HOWARD, Thomas (aft.1542-1611)

Howard’s father was a younger son of Thomas Howard^†, 3rd duke of Norfolk. Having acquired a substantial estate in Dorset by marriage, he settled in the county and became a prominent local governor, serving as both custos rotulorum and vice admiral. In 1559 he was created Viscount Howard of Bindon, the territorial suffix deriving from his principal Dorset seat.17 CP, vi. 583-4; C142/198/22; CPR, 1560-3, p. 436; Sainty and Thrush, 15.

Howard himself first entered Parliament in 1563, when he represented the county in the Commons. As a younger son, he then stood to inherit only one manor. Perhaps for this reason, he served as a borough official in the mid 1570s at Weymouth, where he owned a house, even though town office was unusual for a man of his rank. Appointed a Dorset magistrate around the same time, he made little mark on county affairs prior to 1590, when, in his late forties, he succeeded his brother as 3rd Viscount Howard.18 C142/231/89; CSP Dom. 1547-80, p. 643; Moule, 100. His peerage necessarily brought him a seat in the House of Lords, and also promotion to the prestigious local commission of oyer and terminer, but the bulk of the family property had passed to his brother’s granddaughter, Ambrosia Gorges. Only on her death in 1600 did Howard finally acquire the wealth appropriate to his status. In the following year he was appointed lord lieutenant of Dorset, but he faced opposition from the county’s other leading figure, Sir Walter Ralegh^‡, and initially struggled to assert his authority.19 C142/260/139; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, 238-9; HMC Hatfield, xii. 181-2; xv. 357-8.

With the accession of James I in 1603, Howard’s position improved considerably. Confirmed as lord lieutenant, he replaced Ralegh as custos rotulorum of Dorset a few months later following the latter’s disgrace, and succeeded Sir Walter’s brother as vice admiral. In 1604 he also became keeper of royal game in the county.20 HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 273; Sainty and Thrush, 16. This new-found local dominance enabled him to clamp down on Dorset’s recusants, whom he regarded with the deepest suspicion, and to pursue administrative reforms, such as reviving sessions of Dorset’s admiralty court, which had been allowed to lapse by Sir Carew Ralegh^‡.21 HMC Hatfield, xv. 357-8; Add. 12506, f. 103. However, Howard showed little obvious interest in court life, and rarely attended the first Jacobean Parliament. Present for only the first three days of the 1604 session, he was nominated on 26 Mar. to help confer with the Commons about the possibility of buying out wardship, but then obtained leave of absence, appointing as his proxy his kinsman Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk.22 LJ, ii. 263a, 266b. Surprisingly, he failed to exercise electoral patronage that year, despite having secured seats for his nominees in 1601 at several Dorset boroughs, including Weymouth.23 HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 150, 152-3, 155.

When Parliament met in 1605 Howard was again absent, Suffolk once more holding his proxy.24 LJ, ii. 355a. He thus missed the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, but acted with customary vigour when the Privy Council ordered the arrest of prominent Dorset recusants, triumphantly reporting that one detainee had ties to Henry Percy^*, 3rd earl of Northumberland, who was suspected of complicity in the Plot.25 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 4; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 277; SP14/18/1. The interrupted parliamentary session resumed in January 1606, but Howard still stayed away, not coming up to London until late April, when he was created a knight of the Garter. He then attended the Lords three times that month, and once in May, though without attracting any business.26 LJ, ii. 361a.

Howard was admitted to the order of the Garter on the same day as Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, and their investiture in May 1606 was reckoned by the Venetian ambassador to have been an event more magnificent than James I’s coronation. The ambassador presumed that Howard owed this signal honour to Salisbury, describing him as the earl’s protégé.27 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, ii. 48; CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 350, 354. However, while Howard and Salisbury were undoubtedly on cordial terms, the latter’s attitude was, by his own admission, strongly influenced by the viscount’s close ties to the earl of Suffolk, one of Salisbury’s key political allies. As early as 1602, the childless Howard had decided to bequeath his lands to Suffolk and his line, and this arrangement thereafter served to insulate him from his enemies.28 HMC Hatfield, xii. 30; xix. 310. His record as vice admiral in particular provoked steady criticism, some of which was apparently justified. While he was no more ineffectual than most other contemporary holders of this office, he was seemingly more willing to help victims of piracy if they were Protestant rather than Catholic. In 1604 he twice interceded on behalf of a ‘poor Dutchman’, whereas in February 1607 he was rebuked by the Privy Council for failing to assist the Spanish ambassador.29 Ibid. xix. 105; Add. 11402, f. 123v; Add. 12506, ff. 155, 169. Later that year, Salisbury warned Howard that a further complaint from the ambassador was imminent, and observed that attacks on Spanish shipping in the English Channel had become an international scandal. Nevertheless, he coupled these remarks with a sympathetic comment on Howard’s personal performance. Similarly, when a piracy commission was cancelled by the admiralty court in July 1608, the writ was carefully worded to avoid any direct criticism of Howard, and run past both Salisbury and Suffolk prior to its dispatch.30 HMC Hatfield, xix. 310-11; xx. 205.

This cosy aristocratic axis was consciously strengthened by Howard’s building activities. At Bindon, in addition to constructing a new chapel, he created a gallery filled with pictures of his friends, and in April 1609 he requested a portrait of Salisbury in his Garter robes for this group.31 PROB 11/117, ff. 173v-4; J. Manco, D. Greenhalf and M. Girouard, ‘Lulworth Castle in the Seventeenth Century’, Architectural History, xxxiii. 30; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 45. Two years earlier he had embarked on a much bigger project, the construction of a compact country retreat, or lodge, at Lulworth, Dorset, where he had already established a hunting park. Built to resemble a small fort, and very much in keeping with current court taste, Lulworth Castle emulated Salisbury’s own Cranborne Lodge, some 20 miles away. Indeed, Howard claimed that Salisbury had first suggested the idea to him, and he probably borrowed craftsmen from the earl. However, the primary purpose of the new house was to provide a base in Dorset for Suffolk and his son Theophilus Howard^*, Lord Howard de Walden (later 2nd earl of Suffolk). In November 1607 Salisbury commended Howard for pursuing the project, and observed that it might ‘give the greater contentment to those towards whom you are a second parent to live in those parts’. ‘Stately and lofty’, according to one contemporary observer, Lulworth was probably finished in 1610, though Howard continued to treat Bindon as his principal residence.32 HMC Hatfield, xix. 310, 400; xx. 204; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 192; Manco et al., 30-1, 45-7, 50.

Howard missed both the third and fourth sessions of the first Jacobean Parliament, as usual giving his proxy to Suffolk.33 LJ, ii. 449b, 548b; SO3/4, unfol. (27 Jan. 1610). However, he intermittently attended the brief fifth session in the autumn of 1610, his presence in the Lords being recorded on eight occasions. Twice appointed to help confer with the Commons about the Great Contract and supply, he was also named to the committee for a bill concerned with Prince Henry’s estates. While in London, he handed Salisbury a ‘letter left under a bed’ which hinted at a conspiracy, but the matter was apparently not pursued.34 LJ, ii. 671a, 677a, 678a; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 255-6.

Howard remained active in Dorset to the end of his life, still complaining to Salisbury in January 1611 of the ‘popish, dangerous recusants which haunt these western parts’.35 SP14/61/5. He died in the following March, ‘exceeding rich as it is said’, and rumours quickly circulated about the likely beneficiaries.36 LMA, Acc/1876/F/03/05/2, no. 25; HMC Rutland, i. 428; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 108. In fact, by the time Howard made his will, on 14 June 1607, he had already assigned his lands to those he had ‘chosen and adopted’ to be his ‘natural heirs’, namely Suffolk’s ‘issue and stock’. Consequently, within a fortnight, Lord Howard de Walden had ‘gone down into the country to take possession’. Howard was buried, at his request, in his new chapel at Bindon; his funeral was attended by Suffolk and Howard de Walden, Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, William Knollys^*, 1st Lord Knollys (later earl of Banbury), and numerous local gentlemen.37 PROB 11/117, ff. 173v-4; HMC Rutland, i. 429; Add. 14417, ff. 24v-5v. Howard’s viscountcy became extinct on his death, but there was talk in 1622 of reviving it for Suffolk’s second son, Thomas Howard^*. In the event the latter became Viscount Andover instead.38 Add. 72254, f. 78.