Elizabethan noblemen enjoyed enormous privileges, but generally recognized that there were limits to their freedom of action. However, one particular peer confounded his contemporaries with his convention-busting behaviour, as Dr Paul Hunneyball of our Lords 1558-1603 section explains…
‘Although he doth many times go apparelled like a nobleman, yet other times he useth such apparel as the poorest man in London can go no worse…; he lately came to the Guildhall in an old whitish gown girded unto him halting right down, with a staff in his hand, and upon his head a linen cloth very mean, with a coif [cap] upon the same; at the which every light person jested, and the graver sort were very sorry to see a nobleman so disguised.’
At first glance, Henry Howard’s eccentric dress-sense seems merely quirky and amusing. However, in Elizabethan England costume was a key marker of social status, rigidly enforced by Parliament through the so-called sumptuary laws, and the viscount’s refusal to conform to established norms was therefore detrimental to good order. But this was one of the more innocent facets of his character.
Born around 1537, Howard was a grandson of the 3rd duke of Norfolk, and nephew of the recently disgraced Queen Anne Boleyn. His father, Thomas, was created Viscount Howard of Bindon in 1559, following the accession of their cousin, Elizabeth I. As a member of one of England’s leading families, and indeed one with royal connections, Howard was to a considerable degree insulated from the consequences of his own bad behaviour. This was a lesson that he learnt comparatively early; in 1556, while probably still a teenager, he was pardoned for the manslaughter of a servant whom he shot dead while fooling about with a gun indoors. Far from being chastened by that experience, he proved so irresponsible that by 1581 the Privy Council had banned him from keeping arms. Nevertheless, he ignored this command, and, according to one of his Dorset neighbours, continued to go shooting daily, ‘to the no great safety of the country thereabouts’.
Howard’s attitude to money was another source of concern, particularly for his own family. The 1st Viscount possessed a comparatively modest estate, but his heir was an habitual spendthrift who lived only for the present. During the 1563 parliamentary session, Howard’s parents secured an Act to prevent him from simply selling his patrimony in due course to clear his debts. The astonishingly blunt preamble to this legislation stated that such safeguards were necessary purely because of their feckless son, ‘of whose good government … in ordering and disposing of the premises … there is some despair conceived’. However, once again there is no evidence that Howard mended his ways. In 1575 the Privy Council intervened in a bid to secure payment for his numerous creditors, whose complaints he was ignoring. This move was evidently unsuccessful, since the government followed up with a more comprehensive debt-clearing process two years later, after Howard’s father had reluctantly agreed to sell land in order to generate funds.
These money troubles helped to poison Howard’s relationship with his father. In 1572 the viscount accused his ‘most unnatural son’ of recruiting ‘manifest and notorious thieves’ to attack and even murder him. This allegation was all the more credible because Howard himself was on very friendly terms with Dorset’s pirate fraternity, habitually socialising with them, and almost certainly colluding in their criminal activities. Although the government never managed to prove his direct involvement in piracy, Howard made no attempt to hide these connections, and in 1587 even disrupted a trial at the Admiralty Court in London, assuring the jurors that the pirates in the dock ‘were as honest men as themselves’. This intervention was ‘so far out of order’ that two of the judges present walked out in protest, but as usual no action was taken against Howard himself.
Indeed, it generally took a clear-cut breach of law and order before the government was prepared to discipline Howard. In 1580 he violently assaulted the sheriff of Dorset, whom he had apparently mistaken for a covert Catholic. As the sheriff had been on official business at the time, this incident could not be ignored, and Howard was jailed by the Council for seven weeks, until he reluctantly acknowledged his fault. However, the government’s preferred strategy was one of containment, such was the prestige which still attached to the peerage. Accordingly, when Howard succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount in 1582, he was not appointed to any local offices except that of justice of the peace, which for a man of his rank counted as a major snub.
Howard apparently responded by spending more time in London, where he continued to attract adverse comment. His casual disregard for the law did not prevent him from attending the House of Lords occasionally, though his only recorded activity, in 1584, was a failed attempt to secure the release from gaol of one of his servants, using parliamentary privilege. In 1587 he took a shine to the current lord mayor, whose house he began to frequent. There, according to one government informant, ‘he useth very idle speeches, … as in terming her majesty by the name of Bess; and as for meaner men he useth many words against them that are not decent for a nobleman to use’. However, as usual his status and powerful connections protected him, and such reports were filed away, rather than provoking one of the exemplary punishments reserved for commoners who spoke disrespectfully of the queen.
Even so, Elizabeth had her own red lines, and eventually Howard crossed them. In 1566 he had married one of the monarch’s ladies-in-waiting, Frances Meautys. The couple had one child, a daughter, but after barely a decade the marriage was in serious trouble, and in 1580 the Privy Council was obliged to investigate reports that Frances was being maltreated. Unabashed, Howard came up to London accompanied by his current mistress, whose husband he was bribing to countenance this illicit relationship. The government’s attempts to achieve a reconciliation failed, and four years later Elizabeth herself intervened, taking Frances and her daughter into protective custody. Howard responded contemptuously to this development, ‘lifting up his leg and letting fly behind’. When the queen’s messengers protested at his lack of respect, Howard asserted that he would have ignored anything less than a royal command, ‘for he was a nobleman, and as good as the best of the lords of the Council’. As Frances departed, Howard fired off one final insult at Elizabeth herself: ‘if her Majesty were a prince, … I should think she sent for my wife to abuse [i.e. seduce] her’.
At length, in 1587, Howard and his wife formally separated, but he then withheld the agreed maintenance payments. Frances took him to court, and he was again imprisoned in London pending a formal hearing. Even now Elizabeth took a lenient view of her troublesome kinsman, instructing the Council to find a resolution, out of the ‘especial regard she hath of those of his quality and birth’. Howard was duly freed, but failed to stick to the revised settlement with Frances. In late October 1590, he was peremptorily summoned before the queen, but the outcome of that interview is not known. Two months later, the dispute abruptly ended when Howard’s death brought his tumultuous career to a premature close.
PMH
Further reading:
Rachel Lloyd, Dorset Elizabethans: at home and abroad (1967)
A biography of Viscount Howard has been prepared for our Lords 1558-1602 project.
For another badly-behaved Elizabethan peer, the 2nd earl of Lincoln, click here!
The History of Parliament 