LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM.
(Vol. iii., p. 185.)
The following observations, though slight in themselves, may tend to show that Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, was, or professed to be, a Protestant.
1st. On his embassy to Spain, Carte says (I quote from Collins's Peerage, vol. iv. p. 272.)—
"On Friday the last of this Month His Catholick Majesty ratified the peace upon Oath in a great chamber of the palace.... It was pretended that the Clergy would not suffer this to be done in a Church or Chapel where the neglect of reverence of the Holy Sacrament would give scandal."
I presume the "neglect of reverence" was apprehended in the case of the English ambassador.
2nd. In Fuller's Worthies (Surrey), speaking of Lord Nottingham, it is said—
"He lived to be very aged, who wrote 'man,' (if not married) in the first of Queen Elizabeth, being an invited guest at the solemn consecration of Matthew Parker at Lambeth; and many years after, by his testimony, confuted those lewd and loud lies which the papists tell of the Nag's Head in Cheapside."
3rd. He was one of the commissioners on the trial of Garnet and others; and told him, as he stood in a box made like a pulpit—
"Sir, you have this day done more good in that pulpit wherein you now stand, than you have done in any other pulpit all the days of your life."—Archæologia, vol. xv.
His coffin-plate has been engraved somewhere, and, if his will exists, it might probably settle the question.
Q. D.
Lord Howard of Effingham (Vol. iii., p. 185.).—There is some proof that he was a Protestant in the letter of instructions to him from King James (Biog. Brit., p. 2679.):
"Only we forewarn you, that in the performance of that ceremony, which is likely to be done in the King's (of Spain) chapel, you have especial care that it be not done in the forenoon, in the time of mass, to the scandal of our religion; but rather in the afternoon, at what time their service is more free from note of superstition."
May Lord Effingham have changed his religion between the Armada and his mission to Spain?
C. B.