These were perilous and treacherous times.17 The Earl of Arundel’s lengthy, deeply considered decision to become a Catholic was an act of enormous courage and commitment when adherents of the faith were being ruthlessly persecuted and missionary priests hunted down and slaughtered by the state. With the memory of his father’s execution always haunting him, he struggled against changing his religious loyalties. It is claimed that the final call came to him one day when
walking alone in the gallery18 of his castle at Arundel, after long and great conflict within himself. Lifting up his eyes and hands to Heaven, he firmly resolved to become a member of God’s church and frame his life accordingly.19
He kept his decision secret - not even telling his wife - until he met his Catholic half-brother William (‘to whom he bore a special love’), in London and told him of his conversion. Lord Howard lent him a Catholic treatise by Dr William Allen20 and the earl was received into the Church by the fugitive Jesuit priest Father William Weston at Arundel on 30 September 1584.
In early November 1583, a Catholic zealot, twenty-nine-year-old Francis Throgmorton, was arrested by agents of Walsingham (by now Elizabeth’s Secretary of State as well as her spymaster) for plotting to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, was expelled from England for his involvement, Throgmorton was executed at Tyburn on 10 July 1584, and Lord Henry Howard imprisoned yet again.21
Arundel feared he would be caught up in the fevered hunt for further conspirators and decided to flee England with his brother William. He despatched his secretary, John Momford, to Hull in south Yorkshire to hire a ship to take them to Flanders, but he was arrested, questioned and threatened with the rack in an attempt to extract information. The queen, her suspicions about the earl’s loyalty growing by the minute, invited herself to Arundel House where an extravagant banquet was laid on for her. At the end of the evening Elizabeth declared her satisfaction at the delights of the evening and graciously thanked Arundel for her entertainment. She then told him bluntly that he was now a prisoner in his own house.22
His questioning began on Christmas Eve, 1583 and concerned his alleged involvement in the Throgmorton conspiracy and about sheltering another fugitive Jesuit priest, Jasper Heywood.23 His other secretary, John Keeper, was also interrogated24 as a suspected priest, by Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth’s Vice-Chamberlain.
The interrogations produced nothing that either Burghley or Walsingham could use against him. Arundel was eventually released in April 1584 and his wife was freed from her confinement at Wiston House the following September.
The earl decided on a second attempt to flee England in April 1585 and made secret plans - not even telling his wife, who was heavily pregnant with his heir. He wrote a letter to Elizabeth explaining the reasons for his flight and entrusted it to his half-sister Meg Sackville until he arrived safely in France, when it could be delivered. He hired a small ship at Littlehampton, at the mouth of the River Arun, south of Arundel, and made several attempts to leave. Each time his departure was thwarted by adverse winds, according to the crew.
This may have been an excuse, a delaying tactic. Walsingham had laid a trap for the earl and his two companions, a servant called Burlace, and William Bray, who was a member of the covert network that smuggled Catholic priests and religious tracts into England. Bray was probably under surveillance and may have been the unwitting cause of the drama that now unfolded.
After a two-day delay, the ship finally put to sea at night and, after an hour, had made good headway out into the English Channel.
Arundel must have fondly believed that he was at last safe. In his delight, he probably did not notice that the crew had hoisted a lantern to the top of the ship’s single mast.
It was a signal.
Soon afterwards, a small warship came alongside and its captain, Francis Kellway, clambered aboard Arundel’s vessel. He ‘pretended to be a pirate . . . known to be a man of notorious, infamous life’ and offered to permit the earl to continue his voyage - on payment of £100. He swore
he would presently, without further stop, [allow] him [to] pass safely into France if he would write a word or two to any friend of his [from] whom he might receive [the money].
Arundel believed him. On the swaying deck he scribbled a few lines to his sister, asking her to speak to Edward Bridges, his chaplain at Arundel House, and to arrange for him to hand over the cash, once the ‘token’, or password - ‘black is white’ - was given to him.
Kellway read through the note approvingly and then revealed his true colours.
He was no common pirate. He had been stationed on Walsingham’s orders to intercept Arundel’s ship and arrest him.
The Earl was nothing but daunted with this so unexpected accident and not only with great patience and courage did endure it, but moreover carried it with a joyful and merry countenance.
Patience and fortitude may well be true Christian virtues. However, given the circumstances, it is difficult to swallow entirely this generous account of Arundel’s unruffled calm, particularly when Kellway relieved him of ‘his money and all those things he had about him, [such] as jewels and the like’.25 Such events could test anyone’s sense of humour and find it wanting. Not only was he heading straight for the Tower - rapidly becoming almost a second home for successive generations of the Howards - but he had been robbed by the rascal Kellway.
Once landed, Arundel was escorted under waiting heavy guard to London, sleeping overnight in Guildford, Surrey. He was taken straight to the grim fortress and committed as a prisoner there on 25 April 1585. His siblings William and Meg were also arrested and put into the custody of Roger, second Lord North. So was the usual suspect, his uncle Henry Howard, who once again faced his all too familiar inquisitors in the Tower.
Bridges, the earl’s chaplain, immediately published the four quarto pages of the earl’s unsigned and self-justifying letter to the queen. It told the story of his past service at court, but, recently, ‘the malice of my adversaries, by reason of your majesty’s good countenance towards me, began to be greater . . .’
I found little by little your good opinion declined and your favour somewhat estranged from me. I heard from time to time how your majesty in words took exception to many of my actions and how it pleased you daily in your speeches to betray hard and evil consent of me.
And though it pleased you at some times to talk with me, yet your majesty never charged me with the least fault or offence.
And thus my adversaries which did bark behind my back dared never accuse me, or once open their mouths to my face.
He heard of the queen’s ‘bitter speeches’ and felt the finger of blame pointed at himself as a ‘person whom you deeply suspect’.
I knew this smoke did betray a fire and I saw these clouds foretold a storm and therefore, with all patience, I prepared myself to endure whatsoever was the will of God by means of your majesty’s indignation to lay upon me, being assured that my faults to you were none.
After his house arrest and questioning, ‘I remained in the same estate fifteen weeks at the least, no man charging me with the least offence, nor my conscience being able to accuse me of the smallest fault’.
After I had escaped safely these storms and when I was clearly delivered from all my troubles, I began to call to remembrance the heavy sentence which had lighted upon those three of my ancestors who immediately went before me.
The first being my great grandfather [the third duke] who was so free from all suspicion of any fault, as because they had no colour of matter to bring him to his trial, they attainted him by Act of Parliament, without ever challenging him to his answer.
The second being my grandfather [Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who] was brought to his trial and condemned for such trifles as it amazed the bystanders at that time and it is ridiculous at this day to all that hear the same . . .
The last being my father [the fourth duke] was arraigned according to the law and condemned by his
peers. God forbid that I should think but that his triers did that whereunto their consciences did lead them.
Howsoever he might unwittingly or wittingly be drawn into greater danger than himself did either see or imagine, yet all his actions did plainly declare and his greatest enemies must confess that he never carried any disloyal mind to your majesty . . .
At best, this was a pedigree of misfortune, and, at worst, one of hereditary treason. Arundel had grim forebodings when he considered ‘the fortune of these three . . . I called to mind my own danger and did not think it impossible that . . . I might as well follow them . . . , as I succeeded them in their place’.
I perceived by my late troubles how narrowly my life was sought and how easily your majesty was drawn to a suspicion and hard opinion of my ancestors and . . . how my innocence was [not] sufficient to protect me.
I knew myself and besides was charged by your Council to be of that religion which they account odious and dangerous to your estate. . . .
When I considered in what continual danger I did remain here in England, both by laws established and by a new act lately made26 I did think it my safest part to depart the realm and abide in some other place where I might live without danger to my conscience, without offence to your majesty, without the servile subjection to mine enemies and without this peril to my life. 27
It is not known whether Elizabeth actually read this eloquent and piquant letter, but it provided Walsingham with some potent ammunition to use against the earl. The spymaster initially employed a tried and tested ruse for extracting information from unwilling prisoners - a forged and incriminating letter in handwriting that ‘very much resembled’ Arundel’s own. Its three pages were triumphantly waved before him but the earl was allowed to read only the first few paragraphs. The letter, addressed to his steward William Dix, began with a warning:
Sir, this letter contains such matter as is fit for the fire to consume than be laid up in your study.
It went on to say that, although he departed England ‘poorly, he would return in glory and land in Norfolk with a great power of men to trouble both the queen and state’. The note passed on to more mundane matters of business, such as instructions about a recent sale of cut timber, inserted to add credence to its content. Arundel was told the letter had been intercepted by Walsingham’s agents ‘at the very time of his going to sea’.28 The earl vehemently denied writing it but the Council threatened him with arraignment for treason on its contents. Unconsciously echoing the words of his great-grandfather, the third duke, when he was in similar danger, Arundel said he was innocent of that ‘all kinds of treason, as a child newly-born’.
His nerve was not shaken and the letter mysteriously disappeared. The ruse had failed.
The interrogations in the Tower continued. On 1 May, Walsingham wrote to Hatton, suspecting there was someone, still more dangerous, that Arundel was concealing and drawing comfort from. He insisted that the earl’s courage should be
abated, and no advantage [should] be lost until he be drawn to use some other language, seasoned with more humility . . . It cannot be that he receives some comfort and that not from mean persons that put him in this courage.
No man is of his nature more fearful.29
Arundel himself wrote to Hatton on 7 May, acknowledging that he had written to Dr (later Cardinal) William Allen, the de facto leader of exiled English Catholics abroad. But he protested:that before God, [I] was so sorry for it after . . . as when the messenger should have carried it, had not opportunity at the first to go over, I desired that it might be burnt. What was done with it, I know not, but Bridges told me it was burnt.
I protest before God, as far as I can call to remembrance, I do utterly deny and disavow that ever was I privy to any plot or practice laid or made against her majesty or her state.
Arundel added: ‘I must confess I was slipping, but not fallen. I call to God to witness she [the queen] has raised many that have slipped more and therefore I cannot despair but that she can raise me.’30
A bewildering variety of questions were put to him: How much did he know of the Throgmorton plot? What was the true reason behind his departure from England? For what purpose did he inspect Langstone Harbour, near Chichester - plainly, they believed he was reconnoitring possible south coast invasion sites. His half-brother William, who had joined the earl in the Tower, was also interrogated: was Bridges a priest? - ‘he denies that ever he heard him say Mass’. How was he going to live overseas? - ‘as he hoped . . . [supported] by the earl his brother’.31 His uncle Henry was reluctantly and regretfully acknowledged as probably innocent, as his inquisitors could ‘find nothing to condemn him justly’.32
On 14 May, the earl’s household of forty-six servants at Howard House were discharged, some of them going to ‘my lady’s house at Romford’ in Essex.33
Probably because of failure to uncover hard evidence against him, Arundel had to wait another year before he faced any legal proceedings. He appeared in the Court of Star Chamber, within the Palace of Westminster, on 15 May 1586, to face three charges: that he tried to flee England without permission; he had been reconciled to the Church of Rome; and, finally, that he had been plotting with foreign powers in order to be restored as Duke of Norfolk.
John Popham, Attorney General, produced the letter that Arundel had written to Elizabeth and claimed it accused her ‘very contemptuously and injuriously of partiality, alleging her highness had countenanced and protected his enemies to do him injury’. Among the earl’s possessions when he was arrested was a ‘clock bag wherein . . . was a paper [on which] was written these words “Philip, Duke of Norfolk, Earl [of] Arundel”’. The earl, however, ‘gave such sufficient answers to everything that was objected against him and behaved himself so discreetly, with such cheerfulness and alacrity, that he got that day much credit and reputation to his person and cause’.
Such demeanour could not go unpunished. The court fined him £10,000 and ordered that he ‘shall return prisoner to the Tower of London from whence he came, there to remain prisoner at her majesty’s pleasure’.34
Perpetual imprisonment! During his first thirteen months in the Tower, he had no servants of his own and was not allowed out of his room in the Beauchamp Tower or to walk in the Queen’s Garden, in the south-east corner of the fortress, unless he was accompanied by a guard. Afterwards, he was allowed one or two servants, but they had to suffer the same strict regime and become prisoners as well. Walsingham’s secretary, Francis Mills, complained that Arundel’s friends ‘daily resort to Tower Hill and as near to the view of him ( . . . walking on the [roof] leads and the battlements) almost as [near] as a man may throw a stone’.
I know right well the turret where the Earl is lodged and yesterday myself was an eye-witness of the Lord Henry and Lord William Howard, [with] one little page following them both, upon Tower Hill.
This day again, these personages, I hear, have been there for an interview between them and the Earl.
[If ] his friends coming . . . to view his prison, happen to be interpreters of signs only between these men, bad effects may follow.
So better the Earl had another strong lodging where he might have air to walk in but no opportunity to view and be viewed as now he is.35
The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Michael Blount, was under orders to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the earl. Arundel complained that ‘his injuries to me . . . are intolerable, infinite, daily multiply, and to those who know them not, incredible’. He became ill and scratched on the wall over the fireplace of his room in the Beauchamp Tower the graffito: ‘Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro Arundell, June 22 1587’ - ‘The more suffering for Christ in this world, so much more the glory with Christ in the next.’36
His wife had, meanwhile, given birth to a son, Thomas, at Finchingfield, Essex - the heir the earl was never to see. She and her two children were now eking out a meagre existence in one wing of Arundel
House, on a pension of £8 a week. Anne, however, had scraped together £30 and used it to bribe the daughter of the Lieutenant to provide access to a nearby prisoner, an old priest named William Bennet, and two other incarcerated Catholics, the Lancashire landowner Sir Thomas Gerard and William Shelley, of Michelgrove in Clapham, Sussex, a near neighbour, in happier days, to the earl at Arundel Castle.37 Bennet sometimes said Mass for all three in the earl’s room, using smuggled vestments which were hidden behind a wall.
Another prisoner, John Snowden, a sailor who had traitorously served with the Spanish Armada during the thwarted invasion of England in July and August 1588, hoped to redeem himself by pretending to be a Catholic and revealing these secret Masses. He filched their missal and sent it to Walsingham as proof.
Bennet was immediately removed to another prison, The Counter, in Wood Street, one of the sheriff’s prisons for the city of London, and there questioned in October 1588. His confession, ‘written with his own hand’, was damning. As the Armada had battled up through the English Channel,
The Earl of Arundel [had] said ‘Let us pray now, for we have more need to pray now than at any time. If it pleases God, the Catholic faith shall flourish. Now is the time at hand of our delivery.
Moreover, the Earl said that he would make me Dean [of St Paul’s], if the Catholic enterprise took place.
I call to mind that when the said Earl [heard] of the discovery of the Spanish fleet, he desired me in the presence of Sir Thomas Gerard to say Mass of the Holy Ghost that it would please God to send them good success.
House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty Page 28