Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

<body bgcolor="#000000" text="#ffffff" link="CRIMSON" alink="CRIMSON" vlink="CRIMSON"> <IMG SRC="thomas3_bar.jpg" ALIGN="LEFT" ALT="Thomas Howard, © HM the Queen, scanned by Lara E. Eakins at Tudor History" WIDTH="180"> <font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" size="7">Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk</font> <P> <TABLE ALIGN=RIGHT WIDTH=188><TR><TD><A HREF="thomas3.jpg"><IMG SRC="thomas3_embed.jpg" BORDER=0></A></TD></TR><TR><TD><CENTER><FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE="1">Image of Thomas Howard © HM the Queen.<BR> Scanned by Lara E. Eakins at <A HREF="http://tudorhistory.org/" TARGET="_parent">Tudor History</A>.</FONT></CENTER></TR></TD></TABLE>The third Duke of Norfolk was the most famous of all the Dukes, and politically he was probably the most significant. He was uncle to two of Henry VIII's wives, significant in politics for the whole of his reign and survived Edward VI's tenure, to be released by Mary I. When he died, he was nearly 80 years old - a truly venerable age for the period. <P> <FONT FACE="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" SIZE="6">Early Life</FONT> <P> Born in 1473, Thomas was twelve at the time of the Battle of Bosworth, when his grandfather was killed fighting for Richard III on August 22, 1485). In the aftermath of the battle, the Howards were attainted and dispossessed (Henry VII having neatly backdated his reign to August 21, thus making those who fought against him traitors); and Thomas' father (also Thomas), having been released in 1489 with some of his lands and the title of Earl of Surrey restored, made a career in service to the new king. <P> The younger Thomas was taken from court after Bosworth, to his mother's manor at Ashwelthorpe (to the south-west of Norwich). When his father was partially rehabilitated and went on to serve the king as Deputy Warden of the North Marches, he was sent with his brother Edward to the royal court - both for their education, and to ensure their father's loyalty to the Tudor regime. They both served as pages at Henry VII's court, and were given an education appropriate to nobles in Latin, rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic and fighting. The school would have been a fairly hard one, with beatings administered when court etiquette was breached. <P> In 1495, Thomas made his first marriage - to Anne Plantagenet, daughter of King Edward IV. This had been planned during Richard III's reign, when the Howards were high in favour. After Bosworth, of course, any such plans, which might have looked extremely suspicious to the new king (married in 1486 to Elizabeth of York - Anne's sister) were abandoned in the name of demonstrating the family's loyalty to the Tudor dynasty. The fact, then, that in 1495 the marriage was allowed to proceed is a very real indication of how far the Howards' rehabilitation had come in ten years. Anne brought little in financial terms, but the match - relating Thomas to the king - was more than sufficient by virtue of its prestige. They now left court to divide time between homes in Suffolk and Lambeth. The couple had children, but none survived beyond the age of 11. Thomas was knighted in the aftermath of the Cornish Rebellion in 1497. <P> <FONT FACE="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" SIZE="6">Henry the Eighth's First Years</FONT> <P> When Henry VIII came to the throne, the elder Thomas continued to consolidate his position; he became the chief temporal lord on the Council. In the meantime he contracted a series of advantageous matches for his children; and when Anne Plantagenet died in 1512, a match was contracted with Elizabeth Stafford, eldest daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. The marriage was to be a singularly unhappy one, but Elizabeth did provide Thomas with sons. Thomas was, during this period, very much overshadowed by his much more effusive younger brother Edward. He was, however, involved in the military campaign in France in 1512, which was launched in alliance with Ferdinand of Aragon. Ferdinand, however, left the English to help themselves after securing his own aims, and the campaign was a disaster; Thomas' own indecision while leading the troops (he was deputy, but the Marquess of Dorset had fallen ill) contributed to the difficulties. Dorset and Howard both received a dressing-down, but survived. <P> In 1513, the death of his brother Edward meant that Thomas was appointed Lord High Admiral in his place; and while he saw little action himself, he did keep the Channel sufficiently free of French ships during the action that year. Later on, he was sent with his brother Edmund to assist their father in the fight against the Scots; at Flodden, James IV, King of Scots, was killed. It was as a result of this that the younger Thomas became Earl of Surrey in his own right, as his father regained the Dukedom of Norfolk. The achievement was limited, though; the Howards were not elevated in isolation, and while others were more generally rewarded their honours were specifically in recognition of Flodden. Even their heraldic augmentation - the Scottish arms with the lion cut in half and an arrow in its throat on the white bend of the Howard arms - looked rather modest beside those granted to Charles Somerset at the same time (which had the arms of France and England in a border). It seems that, while Henry VIII may have fallen for two of Norfolk's nieces, he had little personal affection for the Howard clan. The Howards did moderately well and continued to serve the king as one of the great families of the realm. <P> <FONT FACE="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" SIZE="6">The Advents of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell</FONT> <P> The rise of Norfolk's niece, <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne Boleyn</A></B>, opened up the field in a whole variety of ways. Her advent created an alternative source of influence to Cardinal Wolsey himself; and while, for the moment, she saw him as a means to achieve the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon, when this perception changed she used her influence against him. Wolsey's own rise to power between 1509 and 1515 provoked considerable resentment among many of the nobility, and they would have been happy to see the back of him. Wolsey's failure to pave the way for the marriage of Henry and <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B> allowed him to be removed from power, and Norfolk seems to have worked with Suffolk and the then Viscount Rochford (<B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/thomas/ target=_parent>Thomas Boleyn</A></B>, father of <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B>) along with the Lady herself to help achieve this. <P> The corollary of this process, however, was that the Boleyns, related though they were as <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/thomas/ target=_parent>Thomas Boleyn</A></B> had married Thomas Howard's sister, were increasingly associated with a religious radicalism which Norfolk found uncomfortable. A conservative at heart, he became more and more alienated from <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B> and her allies, men such as Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, as time went on. Eustace Chapuys says that he even called her a <I>grande putain</I> - great whore. She, for her part, used words to Norfolk "such as one would not use to a dog". However, <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B>'s influence did help secure the marriages of Henry Howard to the Earl of Oxford's daughter and that of Mary Howard, Norfolk's daughter, to Henry Fitzroy - Henry's illegitimate son, and a realistic candidate for the succession in default of other male issue. Norfolk might have grumbled, and he disliked his niece intensely, but he remained acquiescent towards the Boleyn marriage. Of course, this was at least partially because much of his own position depended upon it. When <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B> fell on spurious charges of adultery, incest and treason in 1536, he presided at her trial and that of her brother <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/george/ target=_parent>George</A></B>; however, there is no reason to believe that he had a hand in her fall. Once the scandal broke, though, he made no bones about participating in her demise. <P> If Norfolk was ambivalent about <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B>, his wife's views were unequivocal. In 1526, Norfolk began a relationship with Bess Holland - the daughter of a steward and one of his serving girls. His wife Elizabeth was outraged, and the couple became a byword for marital disharmony. Elizabeth would later claim that Norfolk had the servants pin her to the floor until her finger bled from scratching at the boards! Other records, however, suggest that the Duchess of Norfolk was quite capable of retaliating. Norfolk kept her in confinement intermittently throughout this period, and eventually the two separated in 1534. She retired to Hertfordshire in the end; Bess Holland became the effective mistress at Kenninghall, his mansion in Norfolk. <P> <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B>'s demise represented a real weakening of Norfolk's position, compounded by the death of his son-in-law Henry Fitzroy. The Duke continued, however, to play the part of a loyal servant, fighting for the King in the Pilgrimage of Grace and helping with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. However, religious policy was still in many ways significantly out of kilter with Norfolk's own conservatism, while the prospect of Cromwell as chief minister aroused similar resentment to the position of Wolsey before. However, the King himself was very much more of Norfolk's persuasion in matters doctrinal than Cromwell's, however attached he might be to the Royal Supremacy, and the 1539 Act of Six Articles pulled the position a considerable way back; while his attempt to engineer a match with Anna of Cleves proved a disaster. For whatever reason, Henry was not at all attracted to her; and Cromwell's 'failure' in this regard gave his enemies opportunity to paint the Secretary as a traitor and a heretic. Cromwell went to the block on 28 July 1540, and on the same day Henry remarried - to another of Norfolk's nieces: <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn Howard</A></B>. <P> <FONT FACE="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" SIZE="6">Howard Ascendancy, Howard Fall</FONT> <P> The king's initial interest in <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn</A></B> was probably not deliberately foreseen by her relatives, but once she was the object of his affections they lost no time in capitalising on them. As with <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne Boleyn</A></B> and Jane Seymour, she was not to give into his desires either until marriage or until marriage was very clearly agreed. Unlike <B><A HREF=/boleynfamily/anne/ target=_parent>Anne</A></B>, she was no independent political figure; naturally, this suited Norfolk much better. This was the peak of Norfolk's influence, and with him the Howard clan prospered - while the position of former allies of Cromwell felt very unenviable; only the Queen's intercession (!) saved Sir Thomas Wyatt, for instance. <P> However, in October 1541, Thomas Cranmer presented the King with testimony of his wife's indiscretions prior to their marriage. A disbelieving Henry ordered an investigation - but rather than clearing <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn</A></B>, it corroborated the stories. Initially an annulment seemed likely on the grounds of a precontract with Dereham; but sufficient evidence emerged to implicate the Queen in adultery with Culpeper, while Dereham was executed (probably unfairly) for intent to do so. On 10 December 1541, Culpeper and Dereham died, while <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn</A></B> herself was executed on 13 February 1542. <P> The fall of <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn Howard</A></B> implicated most of the rest of the Howard family. First the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk and then several other Howards were imprisoned temporarily (many of whom could not conceivably have had anything to do with <B><A HREF=katheryn.html target=_parent>Katheryn</A></B>'s adultery) and eventually punished for misprision of treason with imprisonment, loss of goods and lands. The Duke himself was unscathed, and co-operated unreservedly in investigating the Queen's activities, disowning another niece completely. <P> After this, the Howard family never recovered its position. Norfolk himself had accepted, in the later years of the reign, that the rise of Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford was inevitable, and (as he had done before) even offered a series of marriage alliances to him. Not only did his son manage to derail this, however; but the Earl of Surrey also failed to keep his firm belief that only a Duke of Norfolk was fit to be a regent to himself. This talk reached Hertford's ears - who saw the opportunity to get rid of a potential liability. Scanty evidence was presented to Henry; and Surrey was marched to the Tower, as was his father. On extremely weak evidence, Surrey was executed on 19 January 1547. <P> Eliminating the Duke would have been more difficult. A trial by his peers would be no means have had a certain outcome; he could very easily have sworn ignorance of Surrey's activities. He was, however, persuaded to 'confess' and beg for mercy. He was attainted on 27 January, and due to be executed - but nothing happened for a few days. <P> On 31 January, Norfolk found out why. Henry VIII had died on 28 January and had been succeeded by his son Edward VI; and though Hertford had no reason not to carry out the sentence, he did not do so. <P> <FONT FACE="Magik,Mistral,Comic Sans MS,Arial" SIZE="6">Aftermath</FONT> <P> Norfolk was imprisoned throughout the reign of Edward VI. But when Edward VI died on 6 July 1553 and Mary I succeeded (despite the attempt to impose Lady Jane Grey instead), Norfolk was released, along with Stephen Gardiner, on 3 August. A few days before, both had heard rumours that Northumberland had planned to execute both. After the radicalism of Edward, conservatism was back in full force under Mary. Norfolk was on the Council to witness the calling to answer of Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who had helped oversee the Edwardian Reformation, and presided over his trial. <P> Norfolk was mostly restored by Queen Mary (though about a third of his lands were in new hands, from which he could never recover them). He was sent with a few hundred London levies to help suppress the 1554 Wyatt Rebellion; unfortunately for him, his own men made common cause with the rebels! Norfolk and his officers managed to extricate themselves and returned to London post-haste. He went to Kenninghall after this; but in July he took to his bed, and on 25 August he died. <P> <HR> <P> <A HREF="/boleynfamily/relatives/" TARGET="_parent"><B>Boleyn Relatives</B></A><BR> <A HREF="/boleynfamily/" TARGET="_parent"><B>Home</B></A> </FONT> </BODY>