Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel

The Earl of Arundel
Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens.
Spouse(s)	Alethea Talbot
Issue
William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford Henry Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel James Howard, Lord Maltravers
Noble family	House of Howard
Father	Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel
Mother	Anne Dacre
Born	7 July 1585
Died	4 October 1646 Tower Hill, London, England

Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel KG, (7 July 1585 – 4 October 1646) was a prominent English courtier during the reigns of King James I and King Charles I, but he made his name as a Grand Tourist and art collector rather than as a politician. When he died he possessed 700 paintings, along with large collections of sculpture, books, prints, drawings, and antique jewellery. Most of his collection of marble carvings, known as the Arundelian Marbles, was eventually left to the University of Oxford.

He is sometimes referred as the 2nd Earl of Arundel; it depends on whether one views the earldom obtained by his father as a new creation or not. He was also 2nd or 4th Earl of Surrey, and later, he was created 1st Earl of Norfolk. Also known as 'the Collector Earl'.

Biography

Arundel was born in relative penury, his aristocratic family having fallen into disgrace during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I owing to their religious conservatism and involvement in plots against the Queen. He was the son of Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel and Anne Dacre, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre of Gilsland. He never knew his father, who was imprisoned before Arundel was born.

Peter Paul Rubens: Alathea Talbot, 1620

Arundel's great-uncles returned the family to favour after James I ascended the throne, and Arundel was restored to his titles and some of his estates in 1604. Other parts of the family lands ended up with his great-uncles. The next year he married Lady Alatheia (or Alethea) Talbot, a daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, and a granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick. She would inherit a vast estate in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire, including Sheffield, which has been the principal part of the family fortune ever since. Even with this large income, Arundel's collecting and building activities would lead him heavily into debt.

During the reign of Charles I, Arundel served several times as special envoy to some of the great courts of Europe. These trips encouraged his interest in art collecting.

In 1642 he accompanied Princess Mary for her marriage to William II of Orange. With the troubles that would lead to the Civil War brewing, he decided not to return to England, and instead settled first in Antwerp and then into a villa near Padua, in Italy. He died there in 1646, having returned to Roman Catholicism he nominally abandoned on joining the Privy Council, and was succeeded as Earl by his eldest son Henry Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel who was the ancestor of the Dukes of Norfolk and Baron Mowbray. His youngest son William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford-the ancestor of what was first the Earl of Stafford and later Baron Stafford.

Arundel had petitioned the king for restoration of the ancestral Dukedom of Norfolk. While the restoration was not to occur until the time of his grandson, he was created Earl of Norfolk in 1644, which at least ensured the title would stay with his family. Arundel also got Parliament to entail his earldoms to the descendants of the 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Collector and art patron

Arundel commissioned portraits of himself or his family by contemporary masters such as Daniel Mytens, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Lievens, and Anthony Van Dyck. He acquired other paintings by Hans Holbein, Adam Elsheimer, Mytens, Rubens, and Honthorst.

He collected drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, the two Holbeins, Raphael, Parmigianino, Wenceslaus Hollar, and Dürer. Many of these are now at the Royal Library at Windsor Castle or at Chatsworth.

He had a large collection of antique sculpture, the Arundel Marbles mostly Roman, but including some he had excavated in the Greek world, which was then the most important in England, and was later bequeathed to Oxford University. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum.

The architect Inigo Jones accompanied Arundel on one of his trips to Italy 1613-14, a journey which took both men as far as Naples. In the Veneto Arundel saw the work of Palladio which was to become so influential to Jones's later career. Soon after the latter's return to England he became Surveyor to the King's Works.

Amongst Arundel's circle of scholarly and literary friends were James Ussher, William Harvey, John Selden and Francis Bacon.

Children

• James Howard, Lord Maltravers (1607–1624)
• Henry Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel (1608–1652)
• William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (1614–1680)

External links

• Rubens' portrait of the Earl, at the National Gallery
• Van Dyck's portrait at the Getty Museum
• Mytens' portrait at the National Portrait Gallery
• Portrait of Thomas Howard, count of Arundel and his wife Alathea Talbot Sir Anthony Van Dyck
•  "Howard, Thomas (1586-1646)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

Sources

• Mary Hervey, The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (Cambridge, 1921).
• David Howarth, Lord Arundel and his Circle (New Haven and London, 1985).
• Edward Chaney, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion (Geneva, 1985).
• Edward Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour, 2nd ed (London, 2000).
• Ernest B. Gilman, Recollecting the Arundel Circle (New York, 2002).
• Edward Chaney, 'Evelyn, Inigo Jones, and the Collector Earl of Arundel', John Evelyn and his Milieu, eds. F. Harris and M. Hunter (British Library, 2003).
• Edward Chaney ed., The Evolution of English Collecting (New Haven and London, 2003)
• Edward Chaney, Inigo Jones's 'Roman Sketchbook', 2 vols (London, 2006).
• Edward Chaney, "Roma Britannica and the Cultural Memory of Egypt: Lord Arundel and the Obelisk of Domitian", in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, eds. D. Marshall, K. Wolfe and S. Russell, British School at Rome, 2011, pp. 147–70.

Political offices
Preceded by The Earl of Dorset	Custos Rotulorum of Sussex bef. 1608 – 1636	Succeeded by Lord Maltravers
Preceded by Sir Philip Woodhouse, Bt	Custos Rotulorum of Norfolk 1617 – 1636
Preceded by Sir Francis Howard	Custos Rotulorum of Surrey 1624 – 1636
In commission	Earl Marshal 1622 – 1646	Succeeded by The Earl of Arundel
Preceded by The Earl of Cumberland The Lord Clifford The Earl of Suffolk The Earl of Northumberland	Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland jointly with Lord Maltravers The Earl of Cumberland The Lord Clifford The Earl of Suffolk The Earl of Northumberland 1632 – 1639	Succeeded by The Earl of Northumberland
	Lord Lieutenant of Westmorland jointly with Lord Maltravers The Earl of Cumberland The Lord Clifford The Earl of Suffolk The Earl of Northumberland 1632 – 1639	Succeeded by The Earl of Cumberland The Lord Clifford
	Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland jointly with Lord Maltravers 1632–1642 The Earl of Cumberland 1632–1639 The Lord Clifford 1632–1639 The Earl of Suffolk 1632–1639 The Earl of Northumberland 1632–1639 1632–1642	Vacant English Interregnum
Preceded by The Earl of Northampton	Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk jointly with Lord Maltravers 1633–1642 1615–1642
Preceded by The Earl of Nottingham The Viscount Wimbledon	Lord Lieutenant of Surrey jointly with The Earl of Nottingham 1635–1642 The Viscount Wimbledon 1635–1638 Lord Maltravers 1636–1642 1635–1642
Vacant Title last held by The Earl of Pembroke	Lord Steward 1640–1644	Succeeded by The Duke of Richmond and Lennox
Legal offices
Preceded by The 6th Earl of Rutland	Justice in Eyre north of the Trent 1632–1646	Succeeded by The 8th Earl of Rutland
Peerage of England
Vacant Forfeit in 1589 Title last held by Philip Howard	Earl of Arundel restored 1604–1646	Succeeded by Henry Howard
Vacant Forfeit in 1572 Title last held by Thomas Howard	Earl of Surrey 3rd creation, restored 1604–1646
New creation	Earl of Norfolk 5th creation 1644 – 1646

Persondata
Name	Arundel, Thomas Howard, 21st Earl Of
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	7 July 1585
Place of birth
Date of death	4 October 1646
Place of death	Tower Hill, London, England