Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel

Armoured portrait by Rubens

Arundel was born in relative penury, at Finchingfield in Essex on 7 July 1585.[1] His aristocratic family had 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, 13th 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, and owing to his father's attainder he was initially styled Lord Maltravers.[2]

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.

Arundel was an effective diplomat during the reign of James I. After coming to court, he travelled abroad, acquiring his taste for art.[2]

He was created Knight of the Garter in 1611. In 1613 he escorted Elizabeth, the electress consort Palatine, to Heidelberg as part of her marriage celebrations, and again visited Italy. On Christmas Day 1615 he joined the Church of England, and took office, being appointed a Privy Councillor in 1616. He supported Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition to Guiana in 1617, became a member of the New England Plantations Committee in 1620 and planned the colonization of Madagascar.

Arundel presided over the House of Lords Committee in April 1621 for investigating the corruption charges against Francis Bacon, whom he defended from degradation from the peerage, and at whose fall he was appointed a commissioner of the Great Seal. On 16 May 1621 he was briefly sent to the Tower of London by the Lords on account of insulting Baron Spencer by referring to their respective ancestry. He then incurred Prince Charles's and the Duke of Buckingham's anger by his opposition to the (proposed) war with Spain in 1624, and by his share in the duke's impeachment.

On the marriage of his son Henry to Lady Elizabeth Stewart (daughter of Esmé Stewart, 3rd Duke of Lennox) without the king's approval, he was imprisoned in the Tower by Charles I, shortly after his accession, but was released at the instance of the Lords in June 1626, being again confined to his house till March 1628, when he was once more liberated by the Lords. In the debates on the Petition of Right, while approving its essential demands, he supported the retention of some discretionary power by the king in committing to prison. The same year he was reconciled to the king and again made a privy councillor.

On 29 August 1621 Arundel had been appointed Earl Marshal, and in 1623 Constable of England, in 1630 reviving the earl marshal's court. He was sent to The Hague in 1632 on a mission of condolence to the king's sister, Elizabeth Stuart, recently Queen of Bohemia, on her husband's death. In 1634 he was made justice in eyre of the forests north of the Trent; he accompanied Charles the same year to Scotland on the occasion of his coronation. In 1635 he was made Lord Lieutenant of Surrey.

In 1636 Arundel undertook an unsuccessful mission to the emperor Ferdinand II to procure the restitution of the Palatinate to the young elector, Charles Louis, the Queen of Bohemia's son.. In 1638 he was entrusted with the charge of the forts on the border with Scotland, and, supporting alone amongst the peers the war against the Scots, was made general of the king's forces in the first Bishops' War, though "he had nothing martial about him but his presence and looks."[3] He was not employed in the second Bishops' War, but in August 1640 was nominated captain general south of the Trent.

Arundel was appointed Lord Steward of the royal household in April 1640, and in 1641 as lord high steward presided at the trial of the Earl of Strafford. This closed his public career. He became again estranged from the court, and in 1641 he escorted Marie de' Medici home.[2] 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 at a villa near Padua, in Italy. He contributed a sum of £34,000 to the king's cause, and suffered severe losses in the war.[2] He died in Padua in 1646, having returned to the Roman Catholicism he nominally abandoned on joining the Privy Council, and was buried in Arundel. He was succeeded as Earl by his eldest son Henry Howard, 15th Earl of Arundel who was the ancestor of the Dukes of Norfolk and Baron Mowbray. His youngest son William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford was 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 his grandfather the 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Thomas's trips as special envoy to some of the great courts of Europe further encouraged his interest in art collecting. He became noted as a patron and collector of works of art, described by Walpole as "the father of virtu in England",[4] and was a member of the Whitehall group of connoisseurs associated with Charles I.[5] He 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

Among Arundel's circle of scholarly and literary friends were James Ussher, William Harvey, John Selden and Francis Bacon. The architect Inigo Jones accompanied Arundel on one of his trips to Italy in 1613 and 1614, 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.

Arundel 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. His acquisitions, which also included fragments, pictures, gems, coins, books and manuscripts, were deposited at Arundel House, and suffered considerable damage during the Civil War; due to the war and subsequent neglect nearly half of the marbles were destroyed. After his death the remaining treasures were dispersed. The marble and statue collection was later bequeathed to Oxford University.[2] It is now in the Ashmolean Museum.

An inventory of Arundel's paintings was prepared in 1655 following the death of the Countess of Arundel. It was published as part of Mary Hervey's collected edition of his correspondence.

The coins and medals were bought by Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchilsea, and dispersed in 1696; the library, at the instance of John Evelyn, who feared its total loss, was given to the Royal Society, and a part, consisting of genealogical and heraldic collections, to the College of Heralds, the manuscript portion of the Royal Society's portion being transferred to the British Museum in 1831.[6]

In 1995, the J.Paul Getty Museum mounted an exhibition on Thomas Howard's and his wife Aletheia's extensive art collection.

Arundel's important collection of manuscripts passed on his death to his son, the 15th Earl, and later to his grandson, Henry Howard (afterwards 6th Duke of Norfolk). In 1666, Howard divided the collection between the Royal Society and the College of Arms. The Royal Society sold its portion to the British Museum in 1831, and they now form the Arundel manuscripts within the British Library.[7]

With his wife Alethea (married 1606) he had six children, only three survived[8]

• James Howard, Lord Maltravers (1607–1624)
• Henry Howard, 15th Earl of Arundel (1608–1652)
• William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (1614–1680)

• Jaffe, David., Allen,Denise., Kolb., Ariane.F., Kleeman, Eva., Foister, Susan., et.al. The Earl and Countess of Arundel: Renaissance Collectors (Apollo Magazine publication, 1996).
• Chaney, Edward, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion (Geneva, 1985).
• Chaney, Edward, The Evolution of the Grand Tour, 2nd ed (London, 2000).
• Chaney, Edward, 'Evelyn, Inigo Jones, and the Collector Earl of Arundel', John Evelyn and his Milieu, eds. F. Harris and M. Hunter (British Library, 2003).
• Chaney, Edward ed., The Evolution of English Collecting (New Haven and London, 2003)
• Chaney, Edward, Inigo Jones's 'Roman Sketchbook', 2 vols (London, 2006).
• Chaney, Edward, "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.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Arundel, Earls of". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 706–709.
• Hervey, M.F.S. (1921). The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel "Father of Vertu in England". Kraus Reprint Company. ISBN 978-0-527-39800-2. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
• Howarth, David, Lord Arundel and his Circle (New Haven and London, 1985).
• Gilman, Ernest B., Recollecting the Arundel Circle (New York, 2002).
• Thomas Howard is portrayed in Le Voleur d'éternité, la vie aventureuse de William Petty, Robert Laffont, 2004, by Alexandra Lapierre, a French novelist.

• 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
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1891). "Howard, Thomas (1586-1646)" . Dictionary of National Biography. 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co.