No. 85 Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel
BORN 1512, DIED 1579-80.
Black dress. Gold buttons. Gold chain. Ermine cape.
He was the only son of William the seventeenth Earl of Arundel, by Anne, daughter of Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland, and succeeded to the title and estates when about thirty years of age, until which time he had lived apart from public life.
In 1544 he accompanied Henry VIII. to Boulogne, which Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was then besieging. With the wonderful precipitancy which characterised the period, Arundel suddenly found himself raised to the grade of Field-Marshal in the English army. Nor was the choice misplaced, for a manœuvre on his part carried the town, which he was the first to enter by a breach, at the head of his troops.
The King, delighted with the success of the undertaking, granted Lord Arundel the government of Calais, and subsequently the Comptrollership of the royal household.
Not long after, Arundel was appointed one of the Commissioners to negotiate a treaty with the Scots, when it so happened that the terms proposed were distasteful to the King, although unanimously approved by his Ministers. Henry sent no less a person than William Cecil (afterwards Secretary) to tell Arundel that whatever he (the King) might write by letter, his royal pleasure was that the treaty should be broken.
Cecil demurred, but was ordered off to Scotland.
Whatever impartial opinions may decide as to the honesty of the proceeding, Arundel gained the King’s approbation, insomuch as he followed his master’s injunctions, and that with so much discretion as to take the onus upon himself. Henry defended him when censured by the Government, ordered his pardon to be drawn up, and not only made him Lord Chamberlain, but named him one of the guardians to his successor, the youthful Edward.
After some attempts to remain or appear neutral during the struggle for power between the Protector Somerset and the Earl of Warwick, Arundel at length joined the party of the latter nobleman, and was chosen one of the six Lords intrusted with the custody of the King’s person. We are told that he was ‘circumspect and slow,’ and ‘a man of integrity.’ Such a character was not likely to be acceptable to Warwick; Lord Arundel was deprived of his Chamberlain’s staff and his seat at the Privy Council, and some frivolous accusations were brought against him, on the strength of which he was sent to the Tower. He was, moreover, subjected to a heavy fine, and banished into the country.
‘Doubtless,’ says Sir John Hayward, ‘the Earl of Warwick had good reason to suspect that they who had the honesty to disapprove his purpose, would not want the heart to oppose it.’
Arundel remained on his own estates till the King’s death, when he came forward as a zealous supporter of Mary’s claim to the Crown. At a meeting of the friends of that Princess he made a most stirring and impressive speech, nor did he lose the opportunity thus offered him of attacking the Duke of Northumberland (the Earl of Warwick) for his conduct, past and present, namely, his disloyalty in the reign of Edward, and his actual treason in setting up his daughter-in-law, Jane Grey, as Queen.
Arundel took upon himself to make promises to the Protestants in Mary’s name which she unfortunately did not fulfil. But his speech was received with such enthusiasm that at its conclusion the whole assembly escorted the speaker to the city, and summoning the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, proceeded then and there to proclaim Mary Tudor Queen of these realms. Lord Arundel immediately took horse and rode down into Suffolk to announce in person to Mary herself the success of the exertions made in her behalf, and at Cambridge he arrested his old enemy, the Duke of Northumberland, and led him a prisoner to the Tower of London.
These proceedings only occupied three days, and were completed by the 21st of July 1553. The Queen was becomingly grateful; she made Arundel, Steward of her household and President of her Council.
In 1558 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford, but in 1560 was obliged to resign that dignity on account of his creed, when the Protestant faith was re-established. In spite, however, of the difference of their religious views, Queen Elizabeth treated Lord Arundel with marked distinction, continued him in his office of Lord Steward, and named him, in addition, High Constable and High Steward of England at her coronation.
He appears to have thought himself higher in the good graces of the royal coquette, than was actually the case, and finding himself somewhat slighted by her and by other friends at Court, we are told he grew ‘troubled in mind, and to wear off his grief, asked leave to travel.’
Accordingly, he went abroad, returned for a short time, and then repaired to Italy, where he resided for some years. He contracted ‘a great fondness for foreign fashions,’ and on coming home introduced many, and in particular the use of coaches, the first known in England being the property of the Earl of Arundel.
He remained unemployed until the year 1569, when he was named one of the Commissioners to inquire into the murder of Henry Darnley, King of Scots. He pleaded Mary’s cause, (believing firmly in her innocence,) and spoke out boldly in her behalf to Elizabeth herself, at the Council table when he considered the proceedings unjust. He never failed in his loyalty to the English Queen, although the intercourse he held with ‘Mary’s friends,’ as they were called, rendered him an object of distrust.
In 1572 he suffered a brief imprisonment in the Tower, and on his release found he had forfeited the royal favour, which he did not go the right way to regain, by his resolute opposition to the proposed marriage with the Duke of Anjou.
He continued in retirement until the beginning of the year 1580, when, says Camden, ‘Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, rendered his soul to God—in whom was extinct the surname of this most noble family, which had flourished with great honour for three hundred years and more’—from the time, indeed, of Richard Fitzalan, who, in the reign of Edward I., received the title of Earl of Arundel without any creation, from being possessed of the castle and lordship of Arundel, in Sussex. Henry married, first, Catherine Grey, daughter of Thomas, second Marquis of Dorset, (and aunt to Jane Grey,) by whom he had three children, who all died before their father, viz.:—
Henry, died unmarried at Brussels; Joan, married to John Lord Lumley; and Mary, the wife of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, in right of whose descent the present Duke of Norfolk enjoys the title of Earl of Arundel. Henry Fitzalan’s second wife was Mary, daughter of Sir John Arundel of Lanherne, county Cornwall, by whom he had no children.