R. W. Emerson, (English Traits, § xi).

Political Exile and Foreign Travel under Elizabeth, and under James.—Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.—The Consolations of Connoisseurship.—Vicissitudes of the Arundel Museum.—The gifts of Henry Howard to the Royal Society.

Book 1, Chap. IV. The Collector of the Arundelian MSS.

The Collector of the Arundel Marbles and Founder of the Arundel Library was the great-grandson of that twenty-first Earl of Arundel (Henry Fitzalan) by whom had been collected the choicest portion of the library which passed, in 1609, from the possession of John, Lord Lumley, to that of Henry, Prince of Wales. |chap. iii, p. 162| That Earl had profited by the opportunities which the dissolution of the monasteries presented so abundantly to collectors at home. The new Earl profited, in his turn, by larger and far more varied opportunities, offered to him during a long course of travel abroad. For himself, his travels ripened and expanded a somewhat crude and irregular education. He attained, at length, and in a much greater degree (as it seems) than any of his contemporaries, to that liberal culture which enabled him to appreciate, and to teach his countrymen to appreciate, the arts from which Greece and Italy had derived so much of their glory; whilst in England those arts had, as yet, done very little either to enhance the enjoyments and consolations of human life, or to call into action powers and aptitudes which had long lain dormant. It is not claiming too much for the Earl of Arundel to say that of whatever, upon a fair estimate, England may be thought to owe to its successful cultivation of the Arts of Design, he was the first conspicuous promoter. Nor is his rank as a pioneer in the encouragement of the systematic study of archæology—a study so fruitful of far-reaching result—less eminent.

Foreign Travel, under Tudors and Stuarts.

He may also be regarded as setting, by the course he took with his own children, the fashion of foreign travel, as a necessary complement of the education of men of rank and social position. The example became very influential, and in a sphere far broader than the artistic one. Under Elizabeth, the Englishmen best known on the Continent had been political exiles. Most of them were men self-banished. Many of them passed their lives in defaming and plotting against the country they had left. The jealous restrictions upon the liberty of travel imposed by the Government rarely kept at home the men of mischief, but were probably much more successful in confining men whose free movements would have been fruitful in good alike to the countries they visited and to their own. The altered circumstances which ensued upon the accession of James notoriously gave facilities to wider Continental intercourse; and it was by men who followed very much in Lord Arundel’s track that some of the best social results of that intercourse were won.

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Surrey, and Norfolk, was twentieth in lineal descent from that William de Albini who, in the year 1139, had acquired the Castle and Earldom of Arundel by virtue of his marriage with the widow of King Henry the First. He was born at Finchingfield, in Essex, in 1585,—a date which nearly marks the period of lowest depression in the strangely varied fortunes of an illustrious family. |Thomas, D. of Norfolk to his son Philip, &c., MS. Harl., 787.| Philip, Earl of Arundel, the father of Earl Thomas, was already in the Tower, and was experiencing, in great bitterness, the truth of words written to him by his own father, when in like circumstances:—‘Look into all Chronicles, and you shall find that, in the end, high degree brings heaps of cares, toils in the State, and most commonly (in the end) utter overthrow.’ Before Thomas Howard had reached his fifth year his mother—co-heiress of the ‘Dacres of the North’—had to write to the Lord Treasury Burghley: ‘Extremytye inforceth me to crave succour,’ and to illustrate her assertion by a detail of miseries.

The hopes with which the Stuart accession was naturally anticipated by all the Howards, were by some of them more than realized, but the heir of Arundel was not of that number. He was, indeed, restored in blood to such honours as his father, Earl Philip, had enjoyed, and also to the baronies forfeited by his grandfather, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, in 1572. But the dignities were restored without the lands. His nearest relations profited by their influence at Court to obtain grants of his chief ancestral estates. The Earls of Nottingham, Northampton,[[30]] and Suffolk had each of them a share in the spoil;—salving their consciences, probably, by the reflection that, despite his poverty, their young kinsman had made a great marriage. For his alliance, in 1606, with Lady Aletheia Talbot, daughter and co-heir of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, had already brought to him considerable means in hand, and a vast estate in prospect. The marriage, in higher respects, was also a happy one. But a natural and eager desire to recover what his father had forfeited cast much anxiety over years otherwise felicitous. He could not regain even Arundel House in London, until he had paid £4000 for it to the Earl of Nottingham.

Arundel at Court.

Lord Arundel made his first appearance at Court in 1605. In May, 1611, he was created a Knight of the Garter. Thirteen years of James’ reign had passed before the Earl was admitted to the Privy Council. This honour was conferred upon him in July, 1616. Five years more were to pass before his restoration to his hereditary office of Earl Marshal of England, although he had been made one of six Commissioners for the discharge of its duties in October, 1616. The baton was at length (29th August, 1621) delivered to him at Theobalds. |Domestic Corresp., James I, 1621, 21 July. (R. H.)| ‘The King,’ wrote John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, when communicating the news, ‘would have given him £2000 a year pension withal, but—whatsoever the reason was—he would accept but the ordinary fee, which is twenty pounds per annum.’ It is plain, however, that this assertion was an error. According to the ancient constitution of the Earl Marshal’s office there were certain fees accruing from it which were now, under new regulations, to cease. The question arose, Shall the Earl Marshal be compensated by pension, or (according to a pernicious fashion of the age) by the grant, or lease, of a customs duty upon some largely vended commodity? |Minutes of Correspondence in Sec. Conway’s Letter Book; (R. H.) and Council Books (C. O.).| The ‘impost of currants’ was eventually fixed upon. But the Earl had subsequent occasion to adduce evidence before a Committee of the Privy Council, that the rent paid to the King sometimes exceeded the aggregate duty collected from the merchants.[[31]]