FITZALAN, HENRY

Twelfth Earl of Arundel; b. c. 1511; d. Feb. 24, 1580 (O.S. 1579). henry viii was his godfather and Fitzalan spent his early career in his service. He served as governor of Calais (1540–43), expending his energy and his own money in improving the town's military strength. The title came to him at the death of his father in January 1544. At the siege of Boulogne he was "marshall of the field" and led the storming of the town. On his return to England he was appointed lord chamberlain, a post he filled for the rest of Henry VIII's reign. During the reign of Edward VI, first Protector Somerset and then the earl of Warwick succeeded in destroying Fitzalan's influence in the government. When Edward VI died, he feigned cooperation with Warwick while contriving to secure the accession of mary tudor. Under Queen Mary, he filled a variety of governmental and diplomatic positions. elizabeth i retained him in all the posts he had held in the previous reign, but he was not trusted. He led the Roman Catholic party, opposed the 1559 intervention in Scotland, favored lenient treatment for mary stuart at the time of her imprisonment, supported the plan to marry her to his widowed son-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk (father of Philip howard, who inherited the earldom of Arundel in 1580), and was aware of the Ridolfi Plot. As a result of his implication in the plot, he was placed under guard and did not secure his liberty until December 1572. He passed the remainder of his life in seclusion.

Bibliography: The Boke of Henrie, Earle of Arundel (Harleian MS 4107), printed in Jeffery's Antiquarian Repertory, v.2 (London 1807). m. a. tierney, The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, 2 v. (London 1834). p. hughes The Reformation in England (New York 1963).

[v. h. ponko]