Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, (10 March 1473 – 25 August 1554) was a politician and military officer of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, Norfolk was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
He was released on the accession of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I, whom he aided in securing the throne, thus setting the stage for tensions between his Catholic family and the Protestant royal line that would be continued by Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth I.
Early life
Thomas was the son of Sir Thomas Howard, later 2nd Duke of Norfolk, with his first wife, Elizabeth Tilney, the daughter of Sir Frederick Tilney and widow of Sir Humphrey Bourchier, and the grandson of John Howard, 1st Baron Howard, later 1st Duke of Norfolk. Through his great-grandmother Margaret Mowbray, Howard was a descendant of Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, the sixth son of King Edward I of England. Through his great-grandfather Sir Robert Howard, of Tendring Hall, Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, Howard was descended from Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, the second son of King John, who had an illegitimate son, named Richard (died 1296), whose daughter, Joan of Cornwall, married Sir John Howard (d. shortly July 1331). Likewise, through his ancestor Isabel d'Aubigny, wife of John Fitzalan, 3rd Lord of Clun and Oswestry, Howard was descended from Roger Bigod, the first Lord of Norfolk after the Norman Conquest. In 1483, his father and grandfather were created Earl of Surrey and Duke of Norfolk respectively in reward for their loyalty to the Duke of Gloucester, who became King Richard III after usurping the throne from his nephews, the sons of Edward IV, and in 1485 the Howards fought on the side of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, where the 1st Duke lost his life and the Earl of Surrey was badly wounded. As the battle resulted in the accession of Henry VII Tudor, the Howards' loyalty to the losing side resulted in the forfeiture of their titles and most of their properties. Nevertheless, they soon began to be rehabilitated, and in 1489 Thomas' father was restored as Earl of Surrey.
In April 1497 his mother died, and in August of that year, by papal dispensation, his father married for the second time Agnes Tilney, Thomas' mother's cousin.
Howard was an able soldier, and was often employed in military operations. In 1497, he served in a campaign against the Scots under the command of his father, who knighted him on 30 September 1497. He was made a Knight of the Garter after the accession of his nephew by marriage, King Henry VIII, and became the King's close companion, with lodgings at court. His first wife, Anne of York, daughter of Edward IV and thereby Henry's aunt, died in November 1511, and early in 1513, Howard married Elizabeth Stafford, the daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Eleanor Percy, and the granddaughter of Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. Through his mother Katherine Woodville, Elizabeth's father was a first cousin to Howard's first wife. On 4 May 1513, he was appointed Lord High Admiral, a position previously held by his brother, Edward Howard, who had died on 25 April, to combat the French navy. Surrey and his sons Thomas and Edmund had hoped to lead the English expedition against France, but were left behind when the King departed for Calais at the end of June. Shortly thereafter King James IV of Scotland launched an invasion into England (despite being married to Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII) in fulfilment of his alliance with France, and Thomas along with his brother Edmund, joined their father and the barons Dacre and Monteagle in leading the army, which despite their numerical inferiority, managed to decisively crush the Scottish forces at the Battle of Flodden, near Branxton, Northumberland, on 9 September. The Scots lost thousands of men, and James IV lost his life in the battle.
Leading the victorious forces at Flodden gave the Howards enormous prestige both socially and at court, and the Howard coat of arms was changed in honour of the victory, incorporating the Scottish lion pierced through the mouth with an arrow within a double tressure flory-counterflory-gules, an emblem of the Scottish royal arms granted by Scottish kings on rare occasions as a special mark of favour. The grant to Howard was thus a blatant heraldic insult to the kings of Scotland. On 1 February 1514, Howard's father, then Earl of Surrey, was created Duke of Norfolk (technically a new creation, but treated for all practical purposes as a recreation of the forfeited title previously held by his father), and by letters patent issued on the same day, Howard was created Earl of Surrey. Both were granted lands in support of their new dignities, although Henry, ever cautious of rivals, scattered the grants across the realm to prevent a Howard landed base in East Anglia. Over the next few years, the younger Thomas Howard served King Henry VIII in a variety of ways. In September 1514, he escorted the King's sister Mary to France for her forthcoming marriage to King Louis XII of France. In 1517, he quelled a May Day riot in London with the use of soldiers.
Rise to power
On 10 March 1520 Howard was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. By July 1520, he entered upon the thankless task of endeavouring to keep Ireland in order. His letters contain accounts of attempts to pacify the rival factions of Gerald FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Kildare and Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormonde, and are full of demands for more money and troops.
At the end of 1521 Surrey was recalled from Ireland to take command of the English fleet in naval operations against France. His ships were ill-provisioned, and his attack consisted of a series of raids near the French coast for the purpose of inflicting as much damage as possible on the French navy. Howard's ships besieged the strategic port of Brest but when he abandoned the siege, he left Vice-Admiral William FitzWilliam on station to blockade the port. The English navy patrolled the Brittany coast for the next three months, but was unable to gain a decisive victory even with their Spanish allies. In July 1522, the forces commanded by Surrey burned Morlaix, and over the next few months razed everything around Boulogne, until the winter caused the fleet to withdraw to England. The sea patrol was abandoned with little achieved.Dollinger, German Hansa, pp.303–4; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, pp.180–2; Rodger, Safeguard, p.174
On 4 December 1522, Howard was made Lord High Treasurer upon his father's resignation of the office, and on 21 May 1524, he succeeded his father as Duke of Norfolk. His liking for war brought him into conflict with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who preferred diplomacy in the conduct of foreign affairs. In 1523, Wolsey had secured to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk the reversion of the office of Earl Marshal by Howard's father, and in 1525, he was replaced as Lord Admiral by Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, the King's illegitimate but acknowledged son, who a few years later became Norfolk's son-in-law. Finding himself pushed aside, Howard spent considerable time away from court between 1525 and 1527–28.
In the mid-1520s, Howard's niece, Anne Boleyn, had caught the eye of King Henry VIII, thereby reviving his political fortunes with his involvement in the King's attempt to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. By 1529, matters of state were being increasingly handled by Norfolk, his brother-in-law Thomas Boleyn, and the Duke of Suffolk, who pressed King Henry VIII to remove Cardinal Wolsey. In October, the King sent Howard and the Duke of Suffolk to obtain the great seal from the Cardinal.
In early 1530, Anne Boleyn was promoting a marriage between her first cousin and eldest son of Norfolk, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and the King's daughter, Princess Mary. The Duke was enthusiastic about the match as it might give him greater political influence at court and put his family closer to the throne. Boleyn may have considered the match to be a way of neutralising the threat Mary posed to the succession of any children Anne might have by the King. But she changed her mind, fearing that the Duke could use the match to support Mary's claim to the throne as well as supporting Catherine of Aragon in the annulment proceedings which were still continuing, and thereby prevent the Church of England's break from Rome. By October 1530, Boleyn persuaded her reluctant uncle to arrange instead for Surrey to marry Frances de Vere, one of the daughters of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford with his second wife, Elizabeth Trussell.
In November 1530, Wolsey was arrested but while on his way from York to London the Cardinal became seriously ill and died in Leicester. Howard benefited from Wolsey's fall, becoming the King's leading councillor and applying himself energetically in the King's efforts to find a way out of his marriage to Queen Catherine.
Later career
Assisting the King in the annulment of his first marriage, added to his extensive loyalty and services to the Crown, brought Howard extensive rewards in the form of monastic lands in Norfolk and Suffolk, employment on diplomatic missions, and being named a knight of the French Order of St Michael in 1532 and Earl Marshal of England on 28 May 1533. In November of that same year, his daughter Mary was married to the Duke of Richmond, Henry FitzRoy, a union that was politically advantageous to Norfolk. Given that Henry VIII did not yet have a legitimate male heir and Princess Mary had been removed from the line of succession, Richmond was seen by many as a potential heir to the throne. The marriage was never consummated by order of the King due to the youth of the couple, and it was then cut short by FitzRoy's death in 1536.Nicola Clark, Gender, Family, and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485–1558, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 145.
Thomas Howard's marriage to his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, which had apparently been mutually affectionate at first, deteriorated in 1527 when he took a mistress, Elizabeth Holland (died 1547/8), whom he installed in the Howard household. Lady Elizabeth formally separated from her husband in the 1530s. She claimed that in March 1534, the Duke of Norfolk 'locked me up in a chamber, [and] took away my jewels and apparel'. Howard then moved her to Redbourn, Hertfordshire, where she lived as a virtual prisoner with a modest annual allowance of only £200. She also claimed to have been physically maltreated by Howard and his household servants.;
On 10 March 1536, the Earl of Surrey's eldest son Thomas was born. On 2 May of the same year, Anne Boleyn and her brother George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford were arrested by order of the King. They were tried in the great hall of the Tower of London. Norfolk presided over the trial as Lord High Steward. The Boleyn siblings were sentenced to death; Rochford was executed on 17 May, and Anne two days later. Following his niece's fall from grace, Howard's power and influence at court waned for a time.
In July, the Duke of Richmond, Norfolk's only son-in-law, died at the age of 17 and was buried at Thetford Priory, one of the Howard properties.