Howard Library Manuscripts

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Introduction

	Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton
	Contents
	Related material (internal)
	Related material elsewhere
	Bibliography

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Catalogue

• Howard Library Manuscripts
• Howard Library MSS 1-5

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Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton

Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (1540-1614) was the second son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and younger brother of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Born at the zenith of his family's influence under Henry VIII, he suffered the trauma of his father's execution for treason in 1547, and his grandfather's imprisonment. Under Edward VI he was tutored by the Protestant martyrologist, John Fox, but a much deeper influence on both his religious outlook and his penchant for learning proved to be John White, the ardently Roman Catholic bishop of Lincoln, in whose household he was placed after the accession of Queen Mary and restoration of his grandfather as Duke of Norfolk. Under Elizabeth I, Henry Howard studied at Cambridge, graduating in 1564 and going on to read civil law, and to gain a reputation as a scholar. To his familiarity with Latin and Greek, he added a knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian. Uniquely for an Elizabethan nobleman, he taught for a time at the university, lecturing both on rhetoric and on civil law. His classical and legal education, and his training in rhetoric, are strongly apparent in the contents and organisation of his commonplace books.
Around 1570 Howard was drawn to court, but his career was blighted by his brother's execution in 1572 for plotting to put Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne, and by continuing suspicions about other members of his family, and about his own religious allegiance and contacts with Mary. These led to his arrest and imprisonment five times under Elizabeth. Frequently banished from court during the 1570's and 1580's, Howard resorted to scholarship to reingratiate himself, producing a flow of compositions upholding orthodoxy and royal authority, designed to flatter Elizabeth and win favour with her ministers. Few of his works appeared in print, however. The execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 ended recurrent suspicions that Howard was engaging in treasonable correspondence with her, and his position at court improved in the 1590's with the emergence of his cousin, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, as Elizabeth's favourite, and the polishing of his own skills as a trimmer, maintaining good relations with both Essex and Robert Cecil. Under James I, with whom he had conducted a long secret correspondence, Howard's fortunes brightened. He achieved a leading role at court - he has been well described as the consummate Jacobean courtier - and became an active privy councillor, playing a prominent part in affairs of state from 1603 until his death in 1614. He was made Earl of Northampton in 1604.

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Contents

Five manuscript commonplace books, in the hand of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (1540-1614), probably compiled in the late 16th century, and one 18th-century precedent book for the barony of Gilsland in Cumberland and a small adjoining area of Northumberland (part of the Howard of Naworth estates). The precedent book also includes a rental. The commonplace books are not volumes containing mainly quotations from published sources arranged under many subject headings. Rather, they contain more prolonged discussions of a limited number of topics, with summaries of and references to the opinions of published authors. In some cases at least, they probably represent a stage of Northampton's preliminary marshalling of materials for books he intended to write. Many passages are crossed out, apparently in the course of the compiler's progressive reorganisation of his materials.
The compiler's identity is not stated in any of the volumes, but was established by Dr. A.I. Doyle in 1992 from palaeographical evidence. Such readily apparent evidence for dating these manuscripts as is available from the contents would tend to suggest that they were compiled in the reign of Elizabeth rather than James, and probably around the 1580's; further research on the contents and the sources cited will be needed to date them more precisely. Much of the religious content seems rather carefully noncommital, although there are indications in the citation of Catholic sources, the inclusion of prayers for the dead, and the emphasis on confession and contrition that Howard's own religious beliefs were Roman Catholic.

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Accession details

These manuscripts form part of the library from Naworth Castle, Cumberland, being the residual undispersed portion of the library of Lord William Howard (1563-1640), together with a few later books, which was acquired by purchase from Sotheby's sale on 14 December 1992, with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the National Libraries, and a private donor. The bulk of the collection consists of printed books; these are the only manuscripts.
Evidence is lacking as to how and when the commonplace books became part of the Naworth library, but, after the execution of his brother, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Howard took charge of Norfolk's children, one of whom was Lord William Howard, who acquired the Naworth estates through his marriage to the heiress Elizabeth Dacre in 1577. When and why the precedent book became separated from the rest of the Howard of Naworth estate records (which are now also in Durham University Library) and strayed into the Naworth library is also not known.

Related material (internal)

Howard of Naworth Papers

Related material elsewhere

Manuscripts and papers of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton are widely dispersed, but see especially British Library MSS Arundel 300 ("A formularie of Psalmes and Prayers made by Henry Erle of Northampton, and writt by his owne hande") and Cotton Titus C.VI (manuscripts and papers of Northampton). Another of Northampton's commonplace books is at Castle Howard, Yorkshire.

Bibliography

Mathew, David, “The library at Naworth” in For Hilaire Belloc: essays in honour of his 72nd birthday, ed. Douglas Woodruff (London, 1942), 117-130
Moss, Ann, Printed common-place books and the structuring of renaissance thought (Oxford, 1996)
Peck, Linda Levy, Northampton: patronage and policy at the court of James I (London, 1982)
Rainey, Elizabeth, “The library of Lord William Howard (1563-1640) from Naworth Castle”, Friends of the National Libraries, Annual report for 1992, 20-23

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Catalogue

Howard Library Manuscripts