The Dukes

by Brian Masters

  The Duke made up for the deprivation of "every function belong­ing to the institution" of marriage in his own beguiling manner. Driving through the village of Greystoke in Cumberland with his steward, he saw hordes of children waving at them from both sides of the road. "Whose are all these children?" he asked. The steward answered, "Some are mine, Your Grace, and some are yours."

  In 1783, three centuries after the creation of the dukedom of Norfolk in the Howard family, Jockey determined to hold a big party at Arundel Castle for "all the blood of all the Howards", to which every descendant of the 1st Duke would be invited to celebrate. He was forced to abandon the idea when calculations showed that over 6000 people would have to be included.

  In old age, Jockey of Norfolk grew so large that he could hardly get through a door of ordinary proportions. But he was not fat in the belly - he was simply of huge girth all over, a living giant. His death in 1815 left a large gap, in bulk as much as in personality.40

  The nineteenth-century Dukes of Norfolk are a much quieter col­lection of men. With the 15th Duke (1847-1917) we approach very close to the present day, for this devout, unwordly man is the father of the Duke who died recently. As he came to the title in 1860, only two men held that title for the hi 5 years until 1975.

  The 15th Duke was the most religious of all the Howards, a deeply brooding ascetic who spent money building churches rather than buying clothes; he always dressed shabbily, was frequently mis­taken for a tramp, and was often offered money, so poor did he look. Strangers whom he helped at railway stations would offer him tips. One woman visitor to the grounds of Arundel Castle told him to get off the grass, and a Salvation Army girl, when she saw his blue Garter ribbon, thought he was one of the Army.41 The churches he built were St Philip Neri at Arundel and a church at Norwich which was one of the largest built since the Reformation. As the senior lay representative in England, he wielded much unseen power in the Church of Rome, as did his late son. It was owing to his influence that John Henry Newman was made a Cardinal.

  The Duke was a saintly man, more so in fact than the ancestor Earl of Arundel who has since been canonised; he was a profoundly good and gentle soul. But, as so often happens with those whose goodness springs from conviction, he was not always an easy man to contend with. Devotion to the Catholic Church was the principle to which all else must needs be subordinated. Hence his support for Newman, who, though not an agreeable man, was a Catholic. The Duke's first wife was Lady Flora Hastings, a Protestant. Whether the Duke made it a condition of their marriage or not, she became a Catholic, much to the displeasure of her family, who would have nothing more to do with her.41 The Duchess, too, was a saint of a kind, a wonderfully simple and good character. If any couple deserved to be happy, they did, yet it was upon them that catas­trophe of the cruellest sort descended. Their son, heir to the highest dukedom of the realm, was mentally defective.

  Philip Joseph Mary Fitzalan-Howard, Earl of Surrey and Arundel (1879-1902), who would in the normal course of events have been the next Duke of Norfolk, grew up an almost complete invalid. Practically blind, deaf and dumb, with the mind of an infant, there was never any hope that the boy would recover the use of his brain, although the Duke turned to his religion time and again for assis­tance, making the pilgrimage to Lourdes twenty-five times. The entire Catholic world prayed for him. As if this was not enough, the good Duchess died after ten years of marriage, leaving the Duke alone with his idiot son. He spent every possible hour as companion to the boy, lavishing care and attention with barely a flicker of intelligent res­ponse.

  Philip died in 1902, at the age of twenty-three. He left £558 in his will. His father said, "After all, my boy has given more glory to God than any of us. Look at the Masses, novenas and pilgrimages of which he has been the occasion."43 He endowed a piece of land in Yorkshire for the reception, maintenance, treatment and education of children suffering from physical disability or infirmity.

  The Duke's life was, then, mostly private, devotional, and tragic. His forays into public life were, however, successful. Lady Warwick records the opinion that he was the best Postmaster-General ever;44 it is to him that we owe the custom, now taken for granted, that letters which go astray may be re-addressed and re-delivered free of charge. His other contribution to public life was to restore the elabo­rate ceremonial for the coronation (in his capacity as Earl Marshal), which had fallen into neglect. He arranged the coronations of Edward VII in 1901 and George V in 1910.

  Having no direct heir, the Duke was married again in 1904 to a woman thirty years younger than himself, Baroness Herries in her own right. The products of this union were three daughters and Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, who in 1917, at the age of nine, succeeded to a bewildering list of duties and titles as 16th Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England.

  From the beginning, it was made clear to the little boy that he was very special. He was brought up by his uncle Lord Fitzalan of Derwent in the full consciousness of his unique position as Earl Marshal with precedence over almost every other subject in the king­dom, and trained by him to assume the rigorous duties of his office. It was the kind of upbringing that would have turned any other young man's head, but as he was a Howard, he knew in his blood that all this was his by right, and he was not at all perturbed by it. He was educated to think of himself almost as royalty.

  The days when the Duke of Norfolk was preceded through the streets by trumpeters and followed by a retinue of a hundred men, when he was met five miles outside London by heralds who escorted him into the capital, and when crowds lined the street to see him pass, all that may be over;45 but enough of the aura of the dukedom remains for him to be revered even in the twentieth century as folk-king of Sussex. Some of that mystical, quasi-divine quality clings yet to the Duke of Norfolk. On the late Duke's coming of age in 1929, there were celebrations lasting three days in the town of Arundel. The Duke made what amounted to a royal progress through the streets, crowded with the townspeople, his "subjects", who turned out symbolically to aver their allegiance. His Grace was received by the Mayor, who made an appropriate speech. Then he drove in an open carriage to Littlehampton (the greater part of the town belonged to him), while people lined the route to see him, the streets were decorated, and the town band gave him a rousing welcome. Shops in Arundel closed after midday, and a public holiday was declared. Schools were entertained at a fete in the grounds of the castle. A month later, 20,000 people joined in similar celebrations at Norfolk Park, Sheffield.46 There was yet more public rejoicing at the Duke's marriage in 1937. The spirit of such occasions is medieval, even pagan in its unconscious ritual. Deep veneration was felt for the antiquity of the Duke's title and dignity, especially in Arundel where, as the Earl of Arundel, he possessed the charisma of a divine king which can only be explained by the people's innate, unconscious need for local mythology to be passed from generation to generation.

  Since William rose and Harold fell

  There have been Earls of Arundel.

  It is the oldest earldom in the peerage of England, and until 1627 it was held as of right by anyone who owned Arundel Castle; in other words, it was a title independent of patents of creation. This is why, in 1572, the son of the attainted Duke of Norfolk was still known as Earl of Arundel, although all other titles had been forfeited. It was not within the power or jurisdiction of Parliament to withdraw the earldom, which was Philip Howard's right as long as he held Arundel Castle. Little wonder, then, that since the ancient earldom was allied to the ancient dukedom, successive incumbents have exerted unseen power upon the collective imagination of the local people.

  The other singularity which sets Norfolk apart from all other dukes is his hereditary post as Earl Marshal of England. Unlike some other such positions (as, for example, the Duke of St Albans, who is Hereditary Grand Falconer, but never goes near a falcon), the Earl Marshal has a job to do, and a job of such complexity that there are only a handful of people who would have the knowledge to deputise for hi
m. This is the work for which Bernard Norfolk was trained by his uncle, and which he performed to the sound of universal praise. The Earl Marshal is ultimate and alone in his responsibility to the Sovereign for all ceremonial occasions, for which onerous charge he is paid a fee of £20 per annum. The fee was fixed by Richard III in 1483 when he appointed the 1st Duke of Norfolk Earl Marshal, and fixed in perpetuity. The King also directed that the Earl Marshal should carry a staff with the royal arms in gold at one end, and at the other, the arms of the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke still carries this staff. The first Earl Marshal had been even earlier, in 1385, when the post was held by a Mowbray Duke of Norfolk; before that, they had been simply Marshals.

  The late Duke's first duty was to arrange the funeral of George V, after which he was responsible for the proclamations of Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II, the funerals of George VI, Queen Mary, and Sir Winston Churchill, and finally the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales. At the first of these, he was only twenty- seven years old. At all of them, he showed the same astonishing grasp of detail as his father had, and the same relentless pursuit of perfection. There was a time when the elaborate ceremonial of the coronation was understood by no one. When Queen Victoria was crowned, she was not told where to sit, what to say, when to get up, or what happened next. Her coronation was not far short of a shambles. Nowadays, thanks to the Duke, it is the most precise and splendid pageant in the world.

  The Earl Marshal is not merely a stage-manager of state occasions. He is head of the College of Heralds, and as such exercises an authority independent of his titles. It is he who may ultimately decide what arms a newly created peer may bear, and by what title he may be known. He decides on matters of precedence. The staff at the College of Heralds is responsible to him.

  The Duke was careful to avoid one embarrassing case of heraldry on which he might have been called to make a decision, since it affected his own coat of arms. The Norfolk coat bears an augment­ation known as the Flodden augmentation, granted to the victor of that battle, along with restoration of the dukedom of Norfolk and regrant of some lands. The difficulty is that the Flodden augmentation was granted with remainder to heirs general of the grantee, while the dukedom was granted to heirs male. The result of this should be that only Lords Mowbray and Petre have the right to bear the augment­ation, and not the Duke of Norfolk. (Other Howard descendants, the Earls of Carlisle and Suffolk for example, bear the augmentation on their arms.) We were denied, however, the cheerful spectacle of the Duke dragging himself before his own Court. It remains to be seen if the new Duke will allow the matter to be examined. (The Complete Peerage, Vol. X, Appendix N, says that this was all a mistake on the part of the King, and that the Flodden augmentation was intended to descend with the dukedom.)

  The Earl Marshal was originally subordinate to the Constable (a military office), and the historical precedence of the Lord High Constable is marked to this day by his ranking on the right of the monarch at coronations, while the Earl Marshal is on the left.

  The popular press has on occasion exaggerated the duties of the Earl Marshal in its desire to make of him a 'superstar' in accordance with the demands of modern public life. The late Duke was not infallible or omnipotent. When the funeral of the Duke of Windsor took place in London, for instance, many of the arrangements were undertaken by the Lord Chamberlain's office, while Fleet Street continued to assume that Norfolk was responsible for it all.

  It is a curious tolerance, one likes to think peculiarly English, which allows the most solemn ritual in the Church of England, when the Head of the Church is crowned, to be within the total control of the senior Roman Catholic in the country. The evening before the coronation the keys of Westminster Abbey are handed to the Duke of Norfolk. When Bernard Marmaduke became 16th Duke of Norfolk he inherited nearly 50,000 acres. The restrictions of twentieth-century life gradually encroached upon these holdings until he was left with 24,000 acres. In St James's Square stood Norfolk House, which had been the London residence of the family since 1684. This was sold in 1937, and pulled down; the furniture was auctioned. In 1931 the town of Littlehampton (or the half of it which belonged to the Duke) was sold, and part of the Arundel estate went in 1950. In 1959 the Duke moved out of Arundel Castle, which he had once said was to him "practically everything there is",47 to a five-bedroomed house which he built in the park. The castle itself, with its 150 rooms, and forbidding aspect, had ceased to be an attractive or economical place to live, although, undaunted, the 17th Duke has announced his intention of living there. When Creevey saw it in the last century he wrote: "The devil himself could make nothing of the interior. Any­thing so horrid and dark and frightful in all things I never beheld."48 It is open to the public.

  The most lucrative portion of the estate is three and a quarter acres just south of the Strand, which have been in the family since 1549. Arundel Street, Norfolk Street, Maltravers Street, and Howard Street all form part of this site. Now, of course, the new Duke of Norfolk has added to the family holdings the extensive lands he owned before he came to the dukedom.

  Bernard Norfolk was a taciturn, withdrawn man, shy but sure of himself. He had few opinions, but they were all unshakeable, and mostly half a century behind those of his contemporaries. His right to be right was unassailable. When he received criticism he was not resentful but amazed; he could not comprehend that another view might be possible. In this he was like the 4th Duke of Norfolk, who antagonised Elizabeth I so much and eventually lost his head. He failed to enter Oxford, but since it was Oxford's loss, he did not mind. At the entrance examination he found himself sitting next to an Asian student. "If they preferred his presence to mine at the university, they were welcome to him," he said. The newspapers, obsessed with trivia and saturated with wrong opinions, annoyed him. "If I had my way," he said, "I'd shut down half the newspapers in the country, and keep a tight censorship on the others, except The Times."

  With his gruff manner, heavy-lidded eyes, and bluntness which was just short of dismissive, he was one of the rare surviving noblemen who managed to caricature themselves. At the investititure of the Prince of Wales in 1970 the Duke had to deal with the Secretary of State for Wales, George Thomas, son of a Rhondda miner. Thomas offered him a cup of tea. "Never touch the stuff," replied Norfolk. The Welshman then went to the cupboard to get some alcoholic drinks. "Wrong time of day," said the Duke, and that was the end of that. The two men later became friendly enough. The Duke said, "I am going to call you George, and you will call me Bernard," and Thomas says he felt it was an order.

  He treated everyone with the same brisk laconic precision. Stories of his behaviour at the coronation are legion. "If the bishops don't learn to walk in step we shall be here all night" he is reported to have said; and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, "No, no, Archbishop, that won't do at all. Go back there and we'll do it all again. "He was not at all aware that his no-nonsense approach, shorn of all unnecessary adornment, could be extremely funny. At dinner he was heard to turn to a lady guest on his right and say, "Now; I have only two topics of conversation - cricket and drains. Choose." He claimed that he did not know when he was being amusing, and what's more, he did not care.

  The Howards have always been men of few words. On one occasion Lord Carlisle and his brother travelled abroad together, and slept in the same room at an inn in Germany. There was a third bed in the room with the curtains drawn round it. Two days later, one brother turned to the other and said, "Did you see what was in that bed in our room the other night?" and the other answered, "Yes." That was all the conversation they had on the matter, yet they had both seen a dead body in the bed.50

  Norfolk was also impatient of politicians with their meandering style and clever evasions, being himself devastatingly direct and monosyllabic. When in 1970 his trainer was fined £500 by the Jockey Club for irregular practices, the Duke determined to have nothing more to do with them. He would not enter into an argument, and never forgave them. One of the reasons he go
t on so well with Richard Dimbleby, for whom he wrote an obituary in The Times, was because Dimbleby had a businesslike attitude similar to his own. He could not bear fuss or delay.

  Norfolk married Miss Lavinia Strutt, a Protestant, in 1937. They had four daughters, and no son. The dukedom passed in 1975 to Lord Beaumont, Baron Howard of Glossop, who is descended from the 13th Duke of Norfolk. In 1966 Bernard Marmaduke had settled a million pounds on Lord Beaumont's son, Edward, born in 1956.

  However austere, aloof and correct he may have appeared, Norfolk enjoyed respect for his profound sense of duty and public service, and affection for his obvious belief that the aristocracy must set an example by getting down to the job in hand and doing it well. This affection is something for which his training did not prepare him, and it was the only aspect of his public life which troubled his calm. Just before the coronation in 1953 he gave a press conference after which the assembled journalists, many of radical persuasion, rose to their feet in unison and gave him a spontaneous applause which visibly surprised him. And at the coronation of George VI he found himself mobbed by a Cockney crowd slapping him on the back and shouting "Well done, Bernard!" He must have wondered what he had done wrong.51

  The man who succeeded as 17th Duke of Norfolk in 1975 is in a different style altogether. Being a remote cousin, he has come to the title by a "wavy line" which would not have veered in his direction at all if one of the late Duke's children had been a boy. He is not over- impressed by his luck. "Succeeding by death is a poor way of getting on," he says. "I am much prouder of having been a general."52

  As Miles Fitzalan-Howard he graduated Bachelor of Arts at Christ Church, Oxford, then proceeded into the Grenadier Guards, with a thirty-year military career in front of him, rising to the rank of major- general, and collecting various distinctions along the way (Maltese Cross, C.B.E., C.B.). He was Director of Service Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence for a period, and Head of the British Military Mission to Russian Forces in Germany. He retired in 1967, and settled to a more peaceful life with his wife Anne Maxwell, two sons, and three daughters. Fitzalan-Howard then went into the City, as director of a merchant bank.