 1618). He clearly expected an answer in the affirmative, which would then cause the bill to be rejected. However, the judges opined that the exercise of arms, not being a sport, was not subject to the bill’s provisions.328 Add. 40087, ff. 62, 64. Gardiner, who transcribed this source, misread ‘doubt’ as ‘double’: LD 1624 and 1626, p. 22. On the 1618 proclamation, see Constitutional Docs. of the Reign of Jas. I ed. J.R. Tanner, 55, 56. Perhaps the main reason Arundel opposed the Sabbath bill was that it was a puritan measure. This was not something he could say publicly for, where religion was concerned, Arundel was forced to tread carefully. When, on 12 Mar., the lower House informed the Lords that papists were exporting large quantities of gold, Arundel did not query the veracity of this claim, but instead joined those who called for these shipments to be stopped.329 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 28.

On 6 Mar. Arundel was appointed to consider a bill to abolish trial by battle, a measure of interest to the newly revived High Court of Chivalry. There is no evidence that Arundel himself had caused this bill to be drafted, and indeed the fact that he subsequently served as the committee’s chairman (delivering the committee’s report on 19 Mar.) suggests that he had not. Arundel probably kept an eye on this bill even after it reached the Commons, where the committee appointed for its consideration included Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden (perhaps already a member of the earl marshal’s circle) and Sir George Chaworth^‡, who had been returned to Parliament on Arundel’s interest.330 LJ, iii. 248b, 269a; CJ, i. 746a.

Following a disturbance in the Painted Chamber in mid March involving pages and footmen, Arundel led a hurried investigation. The day after the incident, he reported that an unofficial corporation of coachmen were responsible. To prevent any recurrence, he and his fellow committee members drafted some rules to regulate the conduct of peers’ servants, which were adopted virtually without amendment. They also recommended that a tavern within the precincts of the palace of Westminster be suppressed.331 Add. 40087, ff. 87, 89; LJ, iii. 417b, 418a. A short while later, Arundel sought to uphold the dignity of Star Chamber, most of whose members sat in the Lords, after a minister named Caleb Morley was found guilty of spreading a libel against the court. Arundel was among those peers who called for Morley and the printer of the libel to be punished.332 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 36-8, 42.

On 19 Mar. Arundel’s client Sir George Chaworth incensed the Commons by attacking the widely held desire for war with Spain. It has been assumed that Arundel himself was behind this speech, since he had voted in favour of the Spanish marriage only two months earlier and his relationship with Buckingham, one of the chief protagonists of armed conflict, was now poor.333 CJ, i. 742a; K. Sharpe, ‘Earl of Arundel and His Circle’, Faction and Parl. ed. idem, 222. However, this supposition is not supported by the memoir subsequently penned by Chaworth, who recalled that his speech was actually encouraged by both the Spanish ambassadors and the crypto-Catholic Secretary of State Sir George Calvert^‡.334 Loseley Mss ed. A.J. Kempe, 477-8. See also HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 496. It is, of course, true that Calvert and Arundel were friends – Arundel had allowed the secretary use of his Highgate house following the death of his wife in August 1622335 Add. 72299, ff. 88, 90; 72254, f. 139v. – but unless he was being extremely devious, it seems unlikely that Arundel would have chosen to influence Chaworth indirectly through Calvert.

One reason for supposing that Arundel was not responsible for Chaworth’s speech is that the earl marshal was probably reluctant to set himself firmly against Prince Charles, who was just as vocal as Buckingham in calling for war with Spain. He certainly continued to try to cultivate the prince’s favour, as he took charge of a bill that formed part of Charles’s legislative programme. This was the measure to eliminate brewhouses near St James’s Palace, which Arundel reported as fit to pass, subject to some amendments and additions, on 5 May.336 LJ, iii. 269a, 342a. A rumour that this bill had actually been introduced by Arundel himself was false, not least because peers did not chair committees on their own bills. It probably stemmed from the fact that in 1621 Arundel had suppressed a brewery next to his house in the Strand.337 SP14/165/35; HMC 4th Rep. 121b.

Over the Easter vacation Arundel secretly supported Middlesex in attempting to topple Buckingham, whose relations with the king were by now strained.338 CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 268. Middlesex reintroduced James to his handsome young kinsman, Arthur Brett, but this stratagem served only to enrage Buckingham, who retaliated when Parliament reassembled by arranging for his clients in the Commons to launch a blistering attack on the lord treasurer. Arundel did what he could for the largely friendless Middlesex, who claimed on 5 Apr. that there was a dangerous conspiracy against him. When Middlesex was challenged, on 9 Apr., to name those behind this plot, Arundel protested that the lord treasurer had spoken ‘in passion’ and suggested that attention should instead be focussed on the conspiracy itself. Three days later, after two peers condemned Middlesex for replying to the charges laid against him by the Commons without the permission of the House, Arundel interjected that any member of the upper House might answer the Commons voluntarily if he wished. These attempts to defend Middlesex proved unavailing, and later that same morning Arundel was omitted from the subcommittee appointed to draw up charges against the lord treasurer, the only senior member of the Council to be thus excluded.339 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 60, 61, 65; LJ, iii. 301b; Sharpe, ‘Earl of Arundel and His Circle’, 224. Thereafter he took little part in debate, though he continued to attract legislative business. On 15 Apr., for instance, he was appointed to two bill committees, one concerned with the stealing of plate and another involving the earl of Holdernesse (John Ramsay^*). He also reported the findings of the committee on a bill introduced by Sir Charles Caesar^‡, then one of the legal assistants in the Lords.340 LJ, iii. 305a, 305b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 21.

Arundel’s support for Middlesex had not gone unnoticed, and on 28 Apr., while the earl marshal was at Windsor for the St George’s Day feast, an attack on the High Court of Chivalry was mounted in the Commons. Sir Edward Coke, no friend to the civil law, implied that the court had already begun to stray from its remit by declaring that it should concern itself only with ‘matters of arms and chivalry’, while Sir Henry Poole^‡ complained of the high level of fees charged by the heralds. Although Dr Arthur Duck^‡, a civil lawyer with a seat in the lower House, explained that Arundel was about to the cut the heralds’ fees in half, a committee of investigation was quickly established.341 CJ, i. 692b, 693a, 777b. Before long this body came to hear from Arundel’s chief antagonist in the college of arms, Ralph Brooke, who complained that Arundel had suspended him from office, imprisoned him, taken his profits and bricked up his study. However, these criticisms were easily explained away by Arundel’s friends on the committee, and subsequent attempts to pursue them met with little support. On 8 May a disappointed Sir Robert Phelips^‡ tried to persuade the lower House to institute an inquiry into the power and jurisdiction of the earl marshal’s court, but the Commons had more pressing matters to consider, and deferred consideration of his motion until the next session.342 SP14/164/46, 86; CJ, i. 786b.

It has been argued that Buckingham was behind these attacks on Arundel,343 Sharpe, ‘Earl of Arundel and His Circle’, 225; Cust, 39. but in fact the duke was by now too ill to organize such acts of reprisal, having been shunned by the king on suspicion of treachery. The real culprit was almost certainly Prince Charles, for in the aftermath of Buckingham’s physical and mental collapse Charles assumed responsibility for managing both Houses. He certainly helped engineer the condemnation of Middlesex on 13 May. Arundel was undoubtedly appalled by this latter development, but he was not permitted to distance himself from it, for that same day he was appointed to the four-strong deputation sent to ask the king to deprive Middlesex of his staff of office.344 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 75.

During the final two weeks of the session, Arundel played little recorded part in the Parliament. He was appointed to several bill committees, and on the penultimate day of the session he reported that the subcommittee for privileges had amended the Standing Orders and desired the new version to be engrossed.345 LJ, iii. 398a, 402a, 408a, 410b, 414b, 418a. The fact that it was Arundel who chaired this subcommittee lends further weight to the view that the Standing Orders were primarily his handiwork.

Political disfavour, and the parliaments of 1625 and 1626

In the immediate aftermath of the Parliament, Arundel found himself excluded from the corridors of power. It is true that twice in June the king stayed overnight at Highgate, ostensibly to hunt stags but in reality to meet privately Buckingham’s enemy, the 1st earl of Bristol (John Digby^*). It is also the case that Arundel also took the opportunity of the king’s visit to arrange a meeting between James and the Spanish ambassadors. However, Charles discovered what was afoot and deprived the Spaniards of all but a formal introduction.346 CSP Ven. 1623-5, pp. 343-4, 354; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 563. Moreover, shortly thereafter a council of war was established from which Arundel, despite the military connotations of his office, was excluded.347 Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 285. Arundel was also barred from the commission appointed to negotiate the terms of a French marriage for Prince Charles, and, like the lord chamberlain (Pembroke) and the lord steward (James Hamilton^*, 2nd marquess of Hamilton [S] and 1st earl of Cambridge), was not invited to attend the signing of the marriage articles in December. All three men were reportedly ‘not well pleased’.348 HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 216. Arundel was certainly incensed, for in January 1625, after Charles asked the Council to promote the policies now coming to fruition, Arundel replied that none of those present knew on what basis decisions had been made. Only by being taken into the prince’s confidence, he added, could the Council offer Charles advice. Charles was so angry at what amounted to a public rebuke that he left the room without uttering another word.349 R. Lockyer, Buckingham, 225-6.

Despite this unpleasant encounter, Arundel had grounds for hoping, following the death of the king two months later, that his banishment to the margins of government would soon be ended. The decision to exclude him and other disaffected councillors from policy formation had been taken in order to prevent James from receiving any advice that might cause him to revive the Spanish Match and prevent the drift to war. Now that James was dead, and Charles was free to marry as he chose, there was surely no need to continue to restrict the decision-making process to Buckingham and his allies? The first sign that Arundel might soon be restored to the inner sanctum of government was given on 28 Mar., the day after James’s death, when Arundel, unlike some others, was readmitted to the Privy Council.350 APC, 1625-6, p. 3. A short while later, after attending a sermon at Whitehall, the earl marshal was engaged in conversation by Charles who, at around the same time, also tried to engineer a rapprochement between Buckingham and Pembroke.351 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 4; Lockyer, 235. Encouraged by these overtures, Arundel proposed at the first Council meeting of the new reign that henceforth the king should involve the whole Council in decision making. He also urged Charles to readmit to the Council his disgraced half-uncle, the earl of Suffolk, even though he himself had played a key part in bringing about Suffolk’s fall. However, no-one seconded either motion.352 CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 21; Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Belgien Fasz. 61, unfol. We are grateful for this latter reference to Tom Cogswell.

Arundel also proposed, at the same meeting, that in future no titles of nobility should be sold and that the earl marshal should be ‘first acquainted’ before any new grants of honour were issued, to ensure that they were bestowed on ‘persons of quality and noble birth’. However, this suggestion enraged Buckingham, the principal beneficiary of the traffic in titles, whose modest ancestry would not have qualified him for a place in the peerage had Arundel had a say in his elevation. He replied angrily that the Council should not seek to cast aspersions on the late king or limit the power of the monarch to reward his subjects, at which Arundel was reportedly ‘somewhat dashed’. Charles, too, was displeased that Arundel was trying to limit his authority.353 CSP Ven. 1625-6, pp. 12, 21. On 12 Apr. he announced that henceforward, as requested, Arundel would be informed before any new grants were made. However, he did not also allow the earl marshal the right to veto such grants, even though this had been Arundel’s objective all along. What appeared to be a defeat for Buckingham was actually little more than an attempt to save the blushes of the earl marshal.354 APC, 1625-6, p. 24. For a different reading of the evidence, see Cust, 1. Although Arundel was admitted the following month to membership of a select committee of the Privy Council alongside Buckingham, it was clear, as one well informed observer remarked, that ‘the same hand governs still court and state’.355 Holles Letters, 305. In mid May Arundel responded to his humiliation at the Council board by rebuffing a proposal put to him by Sir Thomas Roe^‡, ambassador at Constantinople. Roe suggested that Arundel allow his agent in the eastern Mediterranean to collect antiquities for Buckingham, only to be told that the agent concerned ‘shall search only for me, because he knows what will fit me best’.356 Orig. Unpublished Pprs. 283-5. However, it was not until the first Parliament of the reign assembled, in June 1625, that Arundel was presented with an opportunity to inflict significant damage on the favourite.

Arundel helped secure seats in the Commons for at least five of his friends and clients in 1625, but failed to find a place for a sixth, Evan Edwards^‡, secretary to the 4th earl of Dorset (Edward Sackville^*), his fellow lord lieutenant of Sussex.357 Thomas Bancroft (Castle Rising); Sir John Borough (Horsham); Sir Robert Cotton (Thetford); Humphrey Haggett (Chichester); Sir Henry Spiller (Arundel). HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 276, 405, 409, 412, 417; Procs. 1625, p. 702. He subsequently attended the opening of Parliament on 18 June, and was appointed to the Lords’ privileges committee five days later. Thereafter he played only a modest part in the life of the Parliament, at least publicly. On 23 June he was appointed to attend a conference with the Commons on the subject of a general fast, and five days later, after the Lords requested a further meeting, he proposed that the lord treasurer (James Ley^*, 1st earl of Marlborough) act as the House’s spokesman.358 Procs 1625, pp. 43, 45, 69. On 1 July Arundel laid before the Lords a petition by his old enemy, Ralph Brooke, whom he had caused to be re-arrested three months earlier, and who reiterated many of the complaints he had presented to the Commons in 1624. However, like the lower House the previous year, Arundel’s colleagues on the privileges committee found Brooke’s complaints to be ‘untrue in all points’. On 9 July Brooke was fined 1,000 marks and sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower for his effrontery. After tendering Arundel an apology in writing, Brooke’s punishment was remitted ‘at the earnest entreaty of the earl marshal’, who wished to appear magnanimous.359 Ibid. 79-82, 97, 109-10.

Aside from Brooke’s petition, the only item of business laid before the Lords by Arundel during the Parliament concerned dress. On 4 July the earl proposed that some course be taken ‘touching luxury and excess of apparel’, a motion which the clerk correctly interpreted as a call for sumptuary legislation.360 Ibid. 84, 85. State regulation of personal attire had been a common feature of life during the medieval and early Tudor periods, but little attempt to enforce the sumptuary laws had been made since 1574, when Elizabeth had issued a proclamation on the subject. Arundel, however, despised ostentatious dress, as is clear from Van Dyck’s portrait of him painted in 1620 or 1621, in which he is shown clothed almost entirely in black,361 On the dating of this portrait, see C. Brown and H. Vlieghe, Van Dyck 1599-1641, pp. 19-20, 37, 149. and from Rubens’ 1629/30 depiction of him wearing a heavy fur collar, with only the badge of the order of the Garter to indicate his rank. In dressing plainly, and by refusing to trim his beard, Arundel deliberately set himself apart from his fellow courtiers like Buckingham, who took considerable trouble over their appearance. In so doing he harked back to an earlier era, when the king’s councillors concerned themselves primarily with the business of state rather than with the latest French fashions.362 J. Adamson, Noble Revolt, 63n. This silent criticism undoubtedly found its mark, for in private the earl of Carlisle, one of the peacocks of the early Stuart court, conceded that ‘in his plain stuff and trunk hose’, with ‘his beard in his teeth’, Arundel ‘looks more like a nobleman than any of us’.363 Walker, 221. However, Arundel’s enthusiasm for sumptuary legislation was not widely shared, and though his motion was referred to the privileges committee, no more was heard of the matter before the end of the sitting. When Parliament reassembled at Oxford in early August, Arundel again broached the subject of dress codes. This time, and without any apparent sense of irony, he also called for action to be taken against those who came to court and Parliament ‘in countrymen’s apparel’, but as before his motion fell upon deaf ears.364 Procs. 1625, p. 140.

On the same day he moved the Lords to revive the sumptuary laws, Arundel was appointed to a committee to set down in writing the House’s proposed alterations to the petition on religion. This was evidently a bit of mischief-making, as the petition complained about the recent increase in the number of papists, and shortly before the Parliament began ‘some of the better sort of the Parliament’ had reportedly learned that Catholics were flocking to Arundel’s house.365 Ibid. 84; Add. 72368, f. 79. Moreover, two Catholic peers, Thomas Arundell^*, 1st Lord Arundell of Wardour and George Talbot^*, 9th earl of Shrewsbury (his wife’s kinsman), had bestowed their proxies on the earl marshal.366 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 272; Procs. 1625, p. 590. A similar desire to embarrass Arundel may explain why, on 8 Aug., the earl marshal was ordered to help confer with the Commons on matters of religion. Arundel, however, refused to be embarrassed, and the following day suggested that the king should be moved to disregard those foreign ambassadors who asked him to issue pardons to convicted papists, a subject which had recently led to criticism of Buckingham in the Commons. He was rewarded for his pains by appointment on 10 Aug. to a committee on a bill to explain a clause in the 1606 Recusancy Act.367 Procs. 1625, pp. 45, 146, 174.

On 9 Aug. Arundel was added to a committee to consider the petition of the prisoners in the Fleet, who were desperate to be moved to avoid the plague then raging in the capital. His sympathy for their plight may have been limited, as he was unimpressed with those who, to avoid infection, had either failed to attend Parliament or had drifted away. He himself missed only four or five days of the session, and on 11 July, as Parliament rose for a brief recess, he proposed that the Members of both Houses be required to attend when Parliament reassembled at Oxford.368 Ibid. 112, 122. That same day Arundel presided over a small committee concerned with distributing money raised in the House for the benefit of London’s poor, reporting its proceedings to the House. His final recorded contribution to the session was on the 11th, when he was appointed to consider a bill to allow freedom to fish on the north American coast.369 Ibid. 127, 170, 174-5, 179.

During the Parliament, Arundel never publicly expressed criticism of Buckingham directly. His motion in respect of sumptuary legislation was no more than an oblique attack on the favourite. Indeed, the closest Arundel came to aligning himself with Buckingham’s critics was on 2 Aug., when he was appointed to a committee to consider a bill to preserve the king’s revenue, a measure which clearly had the duke in its sights. Nevertheless, it was widely believed at the time that Arundel was one of four peers responsible for fomenting discontent against Buckingham in the Commons (the other three being his wife’s brother-in-law Pembroke, Archbishop Abbot and the bishop of Lincoln, John Williams, the former lord keeper).370 See in particular the bishop of Mende’s letter of 15 Aug.: Add. 30651, ff. 12v-13. For a useful discussion of the difficulties posed by the bishop’s letter, see C. Russell, PEP, 253. Buckingham himself shared this view. He may well have been correct, for in the lower House on 5 Aug. the duke was accused of monopolizing the king’s ear,371 Strafforde’s Letters ed. W. Knowler (1739), i. 28; Procs. 1625, p. 542. the very criticism that Arundel himself had expressed at the Council table only four months earlier.In the immediate aftermath of the Parliament it was rumoured that the king intended to question Arundel about the Commons’ attacks on the duke. Although this report was dismissed as false by one well informed source, Charles, incensed at the information presented to him by Buckingham, was so angry with Arundel that, by November, he would ‘hardly speak with him’.372 HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 233; Strafforde Letters, i. 28.

In the short term Arundel may have been far too busy to be put off his stride by the king’s displeasure. Charles had resolved to be crowned early the following February and, as earl marshal, Arundel was primarily responsible for planning this major state occasion. His duties included choosing suitable candidates for creation as knights of the Bath, who were then formally nominated by the king.373 J. Guillim, A Display of Heraldry (1724), appendix, 41; CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 229, 233; Rymer, viii. pt. 1, pp. 196-7 (warrant mis-dated 5 Feb.). At the previous coronation in July 1603, 62 knights of the Bath had been dubbed, but of these only eight had been the sons or brothers of noblemen. However, Arundel shared the king’s determination to raise the standing of the aristocracy, and therefore ensured that more than half of the 59 men chosen were drawn from the ranks of the nobility, among them his own son William (the future Viscount Stafford).374 Shaw, Knights of Eng. i. 153-6, 160-3.

Preparations for the coronation may have kept Arundel so busy that he had little time to devote to elections to the forthcoming Parliament, which was due to meet shortly. He seems to have neglected to send a letter of nomination to Thetford, which perhaps explains why Sir Robert Cotton, returned for the borough at his request the previous year, was left without a seat. He also failed to find places for Sir Francis Crane^‡, the director of the recently established tapestry works at Mortlake, or John Cotes, one of his servants. He evidently nominated Cotes for a borough – perhaps Droitwich in Worcestershire, or Chipping Wycombe in Buckinghamshire - that he hoped would respond to pressure from his fellow art collector and Catholic, the 6th Lord Windsor (Thomas Windsor^*), who entrusted him with his proxy. However, he did manage to find seats for four other clients: John Borough at Horsham, Thomas Bancroft^‡ at Castle Rising, Humphrey Haggett^‡ at Chichester (where he was the borough’s high steward) and Nicholas Jordan^‡ at Arundel. He may also have been responsible for persuading his friend the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Richard Weston^* (later 1st earl of Portland), to find a seat at Midhurst for Sir Henry Spiller.375 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 275, 285, 405, 412, 416; Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 279; Add. 6297, f. 151v.

The king was still angry with Arundel by the time of the coronation, which took place on 2 Feb. 1626. Indeed, he publicly signalled his displeasure by appointing Buckingham lord high constable for the occasion, thereby relegating Arundel to a subordinate position. Moreover, on his arrival at Westminster by barge, he pointedly chose to disembark at the Parliament Stairs, even though the landing place was ‘dirty and inconvenient’, rather than at the water-gate which led to the garden belonging to Sir Robert Cotton, where the earl marshal had laid out clean carpets.376 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 265; Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, i. 291-2.

The royal opprobrium which now attached itself to Arundel served to make the earl marshal an important focus of opposition to Buckingham ahead of the Parliament which assembled four days later. In 1625 only two absentee peers had assigned Arundel their proxies, but in 1626 this number rose to five.377 Procs 1626, iv. 10, 11. Moreover, shortly before the Parliament met, at least one of Buckingham’s enemies in the Lords, the earl of Clare, pledged Arundel his unwavering support, declaring that ‘your lordship shall command me to the uttermost of my strength’, being ‘confident in your love to your country (never more needful than now)’.378 Holles Letters, 321. However, in the short term, the anticipated parliamentary assault on Buckingham failed to materialize. This was because the duke’s puritan critics were awaiting the outcome of a conference held in mid February at York House, Buckingham’s Thames-side residence, on the writings of the Arminian cleric, Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester).379 For a more detailed discussion, see GEORGE VILLIERS. During this time, Arundel was frequently absent from the Lords, taking time off to visit one of his Suffolk friends, Sir Nathaniel Bacon, who was ill in bed with a cold.380 Pvte. Corresp. of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, 142. However, he did not avoid the chamber entirely, for on 9 Feb. he reminded his colleagues to read the Standing Orders before attending to bills. He also spoke in the debate on his fellow Catholic, the 4th Lord Vaux (Edward Vaux^*), who requested parliamentary privilege despite having failed to attend the Lords ever since 1610, when it became compulsory to take the oath of allegiance before sitting. Vaux, he argued, should not be granted privilege unless he first took the oath, which he himself took on the 15th, when he was also appointed to the committee for privileges.381 Procs. 1626, i. 38, 43, 46, 48, 49.

The truce between Buckingham and his critics came to an end with the second and final session of the York House Conference on 17 February. It was clear to the duke’s enemies that Buckingham had refused to distance himself from the teachings of Richard Montagu, and in the Commons the foundations for an attack on Buckingham were laid as early as the following day, when the lower House decided to investigate the complaints of English merchants whose goods had been seized by France. However, it was events in the upper House that initially gave Buckingham most cause for concern. On 25 Feb. the committee for privileges recommended making four additions to the Standing Orders, including one on proxies. In future, the committee proposed, no peer should be permitted to hold more than two proxies at any one time.382 Ibid. 70. On the face of it, this recommendation was aimed at several peers, including Arundel and Pembroke, both of whom held five proxies. However, this was deceptive, as the real target of the proposal was Buckingham, who by the start of the Parliament had amassed in his hands no less than 13 proxies, more than Arundel and Pembroke combined. This is hardly surprising, as the committee for privileges established ten days earlier was dominated by Buckingham’s enemies. Its members included not only Arundel and Pembroke but also Archbishop Abbot, the earl of Mulgrave (formerly Lord Sheffield), Viscount Saye and Sele, Thomas Morton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and Arundel’s friend Bishop Harsnett. Only a handful of Buckingham’s partisans sat on the committee, among them the earls of Manchester and Bridgwater, the 1st Lord Conway (Edward Conway^*, later 1st Viscount Conway) and the 1st Lord Montagu (Edward Montagu^*).

Buckingham and his allies in the Lords were furious at the committee’s recommendation, and in the ensuing debate, held in grand committee, they fought to prevent it from being adopted. Eager to pretend that the committee’s recommendation was not directed at him personally, Buckingham claimed that the proposed alteration ‘is a restraint to every Member’. However, he was opposed by Clare and Arundel, who queried whether the suggested change really was as novel as the duke had suggested. In the subsequent vote Buckingham and his supporters were defeated.383 Ibid. 71-2.

In the short term, the outcome of this vote changed little, since the essential arithmetic of the House remained unaltered. While Buckingham felt obliged to give up most of his proxies, he simply distributed them among his friends and allies in the House. The threat to the duke’s power would only become apparent in successive parliaments, when the new Standing Order was due to take effect. However, Buckingham was now bent on punishing those responsible for this humiliation.

The chief culprit was almost certainly Arundel. On the very day the Lords debated the proposed additions to the Standing Orders, Clare wrote to the earl marshal observing that ‘your lordship’s paper ... is made a martyr’.384 Holles Letters, 323. Clare did not explain what he meant by Arundel’s ‘paper’, but he was probably referring to a document, now lost, setting out for the consideration of the committee for privileges the four proposed additions to the Standing Orders. It would not be surprising if Arundel had written such a paper, as he had probably drafted most of the original Standing Orders himself, and as recently as 9 Feb. he had posed as their guardian by reminding the House to read them before proceeding to any other business. No-one in the Lords was more likely than Arundel to have been the author of the order limiting the number of proxies.

Buckingham did not have long to wait before an opportunity to revenge himself upon Arundel presented itself. On the evening of 2 Mar. Arundel learned that his eldest surviving son, Lord Maltravers, had secretly married without the king’s consent Lady Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of Charles’s late cousin Esmé Stuart^*, 3rd duke of Lennox [S] (and 1st earl of March in the English peerage). Arundel had been aware for some time that Maltravers and Elizabeth were in love, and on learning that negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth and Buckingham’s nephew, Basil Feilding^*,Viscount Feilding (later 2nd earl of Denbigh) had ended, he and his wife had supported a match, even though Elizabeth had no valuable dowry to offer. However, matters had become complicated thereafter, as the king, being cousin to Lady Elizabeth, decided that Elizabeth should marry instead Archibald Campbell, Lord Lorne [S], heir to the disgraced 7th earl of Argyll [S].385 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 284. Fearing that their hopes would soon be dashed, Maltravers and Elizabeth thereupon took matters into their own hands, and secretly tied the knot. Arundel seems to have suspected too late that something was afoot, for on 1 Mar. he obtained leave of absence from the Lords, presumably in the hope of heading off a family crisis. However, on hearing his son’s admission, he immediately rushed over to Elizabeth’s mother, the dowager duchess of Lennox, who confirmed that the couple were indeed now wed. The following day, the 3rd, he offered the king an apology and sought pardon for his son. However, when Charles learned what had transpired, he banished Arundel, his countess and the dowager duchess of Lennox from court.386 Procs. 1626, iv. 271; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 358; Add. 30651, f. 402.

Arundel immediately resumed his seat in the Lords where, for a few short hours, normality seemed to return. He made a minor speech on the 4th and was appointed to the committee for the bill to prevent gold and silver from being exported.387 Procs. 1626, iv. 104, 107. However, the storm broke about his head later that day, when he was sequestered from the Privy Council on the orders of the king.388 APC, 1625-6, p. 373. The following afternoon he was deprived of his staff of office and escorted to the Tower,389 Procs. 1626, iv. 271, 341. to the distress of his new daughter-in-law, who sent him a note apologizing for having caused him such trouble. This note, which survives only in copy form,390 Harl. 1581, f. 390, printed in Hervey, 244. bears the date 6 Feb., which has led one historian to assume that Arundel knew of Maltravers’ marriage much earlier than he did.391 V.F. Snow, ‘The Arundel Case, 1626’, The Historian, xxvi. 328-9. Snow overlooked the fact that the note is a copy, and mistakenly assumed that it is among Arundel’s own papers: ibid. 328n. However, the stated month is clearly a slip of the pen.

Charles claimed that he had caused Arundel to be arrested because he did not believe the earl’s protestations that the marriage had taken place without his knowledge and consent.392 HMC Skrine, 50. However, political considerations undoubtedly influenced his decision. Charles wished to support Buckingham, and an opportunity to neutralize one of the chief sources of opposition to the duke in the upper House, at a time when parliamentary criticism of Buckingham was mounting, was too good to miss. Buckingham, too, undoubtedly encouraged Charles to take a firm line against Arundel; Clare certainly believed that Buckingham ‘blows the coals, glad to be rid of the marshal’.393 Holles Letters, 325. See also HMC Skrine, 54. Once Arundel was in the Tower, Buckingham secretly monitored the earl’s correspondence, probably hoping to uncover further damaging evidence that could be exploited. We know this, not because the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Allen Apsley, was one of Buckingham’s most loyal clients, but because the copy of Lady Maltravers’ note to Arundel, and Arundel’s own reply, are among Buckingham’s papers rather than Arundel’s.394 Harl. 1581, f. 390. It seems likely that Arundel quickly realized, or suspected, that his correspondence was being intercepted, for sometime in March he received a rather peculiar letter from Sir Francis Crane. In this letter Crane tried to exonerate Arundel, claiming that he himself had encouraged Maltravers to marry Lady Elizabeth Stuart, and laid out in detail the background to recent events.395 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 284. Unless Arundel’s memory was poor, this latter exercise should have been unnecessary. However, by including this background information, and by declaring that Arundel was guiltless, Crane may have been trying to influence Buckingham, whom he must have suspected was reading the earl’s correspondence.

Arundel’s imprisonment altered the balance of power in the Lords, depriving the opposition to the duke of one of its key leaders and removing the five proxy votes which remained in Arundel’s hands. It also angered many members of the Lords who, believing that it had been engineered by Buckingham, privately began to talk of demanding Arundel’s release.396 CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 359; Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ii. 180. In the short term the malcontents evidently pinned their hopes for Arundel’s release on the outcome of his interrogation by four members of the Privy Council, which took place on or shortly after 11 March. However, they were quickly disappointed, for although Arundel avoided incriminating himself his answers reportedly failed to satisfy the king.397 HMC Cowper, i. 262; HMC Skrine, 52; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 365. This may have been because, at precisely that moment, Pembroke, eager to avenge the arrest of the earl marshal, caused Dr Samuel Turner, one of his clients in the Commons, to launch a blistering attack on the favourite. Pembroke clearly hoped that by increasing the pressure on Buckingham in the Commons he might persuade Charles to order Arundel’s release. On 15 Mar. he told the Lords that he hoped that by some ‘happy mediation’ the earl marshal would soon be freed.398 Procs. 1626, iv. 259. However, Turner’s attack, far from causing Charles to free the earl marshal, merely had the effect of hardening his attitude.

By 14 Mar. it was clear to many of Arundel’s well-wishers in the Lords that the king was in no hurry to release the earl marshal. Taking the opportunity of a brief absence of the duke from the chamber, Theophilus Clinton alias Fiennes^*, 4th earl of Lincoln, therefore moved that some course should be taken to secure the House’s privileges. He was countered by the lord keeper, Sir Thomas Coventry^* (later 1st Lord Coventry), who declared that Charles had caused Arundel to be imprisoned for a misdemeanour ‘personal to him, and known to himself’, a response which ‘caused a great silence for a while’.399 Ibid. i. 151-2. From this exchange, and the debates which followed, it was apparent that Buckingham’s opponents in the House believed that Arundel’s imprisonment constituted a grave breach of parliamentary privilege. For their part, Buckingham and his allies held that, since Arundel had been arrested for an offence committed outside Parliament, no breach of privilege had occurred.

Towards the end of the month, Arundel’s friends in the House adopted a fresh tactic in the hope of securing the earl marshal’s release. On 30 Mar. Clare suggested that the proxies in Arundel’s hands should be returned to their original owners so that they could be issued anew to others. This motion, had it been adopted, would have had the effect of removing one of the principal reasons for keeping Arundel in the Tower. However, Buckingham and his supporters defeated Clare’s proposal, apparently by means of a vote, though no such vote is recorded in the Journal.400 HMC Skrine, 56. Despite this setback, Arundel’s allies in the House persisted. On 5 Apr., the day before Parliament rose for the Easter recess, the privileges committee reported that Arundel’s imprisonment had deprived the House of the five votes that had been entrusted to the earl marshal. That same day, the House authorized a search to be made for precedents regarding peers imprisoned during time of Parliament.401 Procs. 1626, i. 256-7.

Over the Easter recess, Charles and Buckingham reassessed the situation. It was clear from the warning shots already fired across the king’s bows that Arundel’s continued imprisonment had the potential to erode support for Buckingham in the Lords. This support would prove vital in the coming weeks, as it now seemed certain that the Commons would soon lay charges of impeachment against the duke. It was equally clear that Arundel’s case had encouraged the earl of Bristol to petition the Lords in protest against having been denied a writ of summons, thereby opening up a whole new line of inquiry against the duke. In order to defuse the ill-feeling against the duke in the upper House, Charles and Buckingham decided to adopt a suggestion first mooted by Pembroke, that Arundel should be released from the Tower but placed under house arrest. On 11 Apr., the day before Parliament reassembled, Arundel was accordingly set free. However, instead of being allowed to travel to his house at Highgate, as Pembroke had suggested, the earl marshal was instructed to go to his mother’s residence at Horsley, in Surrey, 20 miles from London.402 APC, 1625-6, pp. 419-20; Pvte. Corresp. of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, 146-7. That way, Arundel would be kept out of easy reach of his friends and allies at Westminster. However, before travelling to Horsley, Arundel stopped off at Arundel House, where he penned a letter authorizing a newly appointed pursuivant to the college of arms to receive his fees, despite the fact that he had been formally suspended.403 Coll. of Arms, Heralds V, f. 219.

Although refused permission to resume his parliamentary seat, Arundel was permitted to appoint a proxy. He declined to exercise this right, to the irritation of his friend Clare, who warned him that he risked being fined by King’s Bench for failing to observe his writ of summons, which required him to serve either in person or by proxy.404 Holles Letters, 328. However, Arundel understood, even if Clare did not, that by refusing to send a proxy, he ensured that his absence continued to poison relations between the upper House and the king. Sure enough, on 19 Apr., while Buckingham lay in bed with a fever, the Lords drew up a petition demanding that Arundel be permitted to resume his seat. The following day, to widespread dismay, they were rebuffed by Charles, who replied that he would answer their request ‘in convenient time’. Charles proved equally evasive when he received a second petition on 10 May, this time seizing upon its peremptory tone to justify refusing to give an answer.405 Procs. 1626, i. 286-7, 395, 401. Charles remained so angry with Arundel that he refused to allow him to attend the St George’s Day ceremony at Windsor, but instead authorized him to be absent on account of ‘your indisposition of health’, a necessary fiction, perhaps, as there is no other evidence that the earl marshal was sick.406 Add. 6297, f. 154.

By 24 May a majority in the Lords were weary of Charles’s prevarication, and that afternoon a delegation from the House presented the king with a fresh petition calling for Arundel’s release. As before, Charles played for time, promising merely to give satisfaction before the session ended. The following day, Charles’s response was widely condemned in the Lords as unsatisfactory, and when Buckingham, who had by now resumed his seat, tried to speak he was refused a hearing. Many members were now so incensed that they considered emulating the Commons, which had recently declined to transact any further business after Charles arrested two of their members for casting aspersions upon the duke. In the event it was decided to postpone taking such a radical step until the following day in the hope that ‘in the meantime his Majesty ... might ... consider of a more satisfactory answer’. The following day, the 26th, the king, anxious to buy more time, stepped back from the brink, declaring that the Lords’ petition was so acceptable to him that he was now resolved to answer it. On hearing this, the Lords again stayed their hand, and adjourned for Whitsun.407 Procs. 1626, i. 545, 548, 549, 553, 554, 556.

Despite this apparent concession, neither Charles nor Buckingham had any intention of allowing Arundel to resume sitting in the Lords, because they feared that his influence, coupled with the five proxies that he still controlled, might tip the balance decisively against the duke, against whom the Commons had now laid charges of impeachment.408 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 42. Consequently, during the short recess, Buckingham assumed that Arundel would remain under House arrest and that the Lords would eventually order the earl’s proxies to be redistributed. Through an intermediary, he tried to persuade two of the peers who had previously granted Arundel their proxies to transfer their votes to him once they were free to do so.409 SP16/529/9. For his part, the king was only willing to consider releasing Arundel once the Lords had cleared Buckingham of the charges against him. This became transparently obvious on 2 June, when Charles announced through the lord keeper that he might not decide whether to allow Arundel to resume his seat before 14 June.410 Procs. 1626, i. 558-9.

Unsurprisingly, most of the Lords were appalled at this announcement and, in accordance with the threat issued on 25 May, declined to transact any further business. Unless he abandoned all prospect of clearing Buckingham in the upper House, Charles now had little alternative but to accede to the peers’ demands. Consequently, on 5 June Arundel was informed that he was now free to resume both his seat and his duties as earl marshal. However, he was instructed to avoid the court.411 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 347; Warws. RO, CR136/B108. The earl took his place in the Lords three days later, when he urged his fellow peers to think kindly of the king, but he played little recorded part in the remainder of the Parliament, which was dissolved on 15 June before the charges against Buckingham could be put to a vote. Indeed, he absented himself on the 9th and 10th, apparently in order to fetch his wife, who had remained behind at Horsley.412 Procs. 1626, i. 291, 564. He did so again on the morning of the 14th.

If Arundel assumed that the end of the Parliament would result in his permanent release he was to discover that he was sadly mistaken. Charles remained bitter against him, and on 14 June, the day before Parliament was dissolved, he was ordered to return to Horsley. The following day the Lords, unaware that Arundel had again been placed under house arrest, appointed the absent earl to a committee for drafting a petition calling for the Parliament to be prolonged.413 Ibid. 633.

The political wilderness, 1626-8

The 1626 Parliament had made an unlikely hero of Arundel. In the Calvinist-dominated Commons, the crypto-Catholic earl marshal had been venerated for his opposition to Buckingham. When, on 23 May, his name had been presented to the Commons as a recusant officeholder, none of those present were willing to endorse this description. On the contrary, they ‘absolutely cleared him’ of any such charge.414 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 105-6. In the country at large Arundel also enjoyed a large following, as the Venetian ambassador reported in August 1626.415 CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 512. However, the route to political rehabilitation lay not through Parliament or the populace but through Buckingham and the king. In July Charles, then on progress, appeared to soften his attitude towards Arundel, whom he allowed to come up to London, first for one month and then for two, to attend to his personal affairs and on condition that he kept five miles from the court at all times.416 CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 372, 378; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 500. The following month there was a further thaw in relations, as Arundel was reportedly dispatched to Scotland bearing the commission dissolving the great convention of estates assembled at Edinburgh.417 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 141. On this great convention, see J. Row, Hist. of the Kirk of Scot. from the year 1558 to Aug. 1637, p. 342. However, in September Arundel was excluded from the Norfolk and Sussex commissions for the Forced Loan, to which, under different circumstances, he might have expected to be appointed. He was also deprived of his apartments at Whitehall, thereby apparently ending any hope that he would soon be restored to liberty and favour.418 C193/12/2; Rymer, viii. pt. 2, p. 144; W. Rye, State Pprs. relating to ... Norf. 35-8; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 541

By the end of September Arundel, frustrated at the continued restrictions on his movement, petitioned to be allowed the freedom to come and go as he pleased provided that he did not approach the court.419 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 441. However, the king had in effect decided to put Arundel, like Parliament, on probation, and was willing only to let the earl have free rein until the New Year. In the interim Buckingham, fearing that another Parliament was imminent, attempted behind the scenes to reconcile himself with the earl and several other disaffected peers. Although these negotiations came to nothing, Arundel was granted a further ten weeks in which to move freely in early January 1627. On 11 Mar., the day before this extension was due to expire, Arundel again sought the complete lifting of the restraint imposed upon him, pleading that he had been careful to cause the king no further displeasure since his release.420 Ibid. 4, 88-9. However, he evidently remained under some form of restriction until at least the end of January 1628, when a fresh Parliament was summoned.421 CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 584. In the meantime, Buckingham continued to regard him with hostility. When, in June 1627, one of the heralds protested to the duke that Arundel was trying to evict him and his family from the offices of the College of Arms, Buckingham protested to the king that Arundel had attacked one of his clients. A humiliated Arundel was thereupon forced to withdraw his former order.422 Cust, 69.

In 1627 Arundel turned his attention to his finances, which had been in a sorry state for at least ten years. He began by attempting to regain control of the impost on currants that had been granted to him in 1620, payment of which was now being resisted by the Levant Company. However, recovery of these duties depended upon the good will of the king, which remained wanting. In March 1627 the Privy Council merely ordered the money in dispute to be paid to a neutral third party while the matter was investigated. One year later the king was still deciding what to do.423 APC, 1627, pp. 136, 151-2; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 10, 17, 18.

As well as trying to recover an important source of lost income, Arundel also sought to raise money by selling land. Over the summer of 1627 his friend Samuel Harsnett, bishop of Norwich, led an inspection of his properties in Norfolk with an eye to selling many of them. Several of the estates concerned, such as Earsham Park, were very dear to Arundel, but Harsnett and his fellow surveyors were adamant that ‘some of these favourites must be sacrificed, to save the whole’.424 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 291. Arundel himself declared that he would ‘do any reasonable thing to reduce my poor estate out of this captivity of interest’, even if it meant selling some of his prized Norfolk possessions, ‘which grieves my heart’.425 Hervey, 259. Consequently, he began selling off part of his Norfolk estate the following year.426 Coventry Docquets, 571, 572; Arundel Castle, MD 1294. However, Arundel’s sense of what was reasonable did not include curtailing his obsessive acquisition of rare antiquities. As recently as January 1627 he had taken delivery of a large collection of Greek marbles, which were subsequently described in print by his friend John Selden. These soon became widely admired, Rubens, for instance, declaring in 1629 that he had ‘seen nothing in the world more rare’.427 Hervey, 279-80, 283.

The king’s decision in early 1628 to summon a Parliament created an expectation that Arundel would finally be released from the restrictions placed on his movements.428 CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 584. Arundel himself regarded the meeting of Parliament as an opportunity to repair his broken relations with Charles, for on 9 Mar., eight days before the session opened, he sought permission to kiss hands. However, he was not only refused access to the king but also ordered to absent himself from the State opening of Parliament on 17 Mar., during the course of which he remained in the Lords’ chamber. Responsibility for organizing the ceremonial procession to Parliament, which Arundel had hitherto performed as earl marshal, was instead entrusted to Buckingham, as master of the horse.429 CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 17, 22; Coll. of Arms, Heralds VII, p. 754; HMC Skrine, 142; Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 331.

Arundel evidently facilitated the election of four Members of the Commons in 1628: his own son Lord Maltravers for the borough of Arundel; Thomas Bancroft and Sir Robert Cotton at Castle Rising; and Sir Dudley North^† (later 4th Lord North), whose father, the 3rd Lord North (Dudley North^*), had been loud in his support for the earl marshal in 1626. He attended the upper House on 19 Mar., on which day the Commons’ Speaker was presented to the king, but was absent the following day, when the privileges committee was appointed. He did not resume sitting until the 22nd, when he was named to a committee for a bill to increase trade. Arundel was not allowed by his colleagues to remain off the privileges committee for long. Not only had he helped found this body seven years earlier but also, as earl marshal, he had a professional interest in that part of its brief which concerned the privileges of the peerage in general. Consequently, he was added to its ranks on 24 March.430 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 72, 88, 96. He evidently chaired its proceedings, for on the 28th he reported the case of William Knollys^*, who had recently been created earl of Banbury by letters patent. Knollys’s grant had given its holder the right of precedence over several other earls whose own creations preceded his own. This was highly irregular, as a statute of 1541 prescribed that peers were to sit in the Lords according to the order of their creation. However, the king, perhaps realizing that he had blundered, asked the committee to make an exception in this case, on the grounds that Knollys was old and childless. Had he been so inclined, Arundel might have caused considerable discomfort for the king, but his natural deference, coupled with his anxiety to be restored to favour, meant that the committee, under his chairmanship, recommended that Charles’s request be accepted. Over the course of the following week the committee secured the consent of four earls who were adversely affected by Knollys’s grant. By 7 Apr. only two absentees remained to be dealt with, one of whom – the earl of Mulgrave – Arundel contacted himself. Three days later, agreement having been reached with all the interested parties, including Arundel himself as earl marshal, the House added a special clause to the Standing Orders enshrining the temporary arrangement.431 Ibid. 113, 137, 158, 180, 190, 192.

It was not only the king Arundel was anxious to avoid offending. On 2 Apr. a fracas involving a soldier and the local authorities in the Oxfordshire borough of Banbury was debated in the House. When Buckingham announced that the matter was not worthy of consideration, and that punishing those involved would probably result in ill feeling, Arundel agreed, and suggested that the culprits be admonished rather than blamed. Likewise, when the duke asked on 18 Apr. whether the House intended to grant privilege to his sister-in-law, who had committed adultery and so brought disgrace upon her husband, John Villiers^*, Viscount Purbeck, Arundel reassured him that the matter had been referred to committee ‘and is not agitated at all in the House’. On 29 Apr. he went further, opposing any grant of privilege to Purbeck’s wife. This desire to avoid offending the king and Buckingham may explain why, on 7 Apr., Arundel was unwilling to act as a reporter after the Commons requested a conference with the Lords on the fundamental liberties of the subject.432 Ibid. 140, 143, 159, 266, 360. It may also account for his conciliatory tone on 15 Apr., after the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir Nicholas Hyde^‡, declined to lay out the reasons behind the judgement reached in the recent Five Knights’ Case. Unlike Viscount Saye and Sele, who was incensed that Hyde had disregarded the Lords’ judicial functions by claiming that the judges were answerable only to the king, Arundel merely asked Hyde to explain that he had not intended to infringe the privileges of the House and called for the matter to be ended ‘by accommodation’.433 Ibid. 218, 228-9, 232-3. This position was far removed from the one Arundel had adopted in 1621, when the judges, pleading the same excuse, had declined to list the privileges of the nobility.

Perhaps the most striking instance of Arundel’s unwillingness to incur either royal or ducal displeasure was the attitude he adopted towards the crown’s right to imprison without revealing the cause. Many of those who had refused to contribute to the Forced Loan of 1626/7 had been imprisoned on the orders of the king, and had only been released on the eve of the Parliament. An attempt to discover the reason for their detention – the aforementioned Five Knights’ Case – had ended in failure, with the result that it had not proved possible to test in the courts the legality of either the Loan or the imprisonment of refusers. As a recent victim of arbitrary imprisonment himself, Arundel was supremely well qualified to head the opposition in the Lords to the crown’s claim to be entitled to imprison without showing cause. However, he is reported to have come close to doing so only once. According to the newsletter-writer Joseph Mead, Arundel lost patience on 22 Apr. after the earl of Manchester declared how inconvenient it would be if the king’s hands were to be tied. At this remark Arundel supposedly stood up, ‘confuted’ Manchester, ‘and made a public protestation against him and the rest who were of the same opinion, concluding that those liberties which now they would betray were those which had cost so much of their predecessors’ blood to maintain them’. Arundel is also said to have added that, ‘for his own part, he was resolved to lose his own life, and spend his own blood’, rather than ‘ever give consent to the betraying of them’. This passionate outburst allegedly attracted the support of more than 50 of his fellow peers.434 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 346-7. However, it is doubtful whether this heated exchange ever took place, as none of the five sets of accounts for that day (one of which was the diary kept by the earl of Bridgwater) mention it.

In point of fact, Arundel, who confessed himself perplexed that the law and the royal prerogative seemed to be at loggerheads on the matter of imprisonment without cause shown,435 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 320. eventually came down on the side of the king. One reason for this was undoubtedly his strong attachment to traditional sources of authority and power, which had earlier informed his hostility towards the upstart Buckingham. Another was that, on the morning of 12 May, the Lords received a letter from the king in which Charles declared that he could not allow his power to imprison without showing cause to be lost. This power was now directly threatened by the Commons in their recently drafted Petition of Right. That afternoon the House sat with the intention of amending the Petition so that it concurred with the king’s letter. However, many of those members who opposed altering the Petition left the chamber before the debate began, claiming that the House stood adjourned. The following morning a heated argument ensued between Buckingham and his opponents, in which quarrel Arundel sided with Buckingham, who argued that no adjournment had been ordered. He declared that in future members should remain in their seats, ‘hearken to the matters in hand’ and ‘see the orders entered’. He was seconded by a no doubt grateful duke. The following day, the 14th, Arundel advised the Lords to redraft the Petition so that it conformed as nearly as possible to the king’s letter without jeopardizing its success.436 Ibid. 415, 429, 436.

Arundel nevertheless had considerable sympathy with those who wished to secure the liberties of the subject against arbitrary royal behaviour. Unlike Buckingham, who would probably not have been displeased had the Lords rejected the Petition in its entirety, he hoped that the Petition could be amended in such a way that the king would ultimately find it acceptable. He thus sought to steer a middle course between two competing interests. Clear evidence that this was his objective is to be found in a speech which he delivered on 15 May, in which he tried to defuse the antagonism between the two Houses that had developed over the Petition by stressing the similarities between them both. ‘The nobility’, he observed, was ‘extracted from the commons’ and ‘our younger children revert to the Commons again’. (His own son, Lord Maltravers, was then sitting in the lower House.) He also pointed out that the Lords were ideally placed to mediate between the king on the one hand and the Commons on the other. ‘We’, he observed, are ‘the great council’. It was ‘fit for us to deal herein for an accommodation’.437 Ibid. 438-41. By choosing the middle ground, Arundel could hope to enjoy the benefits of running with the hare while hunting with the hounds. However, to an outsider at least it looked as though, by supporting the Petition, Arundel had aligned himself against Buckingham. The Venetian ambassador certainly regarded him as one of Buckingham’s leading opponents in the upper House.438 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 84.

The belief that Arundel had once again thrown in his lot with Buckingham’s enemies was understandable but inaccurate for, as has been demonstrated, Arundel had sided with the duke on the 14th. The two men were again united in agreement on the 17th, after Arundel proposed amending the clause in the Petition concerning arbitrary imprisonment. Arundel suggested that this clause should make no explicit mention of the prerogative. Instead, the prerogative should be ‘tacitly intended’, in order that, ‘when we go to the king, we may have a gracious answer’. Buckingham considered this an excellent suggestion, and proposed that ‘the earl marshal’s words be set down’, as they were ‘no more than what the Commons have already protested this Parliament to the king’. In the event nothing came of this motion, as Arundel’s friend Richard Weston, now Lord Weston, suggested instead the addition of an entirely new clause designed ‘to leave entire the sovereign power with which your Majesty is entrusted’. Buckingham warmly endorsed this fresh proposition, as did Arundel, who defended the new clause on the 19th, on the grounds that ‘the king’s prerogative and people’s rights’ will be ‘equally preserved and neither destroyed’.439 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 440, 452, 453.

It was clear that the issues that now united Arundel and Buckingham were greater than the differences which had previously divided them. On the 19th both men fretted that the Commons were trying to prohibit the exercise of martial law at home, Buckingham because he wondered how he might otherwise punish soldiers who refused to obey their commanders, and Arundel because he worried that his authority as earl marshal might thereby be reduced and because the lieutenancy, which was vital for the country’s defence, would be left without any legal underpinning. The following day Arundel, echoing a view held by Buckingham, declared that he could not accept the Petition as it stood. Instead, he urged the Lords to explain to the Commons that their proposed amendments had been offered ‘not for conveniency as peers, but upon reasons well grounded’. When, on 23 May, the unofficial leader of the Commons, Sir Edward Coke, riposted that the House of Commons, as the representative body of the kingdom, should be allowed to have its way, Arundel replied that the Lords had ‘as much interest in the public [as them]’. Not until 24 May did Arundel part company with Buckingham, and even so the difference between them was hardly enormous. Whereas Arundel, having now realized that the Commons would not consent to any alterations, proposed that the Lords draft a declaration expressing their intentions in consenting to the Petition, Buckingham called for the Lords to draft an entirely new Petition of their own.440 Ibid. 463-4, 512; CD 1628, iii. 477.

In the event, the Petition was presented to the king without an accompanying document drafted along the lines proposed by Arundel. On 2 June Charles declared that he accepted the Petition in full, subject to the preservation of his prerogative. The addition of this proviso, which was similar to the clause, supported by Arundel, that the Lords had been forced to abandon, not surprisingly caused widespread dismay. In the Lords John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, pointed the finger of blame at the Privy Council. However, Arundel, though no longer entitled to sit on the Council himself, declined to second him, remarking instead that Parliament should consider the king’s answer rather than its authorship.441 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 598.

During the period between the king’s first and second answers to the Petition of Right, Arundel laid a bill of his own before the Lords. Drafted by the lawyer John Selden, this measure reflected Arundel’s concern at the increasingly desperate state of his finances. Although he had recently authorized the sale of large tracts of his Norfolk estate, Arundel wished to protect several key properties, including his house in the Strand, from a similar fate by creating an entail. It was already the case that the castle, manor and lordship of Arundel were tied to the earldom of Arundel, but Arundel now added to this list several other properties which were worth £1,800 a year between them.442 Arundel Castle, G 1/10, unnumbered items (20 July 1634 grant of an annuity to Selden and copy of the 1628 Act); HMC Cowper, i. 352; SP23/62, pp. 627, 629. Arundel’s bill, described incorrectly in the Journal as a bill to annex the castle, manor and lordship of Arundel to the earldom, was granted two readings on 4 June, when it was also entrusted to a committee whose members included Arundel’s kinsman by marriage, Pembroke, his friend Harsnett, and two members of his own family, the 1st earl of Berkshire (Thomas Howard) and Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard^*).443 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 582. The measure subsequently passed rapidly through the Lords, and also through the Commons, where Arundel’s support for Buckingham had not perhaps been fully appreciated. Arundel was so grateful to the Commons for the speed with which they attended to his business that on 18 June he thanked the Speaker in person, promising that he and his successors ‘would forever be ready to serve the commonwealth and every Member’ of the Commons.444 CD 1628, iv. 368.

The estate bill was not the only matter that came before Parliament in 1628 that had a close bearing on Arundel’s finances. In April the Levant Company petitioned the Commons against the 2s. 2d. impost levied on every hundredweight of currants. Several merchants had refused to pay this duty, of which Arundel was the farmer, and had been imprisoned.445 R. Brenner, Merchants and Rev. 228-9. On 20 June the company submitted a second petition mentioning Arundel to the Commons, who had earlier complained to the Council about the company’s non-payment. That same day Arundel was granted leave by his fellow peers to submit his answer in the lower House.446 CJ, i. 915a; Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 679-80. However, the session ended before the matter could be resolved.

Arundel was appointed to several legislative committees during the session, among them one to regulate apparel. It is tempting to suppose, in light of his own observations on the subject in 1625, that Arundel himself was its author, but in fact a similar bill had been laid before the Lords in 1626, after he was sent to the Tower.447 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 112; Procs. 1626, i. 216. Concern for the honour and dignity of the peerage led Arundel to take a close interest in the case of Sir Henry Shirley, who had accused the 5th earl of Huntingdon (Henry Hastings^*) of oppressive behaviour and corruption as lord lieutenant of Leicestershire. On 26 May Arundel called for consideration of the matter to be postponed, but this was only because the Petition of Right was then more pressing. Four days later he demanded to know what had been done, and on 9 June he himself read out the submission that Shirley was to make by way of apology. Two days later Shirley was brought before the House, as Arundel himself had advised.448 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 521, 525, 533, 535, 567, 607, 623. Similar concern for the honour of his fellow peers also led Arundel to complain, on 21 June, that the printer Thomas Walkley had published the names of the nobility ‘very falsely’. At his urging, Walkley was severely reprimanded, and ordered to bring in all copies of the offending publication to be burned.449 Ibid. 684-5.

Restoration and disillusionment, 1628-32

Although Buckingham came under fierce attack in the Commons during the final two weeks of the 1628 session, Arundel himself remained on harmonious terms with the duke. As late as 12 June he seconded the lord admiral after Buckingham proposed to create an academy for educating the children of the nobility, a suggestion the duke had first made in 1621.450 Ibid. 629. Not surprisingly, therefore, Arundel received evidence that he was about to be returned to royal favour even before the session ended. On 16 June his title to three manors, two in Norfolk and one in Sussex, was confirmed by the king.451 CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 163. However, it was not until after the prorogation that Arundel was rewarded for the steadfast support he had given to both Buckingham and the king. Four days after the session ended he was granted permission to return to court.452 CSP Ven. 1628-9, pp. 168-9. In the event, Arundel was unable to avail himself of this privilege immediately, as he fell ill, allegedly of smallpox.453 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 375. However, on 20 July he, his wife and his eldest son were formally presented to the king by Buckingham at York House, the latter’s Thames-side residence.454 HMC Skrine, 159; CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 213.

Full restoration to favour, though, did not occur until the autumn, after Buckingham’s assassination. Primary responsibility for engineering this feat lay with Arundel’s friend and former client Lord Weston, now lord treasurer, who, following the duke’s death in August, assumed the role of chief minister.455 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 394. Like Arundel, Weston was popishly inclined, and by early September it was supposed that he would soon call upon the services of his former patron.456 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 293. Over the next few months Arundel grew into ‘great grace’ with the king, who, along with the queen, visited Arundel House in mid December, where Charles and Henrietta Maria ‘made as much demonstration of favour to the owner of it, as a king and queen could do to a subject’.457 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 419, 451-2. Aided by Weston, Arundel was restored in late October to membership of the Privy Council and to his former lodgings at Whitehall, thereby completing his political rehabilitation.458 APC, 1628-9, pp. 205-6; HMC Skrine, 169.

Weston lost little time in strengthening his position at court ‘by means of Arundel’s party’.459 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 432. Among those peers who fell into this category was probably Arundel’s friend Thomas Wentworth^*, Lord Wentworth (later earl of Strafford), at whose investiture Arundel assisted when the latter was elevated to a viscountcy in December.460 Add. 72299, f. 124. In return for the support of Arundel and his allies, Weston ensured a favourable outcome for the earl marshal in his dispute with the Levant Company, for in December the Exchequer Court ruled in Arundel’s favour on the matter of payment of the 2s. 2d. impost on currants.461 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 441. The tide of political fortune was now flowing firmly in Arundel’s direction, and in January1629 there were even signs that Arundel would be permitted to extend the remit of the Court of Chivalry to include military matters. Following the failure of a recent expedition to raise the French king’s siege of La Rochelle, several naval captains had been accused of cowardice, whereupon the council of war had resolved to draw up charges and pass them on to Arundel.462 SP16/28, f. 81v. However, this proposed manner of proceeding was problematic, to say the least, as the Petition of Right forbade the application of martial law in England.463 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 503. Since Parliament was about to reconvene, it is hardly surprising that nothing came of this plan.

By the time Parliament reassembled on 20 Jan. 1629, Arundel had recovered much of his old confidence, which he had lost following his imprisonment in March 1626. Ahead of the official opening, he was even reported to be making ‘great preparations’ to process to Whitehall in state from Arundel House.464 Cust, 70-1; Add. 35331, f. 26v. Arundel undoubtedly led the subsequent parliamentary procession to Westminster, and during the session itself he attended the chamber on all but three occasions. However, after securing his by now customary place on the privileges committee,465 LJ, iv. 6a. he played little recorded part in the business of the House. One important reason for this apparent inactivity is that the session is poorly documented. However, it is also the case that there was little for peers to do, as the political focus rested on the Commons, where the dispute over the duties imposed on currants reached its climax. Despite their recent defeat in the Exchequer, the Levant Company had not only continued to withhold payment of the sums they owed Arundel, but had also enlisted the support of a sizeable section of the Commons. In disgust Arundel surrendered his grant to the king, who was himself embroiled in a wider struggle with the merchants over the legality of these duties.466 CSP Ven. 1628-9, pp. 552-3. However, the Parliament ended without resolving the matter.

Although Arundel must have spent much of the session watching events in the Commons from the sidelines, he was not entirely idle in the Lords. On 9 Feb. he was appointed to a committee to consider the quarrel between English barons on the one hand and the English holders of Scottish and Irish titles on the other, which had recently reignited. This body resolved that henceforward no holders of ‘foreign’ titles should be permitted to take precedence over English peers, whereupon Arundel was appointed to help draw up a petition to the king. Arundel helped draft a second petition a short while later, this time on the subject of the 19th earl of Oxford (Robert de Vere^*), whose poverty was such that his fellow peers wanted the king to grant him an estate. Indeed, it was Arundel who reported this document to the House on 19 February. Two days later, Arundel was appointed to help examine the state of the kingdom’s military resources, which had been depleted by four years of war. On 23 Feb. Arundel also revived Buckingham’s motion for creating an academy for young noblemen, and was named to a committee which was to consider the proposal and find a way of obtaining from the king a grant of lands to pay for such a school. That same day he preferred a petition from Sir William Segar, Garter king at arms, regarding the fees payable by peers on their introduction to the House. At his recommendation, the matter was referred to the subcommittee for privileges.467 LJ, iv. 25b, 27b, 34a, 34b, 37b, 39a, 39b.

In the aftermath of the Parliament, Arundel experienced a marked diminution in his authority. Like his ally Lord Weston, Arundel inclined towards Spain and therefore favoured an end of the war which had begun in 1625. However, in the preliminary peace talks, held at court in June 1629, all but Weston, Pembroke and Sir Francis Cottington^† (later Lord Cottington) were excluded.468 CSP Ven. 1629-32, pp. 93, 227. Arundel grew so ‘froward and discontented’ at being passed over that he reportedly ‘cares not to attend to any business.’469 HMC Cowper, i. 387. Instead, he retreated to the study of his beloved antiquities, shunning even his wife and family, thereby prompting the earl of Clare to remark that Arundel loved ancient artefacts ‘better than those he lives withall’.470 Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxvi), 393. Matters showed no sign of improving the following year, when his mother urged him to consider ‘how little you have gained, either of honour, wealth, reputation or true contentment of mind’ since he publicly converted to Protestantism.471 Tierney, 429. By November 1630 Arundel came to court ‘no oftener than he hath need’, at which time he complained to Wentworth that ‘I know nothing [of ] what becomes of me, for I scant feel where I am’.472 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 382; Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP12/163. Desperate for meaningful employment, in December he sought appointment as extraordinary ambassador to Spain.473 CSP Ven. 1629-32, p. 450.

Arundel’s sense of frustration at having failed to attain greater authority after the death of Buckingham was exacerbated by the cross winds which now buffeted him in his capacity as earl marshal. In January 1631 his fellow privy councillors had to rally to his defence after the judges in King’s Bench challenged his right to try a case involving a London churchwarden, who had been released upon a writ of habeas corpus only to be rearrested by the earl marshal’s officers.474 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, ii. 97-8. Over the summer the authority of the Court of Chivalry was enhanced after the king decided that it was competent to try Reay v. Ramsey, a case involving a charge of treason.475 Cust, 142. However, any satisfaction Arundel may have felt probably dissipated on learning that, despite the extension of his powers in 1622, these proceedings required the temporary appointment of a lord high constable. As the attorney general, William Noye^‡, pointed out, this threatened to undermine the right of the earl marshal to sit alone.476 Squibb, 52n. Arundel himself might have been especially promoted for the occasion, of course, but someone else would then have had to serve as earl marshal for the duration of the trial. In the event it was decided to invest Robert Bertie^*, 1st earl of Lindsey as constable. Despite this setback, Arundel managed to retain oversight of his court, at least during the early days of the trial, when it was noted that he rather than Lindsey ‘directed all’.477 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, ii. 144-5. However, he may have felt diminished by being made technically subordinate to a constable, for in January 1632 he appointed a deputy to act on his behalf.478 CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 252.

Diplomatic career, 1632-6

Not until late 1632 did the earl marshal’s fortunes begin to improve. Following the death of the Elector Palatine in November, Arundel was instructed to fetch from The Hague Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Elector’s widow and sister to the king.479 Harl. 7000, f. 437. Granted the status of an ambassador extraordinary to the United Provinces, Arundel travelled to the Dutch capital early in the New Year, where he received a frosty reception from the Dutch authorities, who were aware of his Spanish sympathies. However Elizabeth declined to accompany him to England, fearing that her departure would dishearten her foreign allies, whose military power she relied upon to restore her family’s fortunes. In early February Arundel therefore returned empty-handed to court where, despite his mission’s failure, he was commended by the king.480 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 216; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 468; M.A. Everett Green, Eliz. of Bohemia, 304-5; Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631-8 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xxvi), 150, 157; CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 61.

Arundel accompanied the king to Scotland in the spring of 1633. En route he visited Durham Cathedral, where he commented approvingly on recent changes made to the internal layout, which he attributed to ‘our worthy good friend the bishop of London’, William Laud^* (soon to be appointed archbishop of Canterbury), and which he hoped would soon be copied in Scotland. He returned to London the following July.481 Northants. RO, IC4313; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 93, 128; Hervey, 342. He attended a Council meeting on 28 July: PC2/43, f. 91v. Over the autumn he returned north, to Cumberland, where he owned extensive property.482 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 207. The year date can be supplied from internal evidence. From there he purposed to travel to Dublin to visit Wentworth, who had recently been appointed lord deputy of Ireland. The intended call was not purely social, for in May the king had granted Arundel lands in Ireland that had once belonged to the dukes of Norfolk and the earls of Shrewsbury. However, bad weather forced him to abandon the planned sea crossing from Carlisle.483 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP13/67; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 11.

An opportunity to visit Ireland nevertheless arose the following year, after Wentworth decided, for financial reasons, to summon the Irish Parliament. Having not met since 1615, few in Ireland were familiar with this body’s procedures, which were modelled on those of the English Parliament. This included Wentworth himself, for despite having sat many times at Westminster, the lord deputy was no expert on the rules governing parliamentary life, or on the order to be observed in processing to Parliament. It was therefore not long before Wentworth turned for help to Arundel, not only for advice on the procession to Parliament but also on such matters as whether the under-age sons of Roger Boyle, 1st earl of Cork [I], were entitled to sit.484 Strafforde Letters, i. 240-1. Nominally at least a member of the Irish Privy Council, and also recently appointed by the king to a new committee for Irish affairs,485 Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 66. Arundel was only too pleased to assist. In May, after seeking the aid of Henry Elsyng, clerk of the parliaments, he sent Wentworth a number of documents setting out ‘those things which concern the forms of a Parliament here’, including a copy of the Standing Orders, which he himself had helped bring into being. On receiving these ‘good rules and orders’, Wentworth gave Arundel fulsome thanks, ‘it being my labour to bring this people in manners and matter to a conformity with England’. A revised version of the Standing Orders was subsequently adopted by the Irish upper House.486 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP14/76; StrP8, pp. 130-1; LJ[I], i. 6-9.

Wentworth’s hope that the Irish Parliament would now run smoothly was soon to be disappointed, for when the assembly met in July the Catholic members demanded that all non-resident members, most of whom were Protestant, be ejected. In order to avoid a repetition of the religiously-based confrontation which had so disfigured the last meeting of the Irish Parliament, the English Privy Council decided to send Arundel to Dublin to mediate a settlement. This was wise, for although the earl marshal was a friend of Wentworth he also held Catholic sympathies, possessed ‘considerable mildness and tact’, and could be relied upon to placate the fears of the Catholic majority in Ireland. Moreover, Arundel himself had already sought permission to travel to Ireland as early as April, ostensibly to observe the Irish Parliament in action, but in reality to gain possession of the lands recently granted to him by the king.487 CSP Ven. 1632-6, pp. 254-6, 262; Strafforde Letters, i. 232.

While in Dublin, Arundel advised Wentworth and the Irish Privy Council on one of the main items on Parliament’s agenda, the programme known as the Graces, a series of concessions previously made by the crown in return for annual subsidies, which had not yet received statutory approval. Wentworth subsequently reported that he was grateful for the earl marshal’s ‘excellent assistance’.488 Strafforde Letters, i. 276, 280. However, Arundel detected that the lord deputy actually resented his advice, for he later complained to Wentworth that, while in Ireland, he had been made to appear ‘indiscreet’ to the king and ‘fallen from your lordship’s respect’ to other men.489 Ibid. ii. 3. Whether there was any truth in this complaint cannot now be determined, but Arundel was remarkably prickly where matters of personal honour were concerned and, as his treatment of Lord Spencer in the 1621 Parliament had demonstrated, was perfectly capable of inferring a slight where none had in fact been intended. For the time being, though, Arundel concealed his anger in order to retain the goodwill of the lord deputy, whose help he needed to recover the Howard and Talbot estates in Ireland. Besides, on returning to England in late August, he fell ill of an unspecified malady, which he made worse by interfering with his medication.490 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP14/174.

Before leaving Ireland, Arundel was approached at the instance of the Irish House of Lords to provide information on the fees payable to the officers of its English counterpart. On returning to England, Arundel once again arranged for the necessary information to be provided by Henry Elsyng, and also by the gentleman usher to the Lords, James Maxwell. He was also consulted by the king after a dispute arose over whether those who served by proxy were liable to pay fees. Charles and Arundel both agreed that absentees were just as liable for payment as those who attended.491 LJ[I], i. 20, 28, 37; Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP8, pp. 168, 171; Bodl., Carte 66, ff. 292-4v; Strafforde Letters, i. 309.

In April 1635 Arundel informed Wentworth that he now intended to pursue his property interests in Ireland in earnest.492 Strafforde Letters, i. 415. Two months later he obtained from the king an instruction surrendering to Arundel several crown properties in Leinster.493 CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 105, 107. However, instead of returning to Ireland to oversee this business in person, as he originally intended, Arundel entrusted his Irish affairs to two men Wentworth subsequently likened to ‘a couple of beagles’, appointed ‘to hunt at random over the province of Leinster, searching and prying for extremities upon legal advantages, turning the ancient owners, ... no way privy to the supposed frauds, forth of their estates.’ Wentworth also objected to the letter Arundel had procured from the king, declaring that he was unable to comply with its demands without committing ‘a foul and main breach, as well of public as private faith’. In April 1636 the simmering resentment between Arundel and Wentworth boiled over. Arundel accused Wentworth of having tried to undermine him during his visit to Ireland, whereupon the lord deputy attacked Arundel for choosing a pair of unsavoury agents to pursue his landed interests.494 Strafforde Letters, ii. 3, 27, 29-30.

Wentworth was not the only senior figure with whom Arundel fell out. In January 1635 he was attacked at the Council table by his ally Lord Weston, now 1st earl of Portland, after he criticized the soap monopoly, an important source of royal revenue. The lord treasurer observed that if the monopoly were to be abandoned, Arundel’s pension from the king would go unpaid. Far from accepting the justice of this point, Arundel made it clear that he resented being lectured so publicly.495 Ibid. i. 363. Yet despite this quarrel, and the subsequent rift with Wentworth, Arundel did not habitually antagonize his fellow ministers. On the contrary, he sometimes took great pains to cultivate those whom he disliked. Not only did he initially conceal his anger against Wentworth in order to further his own interests, but also, in October 1635, as part of an attempt to ingratiate himself with the queen, he affected friendship towards one of Henrietta Maria’s closest advisers – perhaps Henry Rich^*, 1st earl of Holland – while sneering at him behind his back.496 Holles Letters, 470.

The failure to recover the Howard and Talbot lands in Ireland was a severe blow to Arundel, whose finances remained in a desperate condition. In March 1636 he owed the Exchequer alone £8,800 in rent arrears for the farm of the currants.497 E389/202. Recovery of these Irish properties would also have strengthened Arundel’s hand in his quest to be restored to the dukedom of Norfolk. However, early in 1636 an alternative strategy for regaining the dukedom for his family presented itself. In February John Taylor, England’s resident agent in Vienna, claimed that the Holy Roman emperor, Ferdinand II, would be willing to restore the whole of the Palatinate on the death of Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, who had previously overrun the upper Palatinate and now enjoyed the electoral title. The king suspected, not unreasonably, that this offer was merely a ploy, and that Ferdinand and his Spanish allies were worried that England might otherwise join with France, which had declared war on the Habsburgs the previous year.498 K. Sharpe, Personal Rule, 517-18. However, in order to discover the truth of the matter he resolved to send a special ambassador to Vienna. The man he selected for this important mission was Arundel.

At first sight Arundel was an unlikely candidate for such a diplomatic role. Despite having recently helped settle a dispute between Wentworth and his Catholic opponents in Ireland, he had little formal experience as an ambassador. Moreover, it was well known that his sympathies lay with Spain, whose support for the emperor had been one of the major stumbling blocks in English efforts to restore the Palatinate to its rightful ruler. On learning in April 1636 that Arundel had been chosen, the young Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis, angrily declared that they could expect nothing to be accomplished.499 CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 542. Elizabeth of Bohemia, too, questioned the wisdom of appointing Arundel, for although certain that the earl marshal was devoted to her and her children, she was equally aware that he was no enemy of the Habsburgs and no friend of the Dutch.500 CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 367. However, these assessments of Arundel’s suitability were unjust. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Arundel drew a distinction between the emperor and Spain: in 1631 he had expressed pleasure at a recent defeat of imperial forces in a letter to his friend Sir Henry Vane^‡.501 Ibid. 1631-3, p. 206. Moreover, Arundel sympathized with the plight of Elizabeth and her sons, for like them he knew how painful it was to be deprived of one’s patrimonial possessions. It may have been true, as Charles Lewis alleged, that Arundel always put the interests of his own family first. However, this character trait was not necessarily a handicap. His reputation was now at stake, a matter of considerable concern to him. Besides, were he to return trailing clouds of glory it would be difficult for the king to withstand his demand for restoration to the dukedom of Norfolk.502 CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 558.

On learning that Charles Lewis objected to his appointment, Arundel tendered his resignation, but it was rejected,503 Ibid. 542. there being no one else more acceptable to Ferdinand than Arundel, the premier earl in England and the leading Catholic nobleman at court. Arundel’s first destination, after setting out from Greenwich on 7 Apr., was The Hague, where the earl marshal confessed to Elizabeth that he was not confident of success. For her part, Elizabeth was dismayed to discover that Arundel’s instructions authorized him to settle for the restoration of just part of the Palatinate in return for a bare promise for the rest.504 F.C. Springell, Connoisseur and Diplomat: the Earl of Arundel’s Embassy to Germany, 54; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 367. On Arundel’s secret instructions, see also CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 344.

Arundel subsequently passed through a Germany devastated by years of war. On one occasion, after arriving at a village that was entirely deserted, he was obliged to sleep in his coach. Despite the discomforts of his journey, Arundel was eager to view the artistic treasures of Germany, and near Ratisbon he visited a Carthusian monastery in order to ‘see the rooms’. Moreover, as a collector of fine objects, he kept a lookout for opportunities to snap up rare pieces at bargain prices. At Nuremberg, for instance, he bought the bulk of the famous Pirckheimer library, whose impoverished owner had received no rents from his war-ravaged estates for five years. However, he found no comparable opportunity to augment his picture collection. At Nuremberg, he grumbled, there was ‘not one scratch of Albert Dürer’s painting in oil to be sold, though it were his country, nor of Holbein nor any other great master’.505 Hervey, 365-6, 439-40; Springell, 63, 105-7.

Arundel had his first audience with the emperor at the Austrian town of Linz on 6 June. At this meeting Arundel demanded a restoration of the Palatinate, whereupon Ferdinand responded by appointing commissioners to negotiate. However, all that emerged from the ensuing discussions was an offer to restore the Rhenish, or lower, Palatinate which, as Arundel reported on 22 June, was ‘ill enough’.506 Springell, 64; Sharpe, Personal Rule, 520-1. Over the next few months Arundel was obliged to follow the imperial court back and forth, travelling to Vienna and Prague before returning to Ratisbon, and by August his patience had worn thin. On 18 Aug. he presented Ferdinand with his demands in writing, insisting that restoration of the Palatinate should be performed not as an act of mercy but of justice. However, he was not hopeful of success, since he now realized that Ferdinand was powerless to compel the duke of Bavaria to surrender the electoral title and the lands he had conquered. It was therefore no surprise when, 11 days later, the emperor replied that he had never promised full restoration and would certainly not consider the matter on the basis of justice. All that he would offer was restoration of the lower Palatinate in return for financial compensation. On 13 Sept. a disappointed Arundel formally applied for leave to return home.507 CCSP, i. 107, 109, 110.

Arundel’s determination to leave as soon as possible greatly alarmed his hosts, particularly after they learned that the Swedes had inflicted a heavy defeat on imperial forces at Wittstock (24 Sept. 1636). In mid October he was visited by Ferdinand’s heir, the king of Hungary, who offered to mediate with the emperor. Later that same month, after his letters of revocation arrived, Arundel was inundated with further callers, though he had previously been largely neglected by the emperor’s ministers. In view of this sudden attention, Arundel decided to delay his departure for a while.508 SP80/10, ff. 5v-6v, 11. However, by 3 Nov. he was convinced that he was being led up the garden path. Besides, the recent birth of a son to the duke of Bavaria extinguished all hope of recovering the upper Palatinate after Maximilian’s death.509 CCSP, i. 117; Sharpe, Personal Rule, 523. It was therefore with some relief that on 8 Nov. he quit Ratisbon,510 Hervey, 391. having first received from the emperor a diamond ring worth just £160. This was such a paltry gift that many in England later wondered whether Arundel should have refused it.511 Ceremonies of Chas. I, 213.

Arundel’s return journey through Germany proved more personally profitable than his outward trip. The burghers of Nuremburg and the duke of Neuberg both presented him with pictures, as did the bishop of Würzburg, who gave him a Madonna by Dürer. This picture so enthralled Arundel - ‘worth more than all the trash I have bought in this country’ - that he kept it in his coach at all times.512 Hervey, 392, 394; Springell, 85. However, at Coblenz he was mistreated by the imperial governor, who detained him for more than a day despite his letters of safe passage.513 SP80/10, f. 40; HMC Denbigh, v. 44. He reached the Dutch Republic in early December and, after visiting the university of Leiden and its famous anatomy school – his entourage included the surgeon William Harvey – he travelled to The Hague, where he informed Elizabeth of Bohemia of the outcome of his mission.514 Springell, 93; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 239. Elizabeth had previously doubted the wisdom of sending Arundel to the imperial court, fearful that he was secretly sympathetic to the Habsburg, but on hearing the earl marshal give an account of his dealings, and seeing him brimful of indignation at the manner in which he had been treated, all her earlier doubts vanished. Writing to William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, she declared that no man could have done better than Arundel for, despite having failed to obtain the restoration of the Palatinate, he had succeeded in discovering their enemy’s false dealings.515 CSP Dom. Addenda 1625-49, p. 539.

Crises at home and abroad, 1637-40

The conclusion that he had been duped was shared by Arundel himself. He had been misled not only by the emperor but also by Spain, whose representatives in Germany had obstructed his efforts, despite promises of assistance previously given by their government.516 Hervey, 403-4. Honour was now at stake, and on returning to England in early January 1637 he told the king that further negotiation was pointless and that military action was now required. His position was almost the same as the one taken 13 years earlier by Buckingham who, newly returned from Madrid and convinced that the Spaniards had been negotiating for a marriage in bad faith, had also called for war. However, whereas Buckingham had encountered fierce resistance from James I, Arundel found no such aversion to war from Charles, who shared the earl marshal’s sense of outrage. After consulting the Privy Council, the king quickly resolved to put a fleet to sea, under the command of the Elector Palatine.517 HMC Denbigh, v. 47; Strafforde Letters, ii. 48; CSP Ven. 1636-9, pp. 133-4.

It now appeared that the salvation of the Palatine cause had emerged from the most unlikely of quarters.518 CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 249. Elizabeth of Bohemia was delighted at this unexpected turn of events, and pressed her brother to restore Arundel, now an advocate of an alliance with France and the Dutch, to the dukedom of Norfolk.519 Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 319-20; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 92. However Charles, though he could not praise enough the skill and good conduct of the earl marshal,520 CSP Ven. 1636-9, p. 156. was unwilling to acquiesce. Instead, in February 1637 he authorized payment of the full cost of Arundel’s embassy, which amounted to more than £19,000 and for which the earl marshal had as yet received only £12,000.521 SO3/11, unfol. (warrants of May and June 1636 and Feb. 1637). See also HMC Cowper, ii. 79. For Arundel’s complaints that his allowance was insufficient, see SP80/10, ff. 34v, 37v. This was a considerable concession, as most ambassadors were forced to wait years for payment, and often they received only a fraction of what they were owed.

From the first, Arundel tried to persuade the king to allow the Elector Palatine’s brother, Prince Rupert^† (later 1st duke of Cumberland), to play a key military role in the forthcoming war. Initially it was suggested that Rupert should be dispatched to Germany with an army, but by mid March there were plans to send him instead with a small expeditionary force to conquer Madagascar, which had not yet been colonized.522 CSP Ven. 1636-9, p. 184; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1635-9, p. 245. The purpose of this scheme remains unclear, but conquest of the island would have made it possible to disrupt the lucrative trade of Portugal, then part of Spain, with the East Indies, as the Portuguese regularly anchored their ships there.523 S. Copeland, Hist. of the Is. of Madagascar, 124-5. There was the added attraction that Madagascar was rich in minerals, including silver and copper. Certainly there was talk of making fat profits.524 W. Ellis, Hist. of Madagascar, i. 6-7.

The chief advocate of the Madagascar scheme was Arundel, who had recently become committed to spending £10,000 he could ill afford on a cabinet of rarities, and now saw a way of turning the war that he had been urging to his own financial advantage. However, by mid April most of Arundel’s fellow councillors realized that conquering Madagascar was impracticable.525 Orig. Unpublished Pprs. 298; Hervey, 409-10; CSP Ven. 1636-9, pp. 184, 188. Disappointed, the earl marshal thereupon turned his thoughts towards a privateering war in the West Indies, which also appeared to promise significant financial rewards. In November 1637, having obtained the support of the earls of Holland and Pembroke, he laid his proposals before the king.526 CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 252, 336, 554. However, by then it was becoming apparent that Charles would not go to war without an alliance with France, which, despite English efforts, never materialized. Nevertheless, Arundel remained ‘very hearty ... in the Prince Elector’s service’ as late as May 1638.527 Works of Abp. Laud, vii.424.

It was the developing crisis in Scotland which finally put paid to all thoughts of war with Spain. At the end of June 1638 Arundel was appointed to a six-strong junto on Scottish affairs.528 C. Hibbard, Popish Plot, 99. Mindful of the nation’s honour, Arundel was one of the keenest advocates of a war against the Covenanters. This was despite the poverty of the Exchequer, and despite the advice of his uncle, Lord William Howard, who warned that the northern counties would rise against the king should the Scots take up arms.529 Letters and Jnls. of Robert Baillie ed. D. Laing, i. 73; Strafforde Letters, ii. 186. Indeed, Archbishop Laud later recalled that Arundel openly counselled military action at the Council table. The king shared the earl marshal’s aggressive view, and in July Arundel, who held three northern lieutenancies, was dispatched to inspect the fortifications at Berwick and Carlisle and review the local militia.530 Works of Abp. Laud, ii. 426; Hibbard, 99. For the rest of the summer he supervised military preparations.531 HMC 3rd Rep. 40b; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 584.

The Scottish crisis gave Arundel the dominant position at court he had so long craved. This was chiefly because, unlike many of his fellow peers, Arundel was hostile to both the Scots and puritans.532 Clarendon, i. 178. Since these animosities were shared by the king, Arundel quickly became one of only a handful of ministers Charles trusted fully.533 G. Burnet, Mems. of the Lives and Actions of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton and Castle-Herald, 155. In November 1638 Charles ordered Arundel, described by one observer as having become a great man at court, to lead the English army against the Scots.534 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ii. 395; Strafforde Letters, ii. 246. Arundel responded by pleading with Charles to appoint someone else. In reality, however, he relished the prospect of taking to the field,535 Hervey, 467-8; Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 506. having now been given the opportunity to emulate his illustrious predecessor, Thomas Howard^†, 2nd duke of Norfolk, who had destroyed the Scottish army more than a century earlier. Indeed, he was so pleased that he had himself painted in full armour.536 Both portraits, by Van Dyck, are at Arundel. Unlike one unkind observer, who pointedly remarked that he expected ‘not to hear of a second Flodden Field’,537 HMC Var. vii. 421. Arundel was undaunted by the fact that he had no military training. He relied on others to supply this deficiency, and consequently in January 1639 he nearly resigned in disgust after the king appointed the earl of Holland - whose military experience was as negligible as his own - as general of the horse. He had hoped that this position would be filled instead by the 3rd earl of Essex, who had long experience of soldiering.538 Strafforde Letters, ii. 276; Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. viii. 386; Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 523.

Arundel’s own commission as general was issued on 7 Mar. 1639.539 HMC 3rd Rep. 75b; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 454. The order to draw up the commission was issued on 2 Feb.: CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 416. Soon after 19 Mar. he left London, having been ordered to help secure Berwick and Carlisle.540 CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 578; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 498a. On reaching York, he quickly attempted to stamp his authority on the army, exchanging ‘high speeches’ with the 1st earl of Newport (Mountjoy Blount^*) after the latter’s cavalry marched off without orders.541 HMC Rutland, i. 507. One of Arundel’s first tasks on arriving in the north was to help the king devise an oath of loyalty for the nobility, who had been summoned to York. Aware that many peers secretly sympathized with the Scots, Charles aimed to ensure that during the coming conflict he had the unswerving loyalty of his nobility. However, the oath that he and Arundel drafted provoked considerable unrest. Two of the most puritan-minded peers, Viscount Saye and Sele and the 2nd Lord Brooke (Robert Greville^*), were incensed that the new ‘military oath’ allowed the king to demand service beyond the borders of the kingdom, and alarmed that it was acceptable to Catholics. Although both were imprisoned for refusing to swear, Arundel subsequently learned that they were not alone in their misgivings. Consequently Charles was left with little choice but to modify the wording a few days later.542 Hibbard, 118-19; Cust, 188-90.

Dissident peers were among the least of Arundel’s worries, however. A larger problem, from his point of view, was that the king had decided to take the field in person, thereby greatly restricting Arundel’s freedom of action and undermining his standing as commander of the army. It soon became clear that Charles was cautious about engaging the Covenanters, whereas Arundel was restless to press forward. By late April an exasperated Arundel was reassuring the king on a daily basis that the Covenanters were weak, and reminding him ‘how nearly it concerns his honour to punish the rebels’. When, on 8 May, intelligence was received from two loyal Scottish peers that the Scots were actually able to field 40,000 foot and 4,000 horse, Arundel dismissed these claims as mere ‘brags’. He was confident of success, declared that his own army was ‘in very good heart’, and told the 4th duke of Lennox [S] (James Stuart^†, later 1st duke of Richmond) that if the two kingdoms came to blows ‘England need not be afraid, for it was the richer and had more men in it’. Unlike one of his own officers, Arundel appears to have been blind to the fact that many of his soldiers were not only ‘raw’ and ‘unskilful’ but also ‘unwilling to fight’.543 Letters and Pprs. of the Verney Fam. ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. lvi), 228-9, 232-3; Hervey, 413.

It was not until early June, the army having now encamped close to the Scottish border,544 Fissel, 23. that Charles appears to have been willing to give Arundel free rein. On the 2nd the earl marshal learned that the Scots were mustering at Duns, nine miles east of Berwick. Declaring it to be ‘a shame ... to lie idle with both our honour and the army’, he personally led 1,500 cavalry to break up the gathering. However, on his arrival he found only women who, when asked where their husbands were, ‘seemed to forget they had any’.545 Ibid. 26n; CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 270-1. At his return he discovered that the Scots were intending to entrench at nearby Kelso, whereupon he dispatched the earl of Holland with a mixed force of horse and foot. Unfortunately for him, his earlier misgivings about Holland’s suitability for command were quickly vindicated. On the 4th Holland, deceived by the Scots into thinking that he was facing a considerably superior force, withdrew in the face of the enemy. The following day the Scottish army appeared opposite the English encampment, where Charles, now equally convinced of the Covenanters’ superior strength, agreed to talks.

Arundel’s role in the ensuing negotiations, which were conducted in his tent, is not entirely clear. On the one hand he evidently remained hostile towards the Covenanters, solemnly berating their leaders for rebelling against their lawful king.546 Walker, 263. On the other, he also attempted to broker a lasting peace. The earl of Rothes [S], one of the leading Covenanter grandees, later referred approvingly in a letter to Arundel to ‘your lordship’s labours at the camp’.547 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters, no. 381. Clarendon, too, subsequently claimed that Arundel had been trying, behind the scenes, to mediate a peace, and that the earl marshal treated the Covenanter leaders ‘with more respect than was suitable to the office of a general’.548 Clarendon, i. 188. Whatever the case may have been, a settlement was reached on 18 June. Three weeks later Arundel headed south,549 Hervey, 415. his commission now at an end.

Arundel arrived home to find his finances in a ruinous state. Reluctantly he agreed to ‘tack about’, and in September he and his wife appealed to the earl of Middlesex, who had worked wonders on the royal finances 20 years earlier,550 Prestwich, 524; HMC 4th Rep. 294b. to help them retrench. However, reducing spending was unlikely to clear the mountain of debt that had now accumulated, and by August Arundel had reached the conclusion that the only chance of financial salvation lay in reviving the scheme to colonize Madagascar.551 Prestwich, 524. After securing the king’s permission to undertake the venture and the promise of a royal warship for six months, Arundel, who could not afford to meet the costs alone, issued a declaration on 6 Sept. inviting investors to come forward.552 Hervey, 506; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 19. Not surprisingly, there was widespread interest in this money-making scheme, and it was not long before Arundel, who intended to lead the expedition in person, was able to hire five ships.553 CSP Ven. 1636-9, p. 578. However, he had reckoned without the opposition of the East India Company, whose directors complained in October that Arundel’s project, and a similar scheme to settle Mauritius put forward by the 2nd and 4th earl of Southampton (Thomas Wriothesley^*), would be as damaging to their interests as the Dutch. Though Arundel described this comparison as ‘unmannerly’, the company’s intervention proved decisive: in December the king recalled both patents.554 Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1635-9, pp. 336-9; 1640-3, p. 296; Winthrop Pprs. ed. Mass. Hist. Soc. iv. 195; PC2/51, pp. 165-6. Arundel now had little choice but to sell more property, and the following month he parted with one of his Sussex manors for more than £7,300.555 Arundel Castle, MD59, p. 118.

The king’s decision to torpedo the Madagascar project was not the only setback Arundel experienced at around this time. On 31 Dec. he learned that Charles, who had resolved to take up arms against the Covenanters once more, had decided not to reappoint him as commander of the army, ostensibly because he was frequently unwell.556 Hervey, 420. He had been suffering from gout for more than four years, and in September he had fallen from his horse and dislocated several bones in one of his legs.557 Strafforde Letters, i. 415; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 247; Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 506; HMC 4th Rep. 294b. The real reason Arundel was passed over, however, was probably that Charles’ confidence in him had been shaken by the events of the previous summer. Arundel had predicted that the forces ranged against the king were weak, but Charles had seen for himself the size of the Scottish army, and had felt compelled to come to terms. The hurt to Arundel’s pride at being cast aside was considerable. In January 1640 he was reportedly ‘much discontented’.558 Hervey, 421.

Although no longer in charge of the army, Arundel is unlikely to have spent the next eight months sulking, as one historian has alleged.559 Adamson, 63. He remained violently anti-Scottish, and at a meeting of the Privy Council in March 1640 he denounced the Covenanters’ neglect of the king’s interests as ‘unprecedented in the Christian world’.560 P. Donald, An Uncounselled King, 225. His continued enthusiasm for war against the Scots was appreciated by Charles who, in April, selected him to serve as lord steward in the forthcoming Parliament. (There being no lord steward of the household, it was necessary to appoint a temporary officer.)561 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 244; Clarendon, i. 206. During the course of this brief assembly, the Commons not only refused to vote supply, but also attacked the Court of Chivalry for the arbitrary nature of its powers.562 Procs. Short Parl. 261; Aston Diary, 12; Cases in the High Court of Chivalry ed. R. Cust and A. Hopper (Harl. Soc. n.s. xviii), xii, xxv.

Final years, 1640-6

Following the dissolution of the Short Parliament, Charles renewed the war against the Scots. However, it was the Covenanters who struck the first blow, crossing the Tweed on 17 Aug. whereupon the Council gave Arundel command of all English forces south of the Trent.563 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 317; PC2/52, f. 348r-v; Rymer, ix. pt. 3, pp. 29-31. However, by the time Arundel had ordered the southern militias to be ready to march to the aid of the king, Charles’s forces in the north had already been defeated.564 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 321; Stuart Royal Proclamations II: Chas. I ed. J.F. Larkin, 732-4. In the aftermath of this disaster, Arundel was appointed to the commission of regency, which governed from the capital while Charles remained in the north. He did not attend the Great Council of Peers which met the following month at York, in part because it was feared that there would be a rising in support of the Scots but also because he once again experienced a bout of ill health.565 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 325; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 506; Misc. State Pprs. ii. 173. By mid September he had concluded that a fresh Parliament was inescapable, and suggested that Charles should call one, ‘that he may have the honour of it himself’.566 CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 60; Adamson, 80.

During the early stages of the Long Parliament, the Commons renewed its criticisms of the Court of Chivalry, which was declared a grievance in February 1641, thereby putting an end to its existence. Arundel must have feared that he would soon be impeached, as the Commons initially resolved to discover who was responsible for usurping the jurisdiction claimed by the court.567 CJ, ii. 89a; Squibb, 66-7. In the event, the Commons fixed their sights instead on Thomas Wentworth, now earl of Strafford and commander of both the English and Irish armies. Arundel, although he shared the latter’s hostility to the Scots, had little reason to love Strafford, with whom he had fallen out five years earlier over the recovery of the Howard and Talbot lands in Ireland. In order to put himself beyond danger, he offered to serve as presiding officer at Strafford’s trial for treason, on the grounds that, as earl marshal, he had jurisdiction.568 LJ, iv. 185a.

Although he oversaw Strafford’s trial, and was even one of the three peers who signed the subsequent act of attainder on behalf of the king,569 Two Diaries of Long Parl. 118; CSP Ven. 1640-2, p. 151. Arundel remained an object of suspicion because of his well known Catholic sympathies. In August 1641, for instance, his arms were confiscated on the grounds that he was a recusant.570 CJ, ii. 261b. He was therefore entrusted by the king with the task of conveying to the Continent the queen mother, Marie de Medici.571 CSP Ven. 1640-2, p. 194. After discharging this duty, he returned to England in October, but in February 1642, realizing that England would soon descend into civil war, he once more travelled to the Continent, this time in the company of the queen.572 CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 22; Bodl., Ashmole 1108, f. 147v; PA, HL/PO/JO/13/3, p. 17. At Utrecht he was reunited with his wife and grandchildren, who had already fled,573 Hervey, 434; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 294; LJ, v. 552a, 558b. but over the summer he left them and moved to the Spanish Netherlands.574 HMC 4th Rep. 296a; Hervey, 440. What lay behind this marital disharmony is unclear, but for some time Arundel and Aletheia had led largely separate lives: in 1633 they had bought Tart Hall, in Westminster, a small villa set in 12 and-a-half acres, which was used primarily by the countess.575 E. Chew, ‘Countess of Arundel and Tart Hall’, Evolution of English Collecting ed. Chaney, 294.

Arundel eventually settled in Antwerp, from where he maintained a regular correspondence with the royalist ambassador to Paris, Richard Browne.576 For this corresp., see Add. 78193, passim. As his eldest son, now Lord Mowbray, had taken up arms for the king, his goods in Norfolk were seized, and in 1644 he was also required to contribute £1,000 towards the parliamentarian war effort.577 LJ, vi. 144b, 198b, 431a, 480a, 482b, 650a. The king, too, made heavy demands on his purse: the royalist writer David Lloyd later claimed that Arundel contributed nearly £20,000 to Charles’s coffers.578 Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives (1668), 284. In June 1644 a grateful king finally recognized Arundel’s right to the Norfolk title. However, for reasons which remain unclear, he created him earl rather than duke of Norfolk.579 Docquets of Letters Patent 1642-6, i. 288.

Over the late summer of 1644 Arundel took the waters at Spa, as he had done more than 30 years earlier. He subsequently journeyed to Rheims, and then stayed at a country house near Paris, presumably for the winter.580 Add. 78193, ff. 59v, 61v; Coll. of Arms, Heralds IV, f. 155. Unable to resist the lure of Italy, which he had not seen since 1614, he travelled to Milan and Piacenza the following spring before reaching his final destination, Padua.581 Chaney, ‘Evelyn, Inigo Jones, and the Collector Earl of Arundel’, 45; Evelyn Diary, i. 307. From there he wrote to his old friend Inigo Jones in terms of bitter disappointment. ‘Italy was no more Italy’, he lamented, for everywhere he looked there had been a decline in architecture, painting and sculpture.582 Evolution of English Collecting, 73.

By April 1646, with the Civil War almost over, Arundel decided to return to England.583 Hervey, 450. See also HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 438b. Over the summer he made preparations to leave, but in September he was struck down by a fever which lasted 20 days. He died at Padua on 24 Sept. (4 Oct. according to the Gregorian calendar), having finally reconverted to Rome.584 Chaney, ‘Evelyn, Inigo Jones, and the Collector Earl of Arundel’, 38-9. His coffin plate stated that he died on 26 Sept. (O.S.): Tierney, 630. His internal organs were buried under the cloister of the church of St Anthony of Padua, but his corpse was subsequently interred in the family vault in the Fitzalan chapel at Arundel Castle.585 R. Lassels, The Voyage of Italy (1670), 429; SP23/62, p. 745; Tierney, 481. In his will, drafted in August 1641, Arundel had requested that a white marble tomb of his own design be erected over his remains,586 Hervey, 459. but the parlous state of his finances meant that this was out of the question. Indeed, his eldest son Henry, now earl of Arundel, was so mired in debt that he tried to disinherit his mother. By January 1652, despite having raised £36,000 by selling land, Henry’s trustees owed a staggering £124,435 12s. 7d.587 SP23/62, pp. 590, 805.