Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel

Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel
Name	Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel
Birth date	1629
Birth place	London
Death date	1694
Death place	Arundel
Nationality	English
Occupation	Peer, lawyer, statesman
Parents	Henry Howard, 15th Earl of Arundel; Lady Elizabeth Stuart

Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel was an English peer and legal figure active in the later seventeenth century who played roles in the affairs of the House of Lords, Westminster, and several prominent shire estates. His life intersected with leading families and institutions of Restoration England, including links to the Stuart dynasty, the Court of King Charles II, and provincial administrations such as the Sussex and Surrey counties. Noted for managing extensive inheritances and navigating complex succession disputes, he combined legal training with aristocratic responsibilities during the aftermath of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.

Early life and family

Born into the senior branch of the Howard family in 1629 in London, he was the son of Henry Howard, 15th Earl of Arundel, and Lady Elizabeth Stuart, herself connected to the House of Stuart and the network of Catholic and recusant nobility. The Howards traced ancestry to figures such as Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and links to royal marriages with the Tudor and Plantagenet houses. His childhood coincided with the rise of tensions between supporters of King Charles I and Parliamentarians like Oliver Cromwell, and his family estates experienced the repercussions of the English Civil War and the Interregnum.

Howard relations included alliances with the Seymour family, the Courtenay family, and other magnates of the West Country and Lancashire, which influenced marriage settlements and property claims. His upbringing involved exposure to leading recusant circles and to household networks that maintained connections with the Roman Catholic Church and with metropolitan legal advisers in London.

Education and legal career

He received legal education customary for aristocratic younger sons and heirs at institutions such as the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, or the Gray's Inn, and studied law in proximity to the Inns of Court where figures like Edward Coke and William Noy had shaped English jurisprudence. His training emphasized common law practice, conveyancing, and the management of entailments pertinent to large estates like Arundel Castle and manorial holdings in Sussex.

During the Restoration era he acted in matters before the Court of Chancery and the King's Bench, engaging with cases that involved trusts, titles, and the enforcement of settlements. His contemporaries included legal luminaries such as Sir Matthew Hale and judges who sat during the reigns of Charles II and James II. He corresponded with solicitors and stewards who administered the family demesnes and represented Howard interests in petitions to the Privy Council.

Political and public service

As a peer with a seat in the House of Lords, he participated in debates concerning the restitution of estates after the Restoration of the Monarchy and voted on measures affecting succession, taxation, and militia musters. He maintained local offices customary to the gentry class, serving where appointed as a justice of the peace in counties like Sussex and participating in quarter sessions alongside figures from the shire gentry.

His parliamentary activity intersected with national events such as the Exclusion Crisis and the later constitutional settlement following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He engaged with factions around leading politicians including Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and ministers of the Cabinet during the reigns of Charles II and William III. In provincial administration he worked with commissioners for assessment, militia captains, and tax commissioners tasked by the Treasury.

Inheritance and estates

He inherited the earldom and vast properties including family seats such as Arundel Castle, principal manors across Sussex, and interests in urban holdings in London. The administration of these assets required negotiating dowries, entails, and life interests arising from marriages with the Pelham and Fitzalan connections. He managed revenues from agricultural rents, timber rights in ancient parks, and coal or mineral leases where applicable, employing estate stewards and solicitors to assert rights in the Court of Exchequer when disputes arose.

Succession complications were a feature of Howard estates: claims by collateral branches, contested wills, and the complex system of primogeniture led to litigation and parliamentary interventions. He took measures to consolidate properties, to restore ruined fabric at principal houses, and to sponsor local charitable trusts and ecclesiastical patronage at parish churches under the patronage of the Diocese of Chichester.

Marriages and children

He contracted marriages that cemented alliances with leading families of the Restoration elite, arranging unions with daughters of houses such as the Pelham family, the Turner family, and other landed gentry. These alliances produced heirs and daughters who married into the networks of the peerage, linking the Howard lineage to families with titles like Earls of Aylesford and Barons Molyneux.

Issue from these marriages continued the aristocratic practice of forming legal settlements and jointures, ensuring the continuity of entails and the transmission of the earldom. Younger sons pursued commissions in the British Army or careers at the Court, while daughters entered into reciprocal marriage ties that spread Howard influence across counties such as Surrey and Hampshire.

Titles, honors, and succession

Holding titles that included Earl of Arundel, he bore precedence among the great peerage of England and participated in ceremonial functions at occasions like coronations and state funerals alongside peers such as the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquess of Winchester. Honors and appointments included commissions from the Crown for local governance and ceremonial roles within the House of Lords.

On his death in 1694, succession followed established hereditary rules, with the earldom and attendant honours passing according to the patent of creation and ultimately affecting the distribution of Fitzalan and Howard claims among surviving kin. His death occasioned settlement of residual disputes over entailed estates and the reconfiguration of alliances among English nobility in the closing decade of the seventeenth century.

Category:17th-century English nobility