Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

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Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk by Hans Holbein the Younger, Royal Collection.
Lord High Treasurer
In office
4 December 1522 – 12 December 1546
MonarchHenry VIII
Preceded byThomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk
Succeeded byEdward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Personal details
Born1473
Died25 August 1554 (aged 80–81)
Roman Catholicism
Plantagenet, arms of Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk
); 3: Chequy or and azure (de Warenne, Earl of Surrey); 4: Gules, a lion rampant argent (Mowbray)

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk,

King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London
, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.

He was released on the accession of the Roman Catholic Queen

Protestant royal line that would be continued by Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth I
.

Early life

Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and Elizabeth Tilney, Thomas' parents

Thomas was the son of

Battle of Bosworth, where the 1st Duke lost his life and the Earl of Surrey was badly wounded. As the battle resulted in the accession of Henry VII Tudor, the Howards' loyalty to the losing side resulted in the forfeiture of their titles and most of their properties.[2]
Nevertheless, they soon began to be rehabilitated, and in 1489 Thomas' father was restored as Earl of Surrey.

In April 1497 his mother died, and in August of that year, by papal dispensation, his father married for the second time Agnes Tilney, Thomas' mother's cousin.

Howard was an able soldier, and was often employed in military operations.

Lord Admiral, a position previously held by his brother, Edward Howard, who had died on 25 April, to combat the French navy. Surrey and his sons Thomas and Edmund had hoped to lead the English expedition against France, but were left behind when the King departed for Calais at the end of June.[7] Shortly thereafter King James IV of Scotland launched an invasion into England (despite being married to Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII) in fulfilment of his alliance with France, and Thomas along with his brother Edmund, joined their father and the barons Dacre and Monteagle in leading the army, which despite their numerical inferiority, managed to decisively crush the Scottish forces at the Battle of Flodden, near Branxton, Northumberland
, on 9 September. The Scots lost thousands of men, and James IV lost his life in the battle.

Howard augmentation of honour, awarded to Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk after the Battle of Flodden (1513): Or, a Scottish demi-lion rampant pierced through the mouth by an arrow within a double tressure flory-counterflory-gules, to be borne on the bend in the Howard arms
Howard's Coat of arms with "Flodden augmentation"

Leading the victorious forces at Flodden gave the Howards enormous prestige both socially and at court, and the Howard coat of arms was changed in honour of the victory, incorporating the Scottish lion pierced through the mouth with an arrow

Louis XII of France. In 1517, he quelled a May Day riot in London with the use of soldiers.[6][2]

Rise to power

On 10 March 1520

Earl of Ormonde, and are full of demands for more money and troops.[9]

At the end of 1521 Surrey was recalled from Ireland to take command of the English fleet in naval operations against France. His ships were ill-provisioned, and his attack consisted of a series of raids near the French coast for the purpose of inflicting as much damage as possible on the French navy. Howard's ships besieged the strategic port of

Boulogne, until the winter caused the fleet to withdraw to England. The sea patrol was abandoned with little achieved.[6][10]

On 4 December 1522, Howard was made Lord Treasurer upon his father's resignation of the office, and on 21 May 1524, he succeeded his father as Duke of Norfolk.[2] His liking for war brought him into conflict with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who preferred diplomacy in the conduct of foreign affairs. In 1523, Wolsey had secured to the Duke of Suffolk the reversion of the office of Earl Marshal by Howard's father, and in 1525, he was replaced as Lord Admiral by Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, the King's illegitimate but acknowledged son, who a few years later became Norfolk's son-in-law. Finding himself pushed aside, Howard spent considerable time away from court between 1525 and 1527–28.[2]

In the mid-1520s, Howard's niece, Anne Boleyn, had caught the eye of King Henry VIII,[11] thereby reviving his political fortunes with his involvement in the King's attempt to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. By 1529, matters of state were being increasingly handled by Norfolk, his brother-in-law Thomas Boleyn, and the Duke of Suffolk, who pressed King Henry VIII to remove Cardinal Wolsey. In October, the King sent Howard and the Duke of Suffolk to obtain the great seal from the Cardinal.

In early 1530, Anne Boleyn was promoting a marriage between her first cousin and eldest son of Norfolk,

Elizabeth Trussell.[12]

In November 1530, Wolsey was arrested but while on his way from York to London the Cardinal became seriously ill and died in Leicester.[13] Howard benefited from Wolsey's fall, becoming the King's leading councillor and applying himself energetically in the King's efforts to find a way out of his marriage to Queen Catherine.

Later career

Sketch of the grave of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, as it probably looked at Thetford Priory. After the Priory Church was closed in 1540, the 3rd Duke had his father's remains moved to Framlingham Church

Assisting the King in the annulment of his first marriage, added to his extensive loyalty and services to the Crown, brought Howard extensive rewards in the form of monastic lands in Norfolk and Suffolk, employment on diplomatic missions, and being named a knight of the French

Duke of Richmond, a union that was politically advantageous to Norfolk. Because as Henry VIII did not yet have a legitimate male heir and Princess Mary had been removed from the line of succession, Richmond was seen by many as a potential heir to the throne. The marriage was never consummated by order of the King due to the youth of the couple, and it was then cut short by FitzRoy's death in 1536.[14] [15]

Thomas Howard's marriage to his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, which had apparently been mutually affectionate at first, deteriorated in 1527 when he took a mistress, Elizabeth Holland (died 1547/8), whom he installed in the Howard household. Lady Elizabeth formally separated from her husband in the 1530s. She claimed that in March 1534, the Duke of Norfolk 'locked me up in a chamber, [and] took away my jewels and apparel'. Howard then moved her to Redbourn, Hertfordshire, where she lived as an actual prisoner with a meagre annual allowance of only £200. She also claimed to have been physically maltreated by Howard and his household servants.[16]

On 10 March 1536, the Earl of Surrey’s eldest son Thomas was born. On 2 May of the same year, Anne Boleyn and her brother Viscount Rochford were arrested by order of the King. They were tried in the great hall of the Tower of London. Norfolk presided over the trial as Lord High Steward. The Boleyn siblings were sentenced to death; Rochford was executed on 17 May, and Anne two days later.[2] Following his niece's fall from grace, Howard's power and influence at court waned for a time.

In July, the Duke of Richmond, Norfolk's only son-in-law, died at the age of 17 and was buried at Thetford Priory, one of the Howard properties.[17]

When the

government-sponsored suppression of monasteries and abbeys across England, Norfolk and his eldest son, the Earl of Surrey shared command of the King's forces with the Earl of Shrewsbury. The Howards and Shrewsbury opened negotiations with the main leader of the insurgents, Robert Aske at Scawsby Leys, near Doncaster, where Aske had assembled between 30,000 and 40,000 people.[18] The 24 Articles to the King, also called "The Commons' Petition", was given to Norfolk to present to the King. The Duke promised to do so, and also promised a general pardon for the rebels, that Parliament would meet in York in a year, and another pardon, this time directed at the abbeys until the Parliament had met. Jesse Childs (a biographer of the Earl of Surrey, Norfolk's son) specifically notes that Henry VIII did not authorise Norfolk to grant remedies for the grievances. The Duke's enemies had told the King that the Howards could put down a rebellion of peasants if they wanted to, suggesting that Norfolk, being Catholic, sympathised with the Pilgrimage. Howard and Shrewsbury were outnumbered: they had between 5,000 and 7,000 men but there were more than 40,000 rebels. Upon seeing their numbers, Norfolk negotiated and made promises to avoid being massacred by insurgent forces.[18] However, the promises of both the King and Parliament were never fulfilled and in January 1537 Bigod's rebellion broke out. In response to this, forces led by Norfolk headed to the north of England, where they carried out a policy of brutal repression on behalf of the King, despite the fact that the Duke himself was a Catholic.[2]

In 1539, Norfolk, who was a conservative, was seriously challenging the reformist religious policies of the King's chief minister,

Six Articles and the penalties for failure to conform to them were enacted into law, and on 28 June, received royal assent.[2]

In February 1540,

Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.[21][22] After the dissolution of the monastic church, the lands were given to the Duke.[23]

On 29 June 1539, Howard, the Duke of Suffolk and Cromwell dined with the King as guests of the

high treason, and the Duke of Norfolk snatched the St George's collar (insignia of the Order of the Garter) from Cromwell's shoulders, saying: "A traitor must not wear it".[25][26] On 9 July, King Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled.[2]
By then
Nicholas Sander, the religiously conservative Howards may have seen Catherine as a figurehead for a fight to restore Catholicism in England.[29]

Despite the fact that the King was much in love with Catherine,

Duchess of Norfolk, and the latter's son William Howard, who was Thomas's half-brother.[32][33] Norfolk tried to detach himself from the situation by retiring to his residence at Kenninghall, from where he wrote a letter of apology to the King blaming both his niece and his stepmother for the scandal.[34] However, the French ambassador Marillac wrote on 17 January 1542, that the Duke had not only escaped punishment, but had apparently been restored to his "full former credit and authority".[2]

Howard was appointed Lieutenant-General north of the

Boulogne, before returning home. Complaining of lack of provisions and munitions, Howard eventually raised the siege of Montreuil, and realising that Boulogne could not realistically be held by the English for long, he left it garrisoned and withdrew to Calais, for which he was severely rebuked by the King.[2]

Imprisonment and release

During the last years of the reign of Henry VIII, the Seymour family, and the King's last wife, Catherine Parr, supporters of the Reformation, were gaining greater power and influence at court while conservative Norfolk was left politically isolated. Howard attempted to form an alliance with the Seymours by marrying his widowed daughter, Mary to Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley,[2] but all his efforts were in vain due to the provocative behaviour of his eldest son and heir, the Earl of Surrey, who was accused of assuming the royal arms of Edward the Confessor as part of his personal heraldry.[35] On 12 December 1546 both Norfolk and his son were arrested and sent to the Tower.

In the early morning of 14 December, Howard's residence in Kenninghall was raided by Richard Southwell, John Gates and Wymond Carew, looking for evidence of Surrey’s treason. Arriving at the house, the men found the Duke's daughter, Mary, his daughter-in-law Frances, who was pregnant with their fifth child, and Norfolk's mistress, Bess Holland, alone in the home. Southwell and his companions arrived, placed men at all the doors and sent for the Duchess of Richmond and Bess Holland, 'who were only just risen', Southwell reported.[2]

The fate of Norfolk's personal property is well documented, for the inventories drawn up at the time of his arrest were annotated as goods were sold or given away.[2]

On 24 December, the elder Howard acknowledged that he had "concealed high treason, in keeping secret the false acts of my son, Henry Earl of Surrey, in using the arms of St. Edward the Confessor, which pertain only to kings", and offered his lands to the King.[36] Although the arms of their ancestor, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk (1397 creation), show that Surrey was entitled to bear Edward the Confessor's arms, doing so was an act of pride, and provocative in the eyes of the Crown.[37]

There were also religious motives behind Surrey's fall from grace and Norfolk's imprisonment. The Duke was the premier Catholic nobleman of England and his son was also a Catholic, although he had reformist leanings. Henry VIII, possibly influenced by the Seymours, supporters of Protestantism, believed that Norfolk and Surrey were going to usurp the Crown from his son, the future

Edward VI, for which he was later partly compensated by lands worth £1,626 a year from Queen Mary I.[2]

Duke of Norfolk's Restitution Act 1553
Act of Parliament
38 Hen. 8
. c. 1

Howard remained in the Tower throughout the reign of Edward VI, being released and pardoned along with the Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner, after the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary I in July 1553. He was appointed to the Privy Council, and presided as Lord High Steward at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland on 18 August.[2] He was also restored to the office of Earl Marshal and officiated in that capacity at Mary's coronation on 1 October 1553.[39] In Mary's first parliament (October–December of that year), Howard's attainder was declared void, thereby restoring him to the dukedom and its subsidiary titles.[40] Because Norfolk's son Henry Howard was dead, the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey, which had been left vacant since the execution of Henry six years earlier, devolved upon Henry Howard's eldest son Thomas, who was now the Duke's heir-apparent.

Shortly after his release, Howard took over the care of his five grandchildren, the Earl of Surrey's children, who up to that time had been under the tutelage of

Henry, this time to the Catholic priest John White who was soon elected to be Bishop of Lincoln.[2]

In late 1553, Howard arranged for a marriage between Thomas and

Wyatt's Rebellion, a group of disaffected Protestant gentlemen who opposed the Queen's projected marriage to Philip II of Spain.[41][42]

Death and burial

Tomb of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Anne of York in the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham

The Duke died at his Kenninghall residence on 25 August 1554 after several weeks in which his health gradually declined.

St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham, Suffolk, where his spectacular tomb, richly decorated with religious iconography and with heraldic lions that hold the coats of arms of both the Howard family and the House of York
, because Anne of York, the Duke's first wife, was buried in the same tomb.

The religious representations on Howard's tomb are of the twelve Apostles and some of the oldest Christian saints. On the south side are

St John the Evangelist, Simeon of Jerusalem and St Thomas.[43]

Parts of the tomb are believed to be parts of the 2nd Duke's tomb, which was located at Thetford and was destroyed when the Priory was closed. The remains of two other men in the tomb are likely the first and second Dukes.[44]

The effigy of Howard is to the left of that of his first wife, rather than the usual right, due to the latter's royal lineage.[45] He was succeeded as Duke and as Earl Marshal by his grandson, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Marriage and progeny

Thomas Howard married twice:

Henry, Mary and Thomas, children of Norfolk and Elizabeth Stafford
  • First he married
    Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville, and the sister-in-law of King Henry VII. The princess had previously been betrothed to the Austrian Prince Philip, son of the Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, but the marriage negotiations were cancelled in 1483, after the death of Edward IV.[46][22] Thomas and Anne were distantly related, as both were descendants of King Edward I. Howard was descended from Thomas of Brotherton, the fourth son of Edward I, while Anne was descended from King Edward II, Brotherton's half-brother. Arrangements for the marriage between the Princess and Thomas began in March 1484, shortly after she and her six sisters were reinstated at the court of their uncle, Richard III, by an agreement between the King and his sister-in-law, and mother of the girls, the Dowager Queen Elizabeth. The monarch, at that time, promised that his nieces would not be imprisoned in the Tower or any other prison and that they would be placed "in respectable places of good name and reputation", and later be married to "men of noble birth" and given dowry lands with an annual income of 200 marks each.[47][48] Shortly after finalising the agreement, the king began to look for suitable husbands for his nieces: for Anne, he chose Thomas Howard. By choosing the son and heir of the Earl of Surrey and second-in-line to the Dukedom of Norfolk, he showed his favour to the Howard family.[49] This was a politically advantageous match on both sides. Richard III and the Earl of Surrey, father of Thomas, agreed to the marriage contract that same year,[50][49] when Anne and Howard were still children, but marriage negotiations were suspended in 1485 after the monarch's death at the Battle of Bosworth. A few years later, Elizabeth of York, eldest sister of the Princess and now wife of King Henry VII, resumed negotiations for Anne to marry Thomas. The princess and her future husband had known each other since childhood as both Howard's father and grandfather served at the court of Edward IV.[51] The queen took into account the opinion of her sister and considered that the Howard family were noble enough to qualify for a high marriage, and therefore on 4 February 1495 (according to other sources in 1494[21][22]) the wedding of Anne and Thomas Howard was celebrated.[21][22][49][52] The wedding took place in Westminster Abbey,[49] and the marriage celebrations took place at the Palace of Placentia.[21][22] The royal family attended the wedding, and the king also attended a festive mass, but the dowry of 10,000 marks, assigned to Anne by her father was not received by the newlyweds.[52] By order of the queen, the couple were assigned annuity payments in the amount of £120 per year,[49] which were to be made throughout Anne's life or until the death of her mother-in-law:[53] this amount included provision for the maintenance of Anne herself, as well as her servants[54] and seven horses.[53] This pension was granted because the queen did not want to leave Anne dependent on her husband, who due to his circumstances, could not provide the princess with a comfortable existence suitable to her royal rank.[54] Since the groom's father had received only part of the family estate following the Battle of Bosworth, and this had no residence suitable for a woman of royal blood, the newlyweds received the right to use the estates located in the possessions of the Duke of York and the Marquess of Dorset, Anne's nephew and half-brother respectively.[55] In return, the queen required that in the event of the death of Howard's father the Earl of Surrey or his wife (a wealthy heiress), Anne's interests should be taken into account on an equal basis with the interests of her husband. The king allocated his new sister-in-law another £26 per year from Crown lands.[53] By Anne, he had four children, none of whom survived to adulthood.[56][57] Anne died in November 1511, being buried in the first instance in Thetford Priory, then the burial place and mausoleum of members of the Howard family. When the Priory was closed during the Reformation, her remains were moved to St Michael the Archangel's Church, Framlingham, Suffolk
    .

As dowager duchess, Elizabeth survived a few years after her husband's death, dying in November 1558. She was buried in the Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, Surrey.

Fictional portrayals

Books

Norfolk is an important character in:

Films

Family tree

Footnotes

  1. ^ Knafla 2008.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Graves 2008.
  3. ^ Waugh 2004.
  4. ^ Richardson 2011, pp. 566–76.
  5. ^ Horrox 2006.
  6. ^ a b c d Creighton 1891, p. 65.
  7. ^ a b Brigden 2008
  8. ^ Ellis, Steven (1985). Tudor Ireland. Longman. pp. 19–109.
  9. ^ Great Britain. Record Commission 1834.
  10. ^ Dollinger, German Hansa, pp.303–4; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, pp.180–2; Rodger, Safeguard, p.174
  11. ^ Ives 2004.
  12. ^ Weir 2001a, p. 320.
  13. ^ Chaney 1998, p. 41.
  14. ^ Weir 2001a, p. 349.
  15. ^ Nicola Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485–1558, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 145.
  16. ^ Graves 2004; Graves 2008
  17. ^ "Church". Framlingham. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  18. ^ a b  Burton, Edwin (1911). "Pilgrimage of Grace". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  19. ^ "Thetford Priory – Mysterious Britain & Ireland". 17 January 2013.
  20. ^ Everett Green 1852, pp. 11–12.
  21. ^ a b c d Weir 2011, p. 139.
  22. ^ a b c d e Panton 2011, p. 51.
  23. ^ "Houses of Cluniac monks: The priory of St Mary, Thetford.", A History of the County of Norfolk Volume 2. (William Page, ed.) London: Victoria County History, 1906. 363–369. British History Online. 2 September 2022
  24. ^ Leithead 2009.
  25. ^ Angus 2022, p. 220.
  26. ^ MacCulloch 2018, p. 525.
  27. ^ Weir 1992, pp. 413–414
  28. ^ Weir 1992, pp. 419, 428
  29. ^ Weir 2001a, pp. 432–433.
  30. ^ Weir 1992, pp. 435–436
  31. ^ Weir 1992, p. 468
  32. ^ Warnicke 2008.
  33. ^ Weir 1992, pp. 474–475; Richardson 2004, p. 237; McDermott 2008
  34. ^ Weir 1992, p. 474.
  35. ^ a b Brigden 2008.
  36. ^ Herbert of Cherbury, Edward (1649). The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eight. pp. 562–64.
  37. ^ The Heraldic Charge Against the Earl of Surrey, Peter R. Moore, English Historical Review, Volume CXVI, pages 557 to 583, (2001).
  38. ^ Weir 2001a, pp. 434–435.
  39. ^ James Robinson Planché, Regal Records: Or, A Chronicle of the Coronations of the Queens Regnant (London, 1838), p. 6.
  40. ^ a b Graves 2008a.
  41. ^ Archer 2006.
  42. ^ Chisholm 1911, p. 743.
  43. ^ "Historical Tombs".
  44. ^ "Historical Tombs".
  45. ^ "The Howard Tombs at Framlingham: More Tales from Inside the Vaults". 18 January 2020.
  46. ^ Everett Green 1852, p. 3.
  47. ^ Ustinov 2015, pp. 214–215.
  48. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4984. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  49. ^ a b c d e Creighton 1891, p. 64.
  50. ^ Everett Green 1852, pp. 5.
  51. ^ Everett Green 1852, pp. 6–7.
  52. ^ a b Everett Green 1852, p. 7.
  53. ^ a b c Everett Green 1852, p. 9.
  54. ^ a b Everett Green 1852, p. 8.
  55. ^ Everett Green 1852, pp. 7–8.
  56. ^ Graves 2008; Horrox 2006
  57. ^ Some sources, for example Douglas Richardson, state that they had an only son, Thomas.
  58. ^ Wood 1846, p. 361; Harris 2002, p. 57; Richardson 2011, pp. 416–17.
  59. ^ Graves 2008
  60. ^ Knafla 2008.
  61. ^ Cokayne 1926, p. 584.

References

Attribution

Further reading

  • Harris, Barbara (Spring 1982). "Marriage Sixteenth-Century Style: Elizabeth Stafford and the Third Duke of Norfolk". Journal of Social History. 15 (3): 371–82.
    JSTOR 3787153
    .

External links
Political offices
Preceded by
Lord High Admiral

1513–1525 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Lord High Treasurer
1522–1546 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Earl Marshal
1533–1547 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Earl Marshal
1553–1554 		Succeeded by
Peerage of England
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