The Dukes (11 page)

Norfolk's son Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel (i
557
-1595), who
could not claim the dukedom of Norfolk which now lay dormant owing
to his father's attainder, was persecuted for his adherence to Catho­licism, and imprisoned in the Tower for eleven years. He wasted and
died there, but not before incurring more odium by openly praying
for the success of the Spanish Armada. This man was eventually
canonised by the Catholic Church in 1970, and is now known as St
Philip Howard. Saint or not, his haughty insolent manner did not
endear him to those who knew him casually. His son, too, Thomas
Earl of Arundel (n 585-1646), inherited that besetting vanity of rank
which has plagued the Howards through centuries. He did not suffer
himself to be addressed by any beneath him in status, and went so
far as to be sent to the Tower for having insulted a fellow peer, Lord
Spencer, in 1621. Spencer had made some reflection upon past events
in their families. Arundel interrupted him rudely: "My Lord," he
said, "when these things you speak of, were doing, your ancestors
were keeping sheep !" to which Spencer replied, "When my ancestors,
as you say, were keeping sheep, your ancestors were plotting treason."
Arundel was not released from prison until he had made an apology.
²⁴
Clarendon said that "he thought no other part of history consider­able, but what related to his own family", and also that he was
"without religion".

Owing to their more or less constant Catholicism, the Dukes of
Norfolk henceforth retired from the political limelight. The first four
dukes had played a leading part in the history of the country for
nearly a hundred years, from 1473 until the 4th Duke went to the
block in 1572, but thereafter their religion barred them from holding
political office. Not for 250 years were the Norfolks allowed to take
their seats in the Houses of Parliament. In 1829 Roman Catholic
Relief Bill repaired the injustice, and at last the 12th Duke of
Norfolk (11765-1842), known as "Scroop" or "Twitch", or "Our
Barney", took his seat in the House of Lords, while his son was the
first Roman Catholic to  sit in the Commons since the Reformation.

By then the damage of being in a back seat for so long had had
its effect. Successive Dukes of Norfolk in the seventeenth and eight­eenth centuries degenerated into a series of amiable eccentrics, obsessed
with their own family history and living on the past.
The year 1572 might have marked the end of the dukedom were
it not for the generosity of Charles II, who revived the title in 1660
by Act of Parliament, after it had lain dormant for nearly a hundred
years. The man who was thus restored as 5th Duke of Norfolk
(1626-1677) was a gibbering idiot who had suffered brain fever at
the age of eighteen from which he never recovered. So dangerous a
lunatic was he, that his next brother Lord Henry Howard had
packed him off to Italy where he was kept in confinement and never
allowed to set foot in England again. The titular Earl Marshal was
"unapproachable ... an incurable maniac".
²⁵
Reresby saw him in
exile and declared that "he laboured under all the Symptoms of
Lunacy and Distraction". His younger brothers suspected that this
madness was a fiction fostered by Henry Howard, who acted as Earl
Marshal in the idiot's place, and they petitioned the House of Com­mons in 1676 to send for the Duke, saying that he was perfectly in
command of his senses. The petition was not granted. Reresby and
others, who had no axe to grind, were believed, and the risk of having
a lunatic let loose on the country's ceremonial was not taken.
²⁶
He
died unmarried in Italy, his body brought back by laboursome
journey, to England, where it was buried one whole year after death.
His brother Henry Howard succeeded him as 6th Duke of Norfolk
(1628-1684).

The 7th Duke of Norfolk (1655-1701) is remembered for a
witty remark he is reputed to have made to James II,
²⁷
and for the
notorious affair his wife had with that handsome soldier of fortune,
Sir John Germain. The Duchess's adultery was flaunted about town
in a way which made a laughing-stock of the poor Duke. Germain
would frequently stay at one of the Norfolks' country seats, where he
was allocated a bedroom adjacent to the Duchess's own bedroom. The
two rooms communicated by a false cupboard, which one walked
into, then climbed over a wooden partition, and walked out of again
into the next room. The partition inside the cupboard was six feet
high, but did not reach the ceiling. One day the Duke came unex­pectedly to his wife's bedroom, and finding the door locked,
demanded entry. Germain was of course in bed with her. He had
time only to leap out of bed, and on to the partition, where he sat
perilously and uncomfortably, naked but for a shirt, not daring to
drop down the other side for fear that he would be heard. To make
matters worse, the Duchess's pet lap-dog followed him to the par­tition, and barked at him all the time, wagging his tail and thoroughly
enjoying the fun. The Duke, strange to say, in spite of the racket,
did not discover Germain hiding on his perch.
²⁸
The affair finally exploded in the courts in 1692. The Duke sued
Germain for damages "for lying with the Duchess", claiming
£100,000. He won his case, but the jury awarded him a miserable
100 marks only, presumably because they knew that he had a mistress
himself and London was anyway bored with the spectacle of the Duke
and Duchess fighting over lovers. The judge fulminated against him,
telling the jury that "he was sorry the world should know how low
virtue and chastity were held in England".
²⁹
Anne Bagnalls wrote:
"The town rings of the Duke of Norfolk's divorce, which will come
to nothing but publishing each other's infamy."
³⁰
How right she was.

The Duke died of apoplexy at the age of forty-six, and was suc­ceeded by his nephews the 8th Duke (1683-1732) and the 9th Duke
(1686-1777),
^w
ho was a timid mouse of a man, married to a
shrewish virago of a Duchess. It was she who gave the orders, he
who obeyed. She was practically Duke of Norfolk herself, and was
even called "My Lord Duchess" by those with a sense of humour. At a
house-warming party she gave, which "all the earth" attended,
Walpole says that "there was all the company afraid of the Duchess,
and the Duke afraid of all the company".
³¹
Lady A. Irwin corrobo­rates the impression of a Laurel and Hardy marriage. The Duchess,
she says, "must act the man where talking is necessary".
³²

At all events, the marriage was childless, but so many Howards
were about that there was no danger of the dukedom becoming
extinct. It passed to his second cousin, son of Mr Charles Howard,
who as 10th Duke of Norfolk (1720-1786) was another eccentric
figure of the elegant eighteenth century, a "drunken old mad fellow"
who "dressed like a Cardinal".
³³
But his eccentricity was tame com­pared with the wild excesses of his son the nth Duke, a theatrical,
extravagant character who is one of those larger-than-life aristocrats,
like the 4th Duke of Queensberry (Old Q), whose personality
elbows all others off the pages of social history.

The 11th Duke of Norfolk (1746-1815) was corpulent, sweaty,
muscle-bound, and graceless. He moved, dressed, and ate in a clumsy
manner, was perpetually drunk, and never washed. "In cleanliness
he was negligent to so great a degree", writes someone who knew
him well, "that he rarely made use of water for purposes of bodily
refreshment and comfort. He even carried the neglect of his person
so far, that his servants were accustomed to avail themselves of his
fits of intoxicati.cn, for the purpose of washing him." The servants
would lay him out on the floor, undress him, and wash him head to
toe while he was semi-conscious, or indeed out cold. He would other­wise presumably have smelt intolerably. He complained one day to

Dudley North that he suffered badly from rheumatism, and had
tried every remedy without effect. "Pray, my Lord," said North, "did
you ever try a clean shirt ?"
³⁴

"Jockey of Norfolk" or "The Jockey", as the nth Duke was
called, surpassed all competitors in the consumption of wine. He was
the most famous drunk of the eighteenth century. The Duke's capa­city to drink anyone under the table, and then proceed to another
party to start all over again, was well known. He could drink five
or six times as much as anyone else before he would feel the effect.
When finally the wine overcame him, after perhaps a whole night of
debauchery to which drinking was only a prologue, he would collapse
at dawn in the streets, where his harassed servants would find him
sleeping peacefully in the gutter or on a bench.

His boon companion in these excesses was the Prince of Wales.
Together, the Prince and the Duke were frequently seen, arms sup­porting each other, staggering up the street. Years later, the Prince
and his royal brothers determined to make the Duke so drunk that
he would forfeit his crown as champion imbiber. He was invited to a
drinking party at the Pavilion in Brighton. He drove over from
Arundel Castle, with his famous equipage of grey horses. Tumblers
of wine were mixed with tumblers of brandy, the old man drinking
one glass with everyone singly, so that he finished by consuming about
ten times more than anyone else. The companions fell one by one like
ninepins, and the Duke continued, unsteady but standing. Finally, he
said he must go home, called for his carriage, and slumped within it.
The royal princes, aching with merriment and swooning against the
walls, waved him off, having instructed the coachman to drive him
round in circles. The poor old Duke thought he was going home to
Arundel, but he was driven around and around the Brighton Pavilion
for half an hour, fell out at the end of the "journey", and into a bed,
waking up the next morning to find he had been tricked into staying
the night.
³⁵

Parallel with astonishing capacity for wine, Jockey possessed in
equal measure an infinitely expandable stomach. He was the greatest
gourmand of his time and the most venerated member of the Beef­steak Club, where he was always ceremoniously ushered to a Chair of
State some steps higher than the rest of the diners. He would get
through two or three steaks more quickly than they could be served
up to him, and when it appeared that he could not possibly take any
more, he would clean his plate ready for a fourth. Amazingly, his
conversation seems not to have suffered from the onslaught. The
strongest port failed to deaden his culture or wit.