Gloucester, March 24.
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."