HOWARD, Charles (1579-1642)

Howard was born the second son of Charles Howard^*, 2nd Lord Howard of Effingham, subsequently lord admiral and 1st earl of Nottingham. In 1597 he married the widow of a wealthy Wealden ironmaster whose fortune was variously estimated at between £10,000 and £40,000. In return, Howard’s father promised to settle various properties, annuities and offices on his son, although he had already sold one of the properties, the Sussex manor of Eastbrook, two years earlier.24 WARD 9/93, f. 290v; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/L29.

Howard sat for Surrey in 1597, for Sussex in 1601 and 1604-10 and for New Shoreham in 1614. In late 1615 Howard’s elder brother William^* died, making Howard himself heir to the earldom of Nottingham. However, shortly before his death, William had broken the entail on the manor of Bletchingley to enable him to settle this property on his wife Anne, and, after her death, his under-age daughter, Elizabeth. Together with his father, Howard, who now assumed the courtesy title Lord Howard of Effingham, quickly tried to seize the manor, taking advantage of the fact that William had entered into a recognizance for £10,000 as surety for his father’s performance of Charles’s marriage settlement. As the settlement had not been fully performed because of the sale of Eastbrook, they claimed the recognizance was forfeit and therefore tried to extend Bletchingley for the debt. In February 1616 the attorney of the Court of Wards, Sir James Ley^* (later 1st earl of Marlborough), exhibited an information against Howard and his father. By the time this case came to a final hearing in February 1619, Howard’s wife had died, rendering the marriage settlement obsolete. The court therefore ruled that the recognizance be declared void and ordered Nottingham to pay his son £1,000 for any loss he might have suffered by non-fulfilment of the settlement. However, this sum was never paid because Charles had promised his father he would suffer no prejudice as a result of the suit.25 SP16/22/110; WARD 9/93, f. 292.

In 1620 Howard, described by John Chamberlain as ‘a man so worn out in state, credit, years and otherwise’, remarried. His second wife was the daughter of Sir William Cockayne, then lord mayor of London, who presumably brought with her a good dowry.26 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 301. Nevertheless, on being approached to make a contribution to the benevolence for the Palatinate later that year, Howard protested that, although he was willing to support the cause, the ‘little fortune I have is not sufficient to maintain mine own honour, and to pay my debts’.27 SP14/118/52.

In 1621 Howard petitioned the House of Commons to overturn the 1619 Court of Wards decree, but without success. He was probably encouraged to try again in 1624 by the impeachment of Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, master of the court when the decree had been issued. At the time of the decree it had been rumoured that Cranfield was interested in marrying William’s widow, which perhaps gave Howard grounds to allege bias in her favour. However, Howard again got nowhere.28 Harl. 6803, f. 12; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 187v; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 210.

Howard’s father died at the end of 1624. George Carew^*, Lord Carew (later earl of Totness), reported that Howard ‘hath no other inheritance by his death than the barony of Effingham, little better than worth £100 per annum’.29 Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe (1740) ed. S. Richardson, 329. In fact, the new earl of Nottingham’s position may not have been quite so desperate, as he expected to inherit another manor after the death of his stepmother, whose children were set to receive the rest of his father’s estate.30 C2/Chas.I/N5/46. Moreover, he still possessed his first wife’s property in Sussex, consisting of three manors (to which he added a fourth in 1608), and a pension of £300 a year.31 J.J. Goring, ‘Wealden Ironmasters in the Age of Eliz.’, Wealth and Power in Tudor Eng. Ed. E.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht, J.J. Scarisbrick, 214; C142/701/2; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 404; Suss. Manors ed. E.H.W. Dunkin (Suss. Rec. Soc. xx), 430-1. Nevertheless, Nottingham felt that he had effectively been cheated of his inheritance by his sister-in-law and stepmother. His subsequent feuding with the dowager countess of Nottingham and the dowager Lady Howard of Effingham was largely unsuccessful, although in early 1625 he secured the appointment of his chaplain, William Hampton, as minister for Bletchingley, despite his sister-in-law’s claim to the advowson. Mostly though, it served only to entangle him in fruitless, and presumably expensive, litigation, as the courts failed to respond to his plea that he should be favoured ‘because the earldom and dignity is descended upon him as heir male’.32 C2/Chas.I/H18/35; 2/Chas.I/H21/1; 2/Chas.I/H34/28; 2/Chas.I/N5/46; 2/Chas.I/N16/61; 2/Chas.I/N18/38; 2/Chas.I/N28/30; 2/Chas.I/M56/52.

Nottingham was present when the initial meeting of the first Caroline Parliament was prorogued on 17 May 1625. He was again in attendance when the session started on 18 June and missed only one sitting, on the afternoon of 4 July, before Parliament was adjourned to Oxford on 9 July. However, it is unlikely that he attended the Oxford sitting; although shown as present in the Journal on 3 Aug., his name was not recorded in the manuscript minutes, and he left no other trace on the parliamentary records after the session was resumed. In total, he attended 17 sittings during the session, 55 per cent, and received one committee appointment, on 5 July, for the bill to settle the estate of Richard Sackville^*, 3rd earl of Dorset. He may have been interested in this bill because he was a Sussex landowner, and because his first wife had been the widow of a client and kinsman of Dorset’s grandfather, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset.33 Procs. 1625, pp. 40, 88; HP Commons, 1558-1603, ii. 451-2.

Nottingham attended the coronation of Charles I on 2 Feb. 1626, but was absent when the second Caroline Parliament convened four days later.34 Manner of the Coronation of King Charles the First ed. C. Wordsworth (Henry Bradshaw Soc. ii), p. li. He missed the first four sittings of the session, being excused on 9 and 11 Feb., but subsequently attended regularly, being recorded as present on 66 of the 81 sittings, 81 per cent of the total. However, he was appointed to just one committee, on 24 Mar., for a naturalization bill, which he reported as fit to pass later that day. The only other occasion he was recorded as speaking was on 15 May, in the debate on whether Sir Dudley Digges^‡ had spoken ill of the king on the presentation of the impeachment articles against George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham. Nottingham stated he ‘could not make any construction that any way might tend to the king’s dishonour’. On 18 Feb. Nottingham assisted in the introduction of the earls who had been created at the coronation.35 Procs. 1626, i. 38, 43, 206, 210, 484.

Early in the Parliament Nottingham preferred a bill to reverse the 1619 Court of Wards decree, which was given a first reading in the Lords on 28 February. On 1 Mar. it was ordered that John Mordaunt^*, 5th Lord Mordaunt, who had married Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of Anne, Lady Howard of Effingham, should be given notice of the bill. The measure was given a second reading and committed on 7 Mar., whereupon Nottingham’s opponents drew up a detailed narrative of the case, which they circulated to the members of the committee. According to a paper drawn up in the early 1640s, the committee meeting was attended by Ley, now earl of Marlborough and one of the committee’s members, together with ‘all the counsel of the Court of Wards with the officers of that court, and all or most of the witnesses’ to the original case. However, this document also states that the committee consisted of 43 members of the upper House, when in fact only 24 were appointed. On 17 Mar. the House rejected Nottingham’s bill on the committee’s recommendation.36 Ibid. 79, 86, 120, 173; SP16/22/110; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/L29.

Nottingham served as lord lieutenant of Surrey in succession to his father, but in the summer of 1626 a rising tide of complaints led the Privy Council to write to him. The Council was careful to place the blame on Nottingham’s subordinates, but the earl must have been considered at least partly responsible for their faults, particularly as his kinsman and deputy lieutenant, Sir Charles Howard^‡ were singled out for criticism. The Council listed a catalogue of defects: inhabitants of the shire had been overrated and returned as defaulters at the musters even when they had actually appeared; the muster masters had exacted fees and had neglected to drill the men of the militia, or had delegated this responsibility to others who were ‘very unexpert’.37 APC, 1626, pp. 176, 189, 193, 210-11. Given this criticism, it is perhaps not surprising that Nottingham helped enforce the Forced Loan levied after the 1626 Parliament failed to grant supply.38 SP16/79/73.

Nottingham attended 73 of the 94 sittings of the 1628 session of Parliament, 77 per cent of the total. He was excused on 12 June, having been reported as missing on the previous two days, but returned on the 16th. He made one recorded speech, on 17 Apr., when he testified that, although ‘he was far off’, he had heard his kinsman Theophilus Howard^*, 2nd earl of Suffolk, say five days earlier that if it were true that John Selden^‡ had erased a legal record, he deserved to be executed.39 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 259-60, 629. Nottingham received no committee appointments. In the 1629 session he attended only six of the 25 sittings; he was last present on 5 Feb. and, four days later, was excused on grounds of sickness. He left no other trace on the records of the session.40 LJ, iv. 25b.

During the preparations for the trial of Mervyn Tuchet^*, 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I] (12th Lord Audley in the English peerage) in April 1631, Nottingham was recorded as being ‘here in town’, but was not summoned to sit in judgement on his fellow peer.41 SP16/189/19i. In January 1638 he was erroneously reported to have died of consumption.42 C115/109/8815. It is likely that he was very ill though, for on being summoned to attend the king at York the following year to fight the Covenanters, he claimed that he had ‘not as yet recovered my strength’ since his ‘last great sickness’. He also claimed that his income was only £400 a year and that his estate was ‘so poor and mean’ that he could barely support his family. He consequently wished to be excused service.43 SP16/412/48.

In February 1641 Nottingham petitioned the Long Parliament about the 1619 decree and sought damages from Mordaunt, now 1st earl of Peterborough, and from Mordaunt’s wife and the earl of Middlesex, but was unsuccessful.44 HMC 4th Rep. 50-1; LJ, iv. 264a, 330b. Reappointed lord lieutenant of Surrey by Parliament in 1642, he started to execute the Militia Ordinance and ‘settle the country in a posture of arms’ over the summer, for which offence the king purged him from the bench.45 HMC 7th Rep. 677. His subsequent participation in the Civil War was cut short by his death at his house in Leatherhead on 3 October.46 C142/701/2. He was buried at Reigate five days later, when a funeral sermon was preached by his chaplain, William Hampton.47 Leveson-Gower, 415; R.W. Blencowe, ‘Paxhill and its Neighbourhood’, Suss. Arch. Colls. xi. 16-17. His will, dated 24 Aug. 1642, was proved on 11 Nov. by his executrix, his second wife.48 PROB 11/190, f. 263r-v. Since Nottingham died childless, his earldom was inherited by his half-brother, also called Charles^†, who died in 1681, whereupon that peerage became extinct and the Effingham barony passed to Francis Howard^†, the great-grandson of the 1st earl of Nottingham’s younger brother Sir William Howard^‡.49 CP, ix. 789-90.