HOWARD, William (1577-1615)

The eldest son of Charles Howard, 2nd Lord Howard of Effingham, the long-serving lord admiral, Howard assumed the courtesy title of Lord Howard of Effingham on his father’s elevation to the earldom of Nottingham in 1597. Earlier that year he married the daughter and heir of John St John^†, 2nd Lord St John of Bletso, whose fortune was later estimated at over £4,000 in cash, a further £6,000 in plate and jewels and ‘a fair estate in lands then worth £800 by the year’, although the latter was tied up in his mother-in-law’s jointure.19 C2/Chas.I/H18/35; Carew Letters ed. J. Maclean (Cam. Soc. lxxvi), 13. He certainly received £3,000 from his wife’s uncle, Oliver St John^*, 3rd Lord St John of Bletso in the 18 months following his marriage.20 Add. 33579, f. 208. In addition, as Howard’s younger brother Charles remarked, Nottingham ‘dealt … freely, liberally and bountifully’ with his heir. On Howard’s marriage, Nottingham agreed to settle on the couple the manor of Bletchingley in Surrey, worth £600 a year, although the conveyance was not actually completed until over a decade later. He also paid for their household for the first ten years of their married life and provided Howard with a cut from various grants and patents he managed to secure from the crown.21 C2/Chas.I/H18/35; 2/Chas.I/H21/1. His father’s generosity enabled Howard to play a prominent part at court, for although he held no formal position, he was granted access to the Privy Chamber early in the reign of James.22 Letters of Philip Gawdy ed. I.H. Jeayes, 132; HMC Hatfield, xv. 220.

Under Elizabeth, Howard had been returned twice for Surrey, where his father was lord lieutenant. In March 1604 he was summoned to the Lords by writ in acceleration in right of his father’s barony. His summons probably owed little to his own qualities, but rather to his father’s status as a senior privy councillor and the new king’s wish to ingratiate himself with the English nobility. The precise date of this writ is unknown, but the warrant authorizing its issue is dated 18 Mar.,23 SO3/2, p. 226. and Howard attended the Lords the following day. In all, Howard attended 59 of the 71 sittings that session, a rate of 83 per cent, and missed only three sittings before 26 June, when he was absent both morning and afternoon. However, he was named to only six of the 70 committees appointed by the House, all concerned with legislation, and made no recorded speeches. Two of his appointments dealt with bills against witchcraft. His remaining nominations were concerned to prevent the export of artillery, unlawful hunting and abuses in painting. On 3 Apr. he was named to the committee for the bill to naturalize John Erskine, 18th and 2nd earl of Mar [S], who later that year became trustee for the jointure of Howard’s stepmother.24 LJ, ii. 269a, 272b, 275a, 285a, 292a, 294b; C2/ChasI/N3/5.

Howard benefited from the 1604 Act which secured for his sister part of the property which had formerly belonged to the latter’s husband Henry Brooke^†, 11th Lord Cobham, attainted for his role in the Main Plot. Part of this property included Cobham’s town house in Blackfriars, which Howard later acquired from his sister in exchange for a house at Deptford given to him by his father.25 LJ, ii. 353a; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 108; C2/Chas.I/H18/35. In addition during the Parliament, Howard received £1,000 from the composition of an attainted recusant. He was granted a further £1,000 as a gift from the king shortly after the session was prorogued in July.26 CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 116, 131.

In March 1605 Howard accompanied his father on the latter’s embassy to Spain to ratify the peace treaty between the two countries. There he visited his wife’s aunt, Jane Dormer, the dowager duchess of Feria, a long-standing patron of the Jesuits who was then intriguing to return to England and take up a place in Anne of Denmark’s household. A Spanish source recorded a rumour that Howard told Philip III he was secretly Catholic, but this claim is not corroborated by other evidence.27 Royall Entertainement of the Right Honourable the Earle of Nottingham (1605), 11; G. Ungerer, ‘Spanish and English Chronicles in King James’s and Sir George Buc’s Dossiers on the Anglo-Spanish Peace Negotiations’, HLQ, lxi. 313, 317n.22. The king of Spain gave him a girdle of gold valued at 1,900 ducats.28 HMC Downshire, ii. 424.

Howard’s attendance deteriorated in the second session of the 1604-10 Parliament, which commenced on 5 Nov. 1605. He initially attended regularly but was frequently absent in February and March 1606. Overall, he was recorded as being present for 49 of the 85 sittings, 58 per cent of the total. He made no recorded speeches, and was named to only nine out of 72 committees. These included a committee to confer with the Commons about purveyance, free trade and the Union. His other appointments included two on bills against swearing, and another for a new bill on hunting.29 LJ, ii. 365a, 365b, 381b, 413b; Bowyer Diary, 116-17. One measure which may have interested him, and which he was instructed to examine on 20 Mar., was to confirm a project to transport timber down the river Taw to Barnstaple. Howard’s father owned the property which had formerly belonged to the priory of Barnstaple and the promoter of the bill claimed to be a servant of Nottingham and Howard. However, the measure was bitterly opposed by William Bourchier^*, 3rd earl of Bath, and Nottingham reported from the committee against the bill on 12 April.30 LJ, ii. 397b, 413a; Beds. RO, R3/10/1.

Howard’s attendance record improved in the third session, which started in November 1606, as he was present at 82 of the 106 sittings, 77 per cent of the total. He also received more committee appointments, 12 out of the 41 established by the upper House. He was named to examine three bills subsequently reported by his father: on draining certain marshes in Kent, to enable a Surrey landowner, John Good^‡_, to convey land to the king, and to repeal a clause in the 1604 statute for regulating Thames watermen. His appointments also included the committee for the estate bill of another Surrey landowner, John Evelyn.31 LJ, ii. 453a, 463b, 490b, 520a, 521b, 523a.

In 1608 Howard received a grant of the crown’s reversion to the Barnstaple priory lands, which were probably conveyed to him by his father around this time. He subsequently mortgaged and eventually sold these properties.32 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 404; HMC Sackville, i. 216, 229; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OL44; C2/Chas.I/H34/28. Nottingham also conveyed to Howard Donnington Castle and neighbouring properties, which had been granted to him by Elizabeth I in 1600. In March 1608 Effingham mortgaged the castle and park to Lionel Cranfield*, later 1st earl of Middlesex, to whom he subsequently pledged other portions of the Berkshire property.33 CPR, 1599-1600 ed. C. Smith, S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxxii), 223-5; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 74; HMC Sackville, i. 152, 178, 216-17, 338. By the end of 1608 Howard owed large sums of money to Cranfield and was finding it difficult to meet his obligations. However, the following February his father procured him a pension of £300 out of impositions, the new and highly controversial additional customs duties levied without the consent of Parliament; this must have eased his financial problems, at least temporarily.34 HMC Sackville, i. 174-5; SO3/4, unfol. (Feb. 1609); Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE534, Nottingham to Cranfield, 14 Nov. 1621.

Howard attended only ten of the 95 sittings in the fourth session of the first Jacobean Parliament, which began in February 1610. Indeed, he was recorded as being present on only two occasions in February and just five times in March. Thereafter he stayed away until May, when he attended only once. He returned for the creation of Prince Henry as prince of Wales on 4 June, but subsequently attended on only one further occasion, ten days later. On 19 Apr., responding to a message from the king complaining about poor attendance, Nottingham excused his son, but on what grounds is unknown.35 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 209. Howard left no further trace on the parliamentary records. His correspondence with Cranfield, which consists largely of requests for more loans and excuses for failure to repay what he had borrowed, indicates that he was resident at Bletchingley during this time. It also suggests that Howard dined with Cranfield in London on 25 June, although he failed to attend the upper House that day.36 HMC Sackville, i. 214, 216. Howard attended the short-lived fifth session in late 1610 only three times: on 13, 15 and 29 November. He received one committee appointment, on 13 Nov., to confer with the Commons about supply.37 LJ, ii. 678a.

After the dissolution, Howard’s finances continued to decline. In 1612 he lost Donnington Castle when he defaulted on the mortgage, although it was subsequently redeemed by his widow.38 Prestwich, 74; HMC Sackville, i. 252, 262; C2/Chas.I/H34/28. His wife caused a minor diplomatic incident in the festivities surrounding the marriage of Princes Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine in February 1613, when she claimed precedence over the wife of the French ambassador.39 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 170. In April, Howard accompanied his father, who had been appointed to escort the newly married couple across the Channel.40 J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, ii. 613-14. At about this date Nottingham was trying to secure the long-vacant post of vice admiral of England for his heir; he contemplated recruiting the Elector and princess to lobby on his behalf, but was blocked by Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton, who regarded the office as unnecessary, and thought that Howard lacked ‘experience … integrity and understanding’.41 Cott. Titus C.VI, f. 106v; L. L. Peck, Northampton, 35.

Howard’s attendance improved in the Addled Parliament of 1614, when he was recorded as being present at 13 of the 29 sittings. He made his only recorded speech in the upper House on 23 May. The House of Commons had requested a conference to put its case against impositions, widely considered to be illegal. However, as already noted, Howard derived a pension from this source, which he could ill afford to relinquish. Consequently, he spoke in favour of first hearing the opinion of the judges, who were expected to uphold the legality of the levy.42 HMC Hastings, iv. 253.

In March 1615 Howard’s mother-in-law died, enabling him to get his hands on his wife’s lands. George Carew^*, Lord Carew (later earl of Totness), reported that, as a result, Howard’s estate was ‘much advanced’.43 Carew Letters, 6, 13. However, by now Howard had lost all his own lands except Bletchingley. Moreover, as he had no sons the manor would, by the terms of his marriage settlement, revert to his father, or his father’s next male heir, on his death. In August 1615 he leased Bletchingley to trustees to provide a jointure for his wife, and the following autumn he executed a common recovery to break the entail, enabling him to settle the manor on his sole surviving daughter, Elizabeth, after the death of his wife.44 C2/Chas.I/H18/35.

By the autumn of 1615 Howard was seriously ill. On 7 Dec. it was reported that he was either dead or past hope of recovery. According to a subsequent inquisition, he died three days later at Bletchingley. However, it is perhaps more likely that, as the letter of administration granted to his widow states, he died at Hampton Court, where his father was keeper. He was certainly in residence there in the previous autumn when he broke the entail on Bletchingley.45 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 383; WARD 7/54/126; PROB 6/9, f. 48v; C2/Chas.I/H34/28; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE534, Nottingham to Cranfield, 26 Aug. 1622.

Nottingham and Howard’s younger brother, Charles, were horrified to discover the entail of Bletchingley had been broken, and blamed Howard’s wife, whom they claimed took advantage of his final sickness. They maintained that Howard would have reversed this act had he recovered. Lady Howard responded that her husband had been well enough after completing the legal formalities to go outside at Hampton Court ‘at the coursing and killing of a deer’. However, she did not say he was well enough to travel. Her brother-in-law retorted that Howard had, in fact, been on his deathbed when he executed the recovery, and that he had died ‘many days before’ 10 December. This was clearly fanciful, as it is difficult to see how Lady Howard could have concealed her husband’s body for several days in a royal palace.46 Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE534, Nottingham to Cranfield, 26 Aug. 1622; C2/Chas.I/N16/61; 2/Chas.I/H18/35; 2/Chas.I/H34/28. Lord Carew reported Howard’s death on 11 Dec.: Carew Letters, 21.. However, the 2nd earl of Nottingham’s accusations may be the source of the statement that Howard died on 28 November.47 Leveson-Gower, 403.

Howard was buried at Chelsea and administration was granted to his widow on 5 Jan. 1616. She also purchased the wardship of his daughter Elizabeth for £600. Elizabeth subsequently married John Mordaunt^*, 5th Lord Mordaunt, who was created 1st earl of Peterborough in 1628.48 Faulkner, ii. 130; PROB 6/9, f. 48v; WARD 9/162, f. 223; CP, x. 496-7.