House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty

by Hutchinson, Robert

  So I said the Mass to his Lordship and he did help me say the same. At which Mass, Sir Thomas Gerard and Hammond, servant38 unto the Earl were present.39

  Gerard later told Bennet of Snowden’s disclosure of their Masses, and ‘charged me very earnestly and threatened me extremely in the earl’s name, to confess nothing in such sort as the terrifying of me had like to have cost my life’.40

  But Gerard made his own confession, reporting that the earl ‘told us that the Spanish fleet was seen in the narrow seas, like unto a huge forest [of masts] and our fleet was not able to deal with them’.

  The queen and the council were greatly afraid of their approach and then [he] sorrowfully said: ‘God save my brother Thomas’ [who had volunteered for service in the English fleet] . . .

  ‘And I hope,’ said the earl, ‘ere long . . . to say Mass openly and to see the Catholic faith flourish again.’

  Arundel also asked the priests held in the Tower to pray ‘for the advance of the Catholic enterprise all the twenty-four hours of the day’.41

  Burghley, Hatton and Henry, first Lord Hunsdon,42 the Chamberlain, all questioned Arundel about these allegations. Hunsdon, enraged by his composure under interrogation, called him a ‘beast and traitor, and said rather than he should not be hanged within four days, that he himself would hang him’. Burghley, rather more measured, said ‘it was no marvel he was so settled in religion, because he read nothing to the contrary’.43

  A new trial was now inevitable.

  Like his forebears, Arundel now faced charges of high treason. Like his grandfather and father, the accused was grimly preceded by the execution axe, its blade pointing away from him, as he entered Westminster Hall on 14 April 1589. Arundel now had to undergo the same ordeal of a trial by his peers, this time presided over by Lord Derby, who sat under a cloth of estate, his three-foot long (0.91 m.) white wand of office as Lord High Steward lying before him.

  Arundel was smartly dressed in a velvet gown, trimmed with fur and gold lace and fastened by gold buttons, worn over a black satin doublet with a tall black hat on his head. He was described ‘as a very tall man, somewhat swarthy-coloured’,44 but his pallor was grey from the four and a half years of confinement in the Tower.

  As he arrived at the bar, he bowed twice to his twenty judges - one of them Burghley - ‘but the lords never [re]moved their hats nor made any countenance’. The clerk then formally addressed him: ‘Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, late of Arundel in the county of Sussex, hold up thy hand.’ The earl held his hand ‘up very high, saying: “Here is as true a man’s heart and hand as ever came into this hall.”’45 His comment goaded his old enemy, John Popham, Attorney General, sitting near him, who sneered: ‘That shall appear anon!’

  The indictment comprised twenty-four separate counts, but focused on the old charge that alleged that he tried to flee the country without permission and a new accusation that he had prayed traitorously for the success of the Spanish Armada.

  The earl asked: ‘How [do] you prove me a traitor?’ and Popham snapped back that ‘because you have been reconciled to the Pope, there was a law made in the twenty-seventh year46 of this queen, that whosoever was reconciled to the Pope from the obedience of the queen’s majesty, was in case of treason’.47

  The Attorney General turned to the charge against Arundel for fleeing England. After the earl had gone, he said, ‘he found fault with her hard dealing in giving countenance to his adversaries and in disgracing him and that he was discontented with the injustice of the realm towards his great grandfather, his grandfather and his father’.

  It is apparent it was discontentment moved my lord, and not religion and fearing less his friends should think amiss of him, he left a copy of his letter with [the priest] Bridges, a traitor, to be dispersed to make the Catholics think well of him.

  Being discontented, he became a Catholic and being so great a man, he became a captain of the Catholics, which is as much as to be a captain over traitors.48

  Arundel remarked dryly that there were some people ‘who like the spider, can suck venom out of the sweetest flowers, and find materials for poison, where others would obtain matter only of a wholesome or harmless description’.49

  Some of those who had made allegations against him were held in a room off the adjacent Court of the Queen’s Bench, hidden by an arras, or screen. One was Sir Thomas Gerard, who was now summoned to give evidence. He was led in, his guards pushing away the onlookers, clearly amazed by the chattering crowds around him.

  Once sworn in, Gerard found it difficult to look the prisoner in the eye and stared fixedly at the Lord High Steward. Arundel ‘stood very stoutly in denial of what he witnessed [said], willing him to look him in the face and charging him as he would answer before God, in whose Presence he spoke, to tell him nothing but the truth’. Gerard, stumbling and hesitant, could only refer to the depositions which had been read in court earlier, ‘to which I have been sworn, yes, twice sworn’.50 He was quickly excused by the prosecution from further testimony.

  The priest William Bennet was then called and again stuck by his confession. Arundel then produced a small piece of paper (a ‘little ticket’) hidden inside the sleeve of his doublet (‘next to his skin’, for fear of discovery if searched). It was a copy of a retraction written by Bennet.

  This he threw into the court and desired that it should be read. Bennet denied the same to be his handwriting and would not affirm that it did consent [agree] in all points with what he had . . . scribbled.51

  Some of the peers sitting in judgement muttered that the priest was ‘a false man and no lawful witness’.52 Two of them, Lords Grey and Norris, urged Bennet to explain why his two confessions contradicted themselves and asked if he knew of this letter: yes or no? The priest remained steadfast in his denials that he wrote the retraction.

  The judges withdrew into the Court of the Queen’s Bench to decide on their verdict and were back within an hour. Henry, Lord Norris, was the youngest of the peers, and he was asked first: ‘Is Philip late Earl of Arundel of the several treasons whereof he is indicted, guilty or not guilty?’

  Norris put his hand on his heart and replied: ‘Guilty.’All the others said the same. 53

  Arundel was recalled to the bar and arrived ‘cheerfully’. He was told of the guilty verdict and merely said in response: ‘Sic voluntas Dei’ - ‘God’s will be done.’

  The axe blade was turned towards him and he was sentenced to death by an anxious Lord Derby.54

  The next day Howard wrote a letter to Burghley, pathetically full of gratitude for his ‘honourable goodness always extended to me’. Like his father before him, he wanted the minister to look after his wife and children.

  And as a dead man to this world, and in all good will whilst I live . . . , I humbly take my leave, beseeching God to send you all honour and happiness in this world to his glory and my poor soul a joyful meeting with yours in Heaven.55

  He had already made his will, dated 12 June 1588: ‘I Philip Earl of Arundel, being a member of the true ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . [do] bequeath my soul into the hands of the most glorious and inseparable Trinity, one true Almighty and Everlasting God.’ He asked that payment be immediately made of ‘such money as my late lord and dear father gave to certain poor towns by his last will and which I have not, by my negligence, already performed, for which I am heartily sorry’. He also asked that [Margaret] ‘my sister’s marriage money being the sum of £3,000, be paid to her out of the money that shall come out of the sale of the manor of [Castle] Rising [Norfolk] with all expedition after my death . . . For that I have done her so much injury in withholding it from her so long.’ Arundel left £2,000 to his daughter Elizabeth on her marriage,56 provided this was approved by her mother, his half-sister Margaret and his executors, his half-brother William and Lord Robert Sackville. Kenninghall was bequeathed to his son. His wife and Margaret were both left gold crosiers studded with diamonds.57 In the event, none of his instructions were car
ried out and most of Arundel’s property, including his wife’s estates, went to the crown.

  Sentence of death was also not carried out on the earl.

  He lingered on for six more years in the Tower, unaware that his execution warrant had not been signed by Elizabeth. The sword of death was always hanging over his head. ‘Not a bell sounded but it might be his knell, not a footstep was heard, but that it might be the messenger of death. Each morning as he arose, he knew not that before night, he might be a headless corpse. Each night, as he laid his head upon the pillow, he was uncertain whether the morning might not summon him to another world.’58

  His wife was still living in three unfurnished rooms on the ground floor at Arundel House, but, if the court visited Somerset House next door, she was ordered to the country, because of the embarrassment of her presence. On one such occasion, when she was away, the queen saw an inscription about the sadness of life, scratched on the glass of one of the windows in Arundel House. Angered by its sentiments, she added a message beneath ‘expressing much passion and disdain, on purpose to grieve and afflict the poor lady’.59 Sometime after his attainder she moved into a smaller house in Spitalfields, north of the city, and later to another at Acton, in Middlesex, where she retained a Catholic priest as a chaplain.60

  Arundel was now growing weak and feeble from sickness. He spent much of his time at prayer or in translation of devotional works, such as the fifty-three pages of the Carthusian Johann Justus’s Epistle of Christ to the Christian Soul.61 A scrap of paper, addressed to him, was smuggled into the Tower, with two lines in Latin, intended to provide some religious comfort: ‘Not always between two thieves did Christ hang! Truth will rise again in the Crucifix . . .’62

  Sometime in August 1595, he had got up at his usual time of 5.00 a.m., had breakfasted and was in reasonable health. At dinner (about ten o’clock) he had eaten some roast teal (duck) and had scarcely finished his plate before he began to retch violently. Soon after, he was afflicted with dysentery.

  His doctors suspected poison and he made no recovery even after a few weeks. Arundel knew his last hour was nigh and appealed to the queen to be allowed to see his wife and two children.

  The earl’s letter was given to the Lieutenant, Sir Michael Blount, to deliver to court and at length he returned with Elizabeth’s answer, which he repeated verbally. The queen said that if Arundelwill but once go to the [established] church, his request shall not only be granted but he shall moreover be restored to his honour and estates with as much favour as I can show.

  Resolute, if not stubborn, to the end, Arundel answered: ‘On such condition, I cannot accept her majesty’s offers. If that be the cause in which I am to perish, sorry am I that I have but one life to lose.’63

  The earl was now confined to his bed. Blount visited him to seek pardon for the harsh treatment inflicted on the prisoner, and was duly forgiven. But Arundel had some sharp words of advice for him:You must think Mr Lieutenant, that when a prisoner comes to this place, he brings sorrow with him. Do not add affliction to affliction.

  It is a very inhuman part to tread on him, whom misfortune has cast down.

  The man that is void of mercy, God has cast down.

  Your commission is only to keep with safety, not to kill with severity.

  Remember, good Mr Lieutenant, that God, who, with his finger, turns the unstable wheel of this variable world, can, in the revolution of a few days, bring you to be a prisoner also and to be kept in the same place where you now keep others.64

  His words were prophetic. Blount left the chamber weeping and within seven weeks had fallen into disgrace, lost his office, and had returned to the Tower a prisoner himself.

  Sunday 19 October 1595 was the earl’s last day of imprisonment in the Tower. He spent it in prayer, saying his rosary beads and reciting psalms off by heart. His servants were standing by his bedside weeping, and he asked them what time it was. They told him ‘eight o’clock’ (in the morning) and he replied: ‘Why, then I have almost run my course and come to the end of this miserable and mortal life.’

  He begged them not to cry any more, but his breath grew shallower and at length he could only mouth the names of ‘Jesus’ and the Virgin Mary. The earl died at noon, ‘his eyes firmly fixed towards heaven and his long, lean and consumed arms out of the bed, his hand upon his breast, laid in cross one upon the other . . . Without any sign of grief or groan, only turning his head a little aside, as one falling into a pleasing sleep, he surrendered his happy soul into the hands of Almighty God.’65

  The state was to have its last vengeance.

  His burial service, on 22 October in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower, was vulgarly amended to vilify him and his religion.

  Blount was asked if the earl had relented in his obdurate espousal of Catholicism and, having been told ‘no’, the minister began the burial service.

  ‘We are not come to honour this man’s religion,’ said the parson. ‘We publicly profess and here openly protest otherways to be saved, nor to honour his offence. The law has judged him and we leave him to the Lord . . .

  ‘Man that is born of women is of short continuance and full of trouble. He shoots forth like a flower and is cut down. He vanishes also as a shadow and continues not. Thus, God has laid this man’s honour in the dust . . . We commit his body to the earth, giving God hearty thanks that he has delivered us of so great a fear.’

  He ended with this prayer:It has pleased Thee in mercy, to take this man out of the world. We leave him to Thy majesty, knowing by Thy word, that he and all other shall rise again to give account that which has been done in the flesh, be it good or evil against God or man.

  We humbly beseech Thee, as Thou has hitherto very gloriously and in great mercy preserved Thy servant, our Queen Elizabeth [and] to preserve her despite of all her enemies, who either secretly or openly go about to b[ri]ng her life to the gra[ve, her] glory to the dust.

  Confound still all Thine enemies and [hers] or convert them if they belong to Thee.66

  He was buried in the chancel, in the same grave as his father was twenty-three years before.

  The funeral costs were deliberately kept to a minimum. Ten shillings was paid for a coffin which was to be covered by just three yards of black mourning cloth, at a cost of £1 10s. The parson was paid 40s for his politically correct words and the clerk 13s 4d for digging the grave and paving over it afterwards. The Lieutenant wanted to know what should be done with the mourning cloth that had draped the coffin and was told to give it to the parson.67

  His body was not to remain in the Tower.

  In 1624 his remains were exhumed and reburied in the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel. His coffin had a plate screwed to the lid with a Latin inscription recording that he had been ‘wickedly sentenced to death . . . for profession of the Catholic faith’.

  The earl was named the ‘Venerable Philip Howard’ in 1886, beatified in 1929 and on 25 October 1970 was canonised as a saint by Pope Paul VI as a witness of Christ and an example of the Roman Catholic faith.68

  The following year, his remains were placed in a shrine in the Catholic cathedral in Arundel.

  11

  RESURGAM

  ‘No other part of history [is] so considerable as what happened to his own family, in which . . . there have been some very memorable people’

  Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey,

  looking back on his own family in the 1600s1

  For more than a century the vengeful hand of the English crown had frequently lain heavy on the Howards. Their colossal pride, egotism, ambition, or loyalty to their faith, had cost them dear. Two Dukes of Norfolk had been attainted as traitors and spent lonely years confined in the Tower of London. Another had been beheaded. An heir to the dukedom had been executed on trumped-up charges and one more had died piteously in prison. Two nieces had also been beheaded. Other members of the family had been frequently incarcerated on suspicion of infidelity to the throne. With the exception o
f Mary I, as far as the Tudor monarchy was concerned the Howards were very much a house of treason.

  Amazingly, in the face of such adversity and distrust, the family fortunes survived, even prospered.

  Charles Howard was the eldest son of William Howard, first Baron Effingham, one of the many progeny of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, Agnes Tylney. Charles was born in 1536 and spent some time in the household of his half-uncle, the third Duke of Norfolk. His father was appointed Lord Admiral by Mary I in August 1555 and Charles was to follow him in this post and make a considerable reputation in naval affairs.

  In 1563, he married Katherine Carey, eldest daughter of the queen’s second cousin, Henry, Lord Hunsdon, who later played the role of one of the more brutal inquisitors of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel.

  When the Earl of Lincoln died in January 1585, Elizabeth’s government cast around for a suitable candidate to replace him as Lord High Admiral and Howard was appointed the following May. Unlike some of the other Howards, his loyalty to the crown and the Protestant faith was unquestionable. His first duty was as one of the commissioners at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay, Northamptonshire, in October 15862 and it was her execution on 18 February the following year that brought England closer to war with Spain.

  On 15 December 1587, he was ordered to mobilise and command the English naval forces against the expected Spanish invasion of England. Elizabeth’s tight-fisted control of cash for her fleet and her prevarication on the appropriate tactics frustrated and annoyed him. He warned Walsingham in January 1588, ‘If her majesty would have spent but 1,000 crowns to have some intelligence, it would have saved her twenty times as much.’3 On 10 March, Howard reported to the spymaster from his anchorage in Margate Roads, off the Kent coast, with news of the departure of the Spanish Armada:The Spanish forces by sea are for certain to depart from Lisbon the 20th. of this month with the light moon and that the number of the fleet, when they all meet, will be 210 sails and the number of soldiers, besides the mariners, are 36,000 . . .