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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1587  Friday, 28 June 2002

From:           Tom Dale Keever <tdk3@columbia.edu>
Date:           Thursday, 27 Jun 2002 20:27:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject:        The Late 17th Duke of Norfolk

The following obituaries appeared today for Miles Francis Stapleton
Fitzalan-Howard, the 17th Duke of Norfolk.

SHAKSPERians may recognize him as the scion of several families that
figure in Shakespeare's plays and in Tudor history.

Demonstrating once again that one should not believe everything one
reads in “The New York Times,” it was Richard II, not Richard III, who
first created one of the recently departed’s ancestors “Duke of
Norfolk.”  This 1st Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham,
was one of the “duketti” who so annoyed the established nobility that
they were moved to revolt against Richard.  Dukes, who had first been
established in England by Richard’s grandfather Edward III, were
previously of the blood royal.  Mowbray’s dispute with Bolingbroke
begins the action in “Richard II.”  He is then banished and dies in
exile.

Mowbray’s eldest son, also named Thomas, supports Bishop Scrope’s
rebellion in “Henry IV, Part 2,” and they are tricked by Prince John
into dismissing their forces when he promises to satisfy their
grievances against the King.  He and the bishop were executed beneath
the walls of York shortly thereafter.

Another Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, a descendent of the 1st Duke’s second
son, appears as a Yorkist supporter in “Henry VI, Part 3,” but whether
this is the 1st Duke’s grandson, John Mowbray, the 3rd Duke, or the next
successor, the latter’s son, also named John, the 4th Duke, is a matter
of debate.  They were both loyal Yorkists and the latter’s daughter was
betrothed to Edward IV’s second son, Richard, Duke of York, who was
murdered in the Tower with his brother Edward V.

The Mowbray line of Dukes of Norfolk ended with the 4th Duke’s death in
1476.  Their cousin, John Lord Howard, a grandson of the 1st Mowbray
Duke, was created Duke of Norfolk in 1483 as a reward for his help in
Richard III’s struggle for the crown.  It is from this “new creation”
that the current Howard line dates the age of its title, but they are
also descended from the original Duke, if not from his sons or their
descendants.  This first Howard Duke of Norfolk appears in “Richard III”
and is warned on the eve of The Battle of Bosworth Field, “Jocky of
Norfolk, be not too bold,/For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.”  He
and his son Thomas, created 1st Earl of Surrey in 1483, fight for
Richard that day and the Duke dies in the battle.

Surrey so effectively curried favor with the Tudors that he regained his
father’s Dukedom in 1514, after commanding the English army that crushed
the Scots at Flodden the year before, and became a figure of great
influence, and Wolsey’s leading rival for power, in the court of Henry
VIII.  Though he died in 1524 Shakespeare brings him back to life to
take part, along with his son Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Surrey, later
the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, in the events of the 1530’s he dramatized in
“Henry VIII.”  The younger Surrey is Buckingham’s son-in-law and ally
and the Howards are pictured along with the other nobles gloating at
Wolsey’s fall in Act III.

The younger Surrey, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, survived his eldest son,
Henry Howard, 3rd Earl of Surrey, who did not become Duke of Norfolk.
Like his ancestors, however, young Henry became embroiled in the court’s
intrigues.  He was executed in 1547 on trumped up charges stemming from
his connections to his two cousins, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard,
brides and victims of Henry VIII.  He does not appear in any of
Shakespeare’s plays, but, along with Thomas Wyatt, he introduced the
Italian sonnet into British verse, pioneering the English, or
“Shakespearean” form that features three quatrains and a couplet.

An earlier Earl of Surrey, possibly also an ancestor of the recently
departed Duke, though I have not checked my Cockayne on this one,
appears in “Henry IV, Part 2” but has no lines.  In Act III the King
asks him and Warwick if they have read letters regarding the rebellion.
Only Warwick responds.  His silent companion would probably have been
Thomas Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, whose family later united
with the Howards, bringing with them the surname Fitzalan and the
Arundel castle mentioned in the obits as the late Duke’s country seat.

The poet Surrey’s son Thomas succeeded his grandfather as Duke of
Norfolk in 1554 and, as the realm’s only surviving Duke, inherited the
leadership of the Catholic aristocracy in the court of his cousin
Elizabeth I.   His marriage to Mary Fitzalan, daughter of the Earl of
Arundel, brought added prestige to his title.  Unfortunately, he
inherited his father’s ineptness at court intrigue and became enmeshed
first in the Northern Rebellion of 1569 and then in the Ridolfo Plot
with Mary Queen of Scots.  He was beheaded in 1572.   Undeterred by this
discouragement the family retains its “Papist” loyalties to the present
day.  He was brought to the screen in 1998 by actor Christopher
Eccleston who played him as the implacable villain opposite Cate
Blanchett’s plucky Elizabeth and Geoffrey Rush’s wily Walshingham.  The
film is quite entertaining, though an historical hash - Norfolk’s career
on the Privy Council did not overlap Walshingham’s and it was Burghley
who exposed and undid him, not the later spy-chief.

Eccleston showed his talents for Shakespearean villainy last season in
the modernized television “Othello” in which he appears as Ben Jago.  If
the film version of “A Revenger’s Tragedy,” featuring Derek Jakobi, ever
makes it into the theaters we will get a chance to see him as Vindici.

The late 17th Duke’s survivors include the actress Marsha Fitzalan, who
has had a very distinguished career on stage and screen.  In the 1983
filming of “The Comedy of Errors,” part of the BBC series, she appears
as Luce in a cast that includes Cyril Cusack, Charles Gray, Wendy Hiller
and Roger Daltry.

Cheers,
Tom Dale Keever

Miles Francis Stapleton Fitzalan-Howard
Section A; Page 27; Column 4; Foreign Desk

Duke of Norfolk, Roman Catholic Leader, 86
LONDON, June 26

The 17th Duke of Norfolk, who held the oldest dukedom in England, died
on Monday at his home in Henley-on-Thames, west of London. He was 86.

Staff members at Arundel Castle, his family seat in southern England,
said the duke died in his sleep. The duke, Miles Francis Stapleton
Fitzalan-Howard, succeeded a cousin in 1975. The dukedom was created in
1483 by King Richard III for John Howard, his loyal supporter in the
Wars of the Roses. The dukes of Norfolk are considered the premier dukes
because their title is the oldest.

The Howards have been one of England’s most prominent families for 500
years. They kept their Roman Catholic faith when King Henry VIII broke
with the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. The 17th duke was
regarded as Britain’s senior Catholic layman and was active in church
matters.

Like his predecessors, he was Earl Marshal of England, one of the great
officers of state, who are senior members of the royal household. The
earl marshal, whose position is now largely ceremonial, is responsible
for state ceremonies like coronations and leads the College of Arms,
which is the authority in England and Wales on genealogy and heraldry.

The duke was educated at Oxford University. He served in the army for 30
years and retired as a major general, having taken several appointments
in the Ministry of Defense, including director of service intelligence
in 1966-67.

In World War II he served in France, North Africa, Sicily and Italy and
was awarded the Military Cross for reconnaissance of mined roads on foot
under enemy fire. He remarked in later years that “anyone can be Duke of
Norfolk, but I’m rather proud of that medal,” The Times said in its
obituary.

The duke is survived by his wife of more than 50 years, the former Anne
Constable-Maxwell; two sons, Edward, the Earl of Arundel, who succeeds
him, and Gerald; three daughters, Tessa Balfour, Marsha Fitzalan, an
actress, and Carina, who is married to the television personality Sir
David Frost.

The Guardian (London)
June 26, 2002

Obituary: The Duke of Norfolk: As Britain's premier peer and senior
Catholic layman, he led a spirited but quiet life
John Ezard

Miles Fitzalan-Howard, who has died aged 86, had so many titles that it
would have taken a medieval herald nearly a minute to shout. He was - to
name but a few of the more sonorous - 17th Duke of Norfolk, premier peer
of the realm and hereditary earl marshal of England.

Yet he was, for most of his life, set apart from the limelight by the
eminence and devotion of his Roman Catholicism. He was Britain’s most
senior Catholic layman, leader of one of the oldest families in a faith
which, for nearly 300 years, lay under a civil and political shadow,
until it was emancipated from state restrictions in the 19th century.
The Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote in Brideshead Revisited that
such people were almost a secret tribe. The duke himself was once quoted
as saying with a small grin, “I believe in living my life under a
bushel”. But he also said:
“We are like the British infantry in defence. We never give in”. His
personal librarian John Martin Robinson observed of the whole 500-year
Norfolk dynasty: “They were in the middle of things, yet shut out. Their
religion, as well as their dukedom, was medieval. With one or two
exceptions, adherence to a prescribed religion is their great trait.
They have always had an unpompous independence of character”.

 This divided inheritance left Howard as a largely invisible duke - the
title he inherited from a cousin, with some reluctance, in 1975. His
only duty as earl marshal was to organise the state opening of
parliament. His predecessor, Duke Bernard, did the 1953 coronation,
though any repetition of that grand role was denied to Howard by the
Queen’s longevity. He effectively retired as earl marshal on his 86th
birthday, passing the work to his son Eddie.

His full titles, collected by forebears since the 12th century, were:
Earl of Arundel; Baron Beaumont; Baron Maltravers; Earl of Surrey; Baron
FitzAlan, Clun and Oswaldestre; Earl of Norfolk; Baron Howard of
Glossop; earl marshal and hereditary marshal and chief butler of
England; Duke of Norfolk and - as he added in his Who’s Who entry -
“premier duke and earl”.

He tended, however, to be more proud of his 30-year record as an active
soldier, military cross-winner and military civil servant before he
inherited the dukedom. Although only occasional speeches in the House of
Lords brought him to public attention, he was, in private, an active,
energetic, tren chant man. His idea of happy exercise was splitting
wood, building walls and working with horses.

Howard, whose titles before he inherited the dukedom were Beaumont and
Baron Howard, was the great-grandson of the second son of the 13th Duke
of Norfolk. He had known long before 1975 that what he called “the wavy
line of the succession” might come to him because of the inability of
the 16th duke, Bernard, to produce heirs. “It was just going to bloody
well happen, and one tried to prepare for it”, he told an interviewer.

Educated at Ampleforth, the Roman Catholic public school, he got a
third-class history degree at Christ Church, Oxford, and joined the
Grenadier Guards as a lieutenant in 1937. Two years later, the second
world war brought him promotion to command of an anti-tank platoon. He
served at Dunkirk and in north Africa, then earned his MC in the battle
of the Sangro river during the German army’s tenacious resistance to the
allied conquest of Italy. After D-day, he was posted to Washington,
where he met his wife, Anne.

In 1957, he headed the British military mission to Soviet forces -
“Great characters, the Russians, rather like Irish Guard sergeants” - in
Potsdam.  Later, as brigade commander with the King’s African Rifles, he
had responsibility for steering the Kenyan army towards independence,
winning credit for his determination to integrate blacks and whites.

As a major-general, he commanded the first division of the Rhine army
from 1963 to 1965. Looking back on this, he declared once, “It took no
effort on my part to inherit the dukedom of Nor folk and all the other
titles I have.  But I am justly proud to have commanded the first
division . . . as I had to work for that off my own bat.”

His final gong before retirement, as director of service intelligence at
the Ministry of Defence, exasperated him. The ministry was a disgrace,
he said - insufferable and overstaffed. But, with his command of German
and French, he found what he saw as a second spring, as director in
charge of euro dollars and eurobonds at the City merchant bank Robert
Fleming.

When he took his ducal seat in the Lords at the age of 59, he did so in
the robes worn by his ancestor, the 12th duke, the first Catholic peer
after emancipation in 1829. He was briefly headlined as “the reluctant
duke who cleans his own shoes”.

One of his first deeds was to call his whole family together for a
service of rededication and rehabilitation for their ancestor, the Tudor
poet Henry Howard, who was executed for high treason. The duke called
him “a sublime poet, who suffered unjustly”. In 1982, to his delight,
the Queen asked him to officially welcome Pope John-Paul II to Britain
on the first papal visit since the Reformation.

In 1980, though staunchly Conservative, the duke summoned his powers of
organisation, tactics and noblesse oblige to inflict a crushing defeat
on the young Thatcher government over legislation to charge for school
buses.  “Why should we penalise poor people in the country compared with
those who live in the town?” he asked.

Four years later, he shocked his co-religionists by denouncing Catholic
teaching on birth control to a conference of Catholic teachers. “How can
you ask a married couple to do it by thermometers and what not?”, he
asked, “My wife and I did that - it didn’t bloody work. Has everybody
got to have eight children like my mother?” It was another frank
question in a spirited and - in the circumstances - by no means inactive
life.

 He is survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters.

Miles Francis Stapleton Fitzalan-Howard, KG, GCVO, CB, MC, 17th Duke of
Norfolk, born July 21 1915; died June 24 2002

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