Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, (27 December 1847 – 11 February 1917), styled Lord Maltravers until 1856 and Earl of Arundel and Surrey between 1856 and 1860, was a British Unionist politician and philanthropist. He served as Postmaster General between 1895 and 1900, but is best remembered for his philanthropic work, which concentrated on Roman Catholic causes and the city of Sheffield.
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Background
Norfolk was the eldest son of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk, and the Hon. Augusta Mary Minna Catherine, younger daughter of Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons. Edmund Fitzalan-Howard, 1st Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent, was his younger brother. The Duke was first educated at The Oratory School, but owing to restrictions from the Catholic Hierarchy he was unable to attend either Oxford or Cambridge Universities. His higher education instead consisted of a Grand Tour of Europe around 1867 under the guidance of classical scholar and biographer Robert Ornsby.
Public career
Norfolk succeeded to the dukedom at the age of 12 on the death of his father on 25 November 1860. He also succeeded to the hereditary office of Earl Marshal held by the Dukes of Norfolk. At the same time he inherited almost 50,000 acres with 19,400 acres in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 21,000 acres in Sussex and 4,400 acres in Norfolk.
On 5 April 1871 he was commissioned as captain in the part-time 9th (Arundel) Sussex Rifle Volunteer Corps, which had been raised by his father just before his death. He was promoted to major in the 2nd Sussex Rifle Volunteers on 4 March 1882.
In 1895, he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Postmaster General by Lord Salisbury, a post he held until early 1900, when he resigned in order to serve in the Boer War. In 1895 he also became Mayor of Sheffield; serving two terms during which he arranged the city's monumental celebrations in honour of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Shortly thereafter he was appointed the first Lord Mayor of Sheffield, but retained the office only until November 1897. He was appointed an honorary Freeman of the City of Sheffield three years later, in March 1900. In November 1900 he became the first Mayor of Westminster, serving for a year.
Aged 53, he volunteered for active service in the Second Boer War, and was commissioned a captain in the Imperial Yeomanry on 7 April 1900, leaving Southampton for South Africa the same month on the SS Carisbrooke Castle. While fighting he was wounded near Pretoria, and invalided back to Britain. After the end of the war, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of his volunteer battalion (now the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment) on 24 December 1902, with the honorary rank of Colonel from 7 February 1903.
He was appointed to chair the Royal Commission on Militia and Volunteers that was established in 1903. The commission attempted to define the role of the auxiliary forces, and made detailed proposals on how their deficiencies in training and equipment could be addressed. Norfolk's commission proposed a Home Defence Army raised by conscription, which was unpopular with the Volunteers and Yeomanry, and was quickly shelved. However, in conjunction with the Elgin Commission on the War in South Africa, the Norfolk Commission's work influenced the creation of the Territorial Force (TF) under the 1908 Haldane Reforms, which subsumed the old Volunteer Force. He retired from command of the 4th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment (as the battalion had become in the TF) in 1913 after 42 years' service.
In his capacity as Earl Marshal, the duke arranged the state funerals of William Ewart Gladstone (1898), Queen Victoria (1901), and King Edward VII (1910), and the coronations of Edward VII (1902) and George V (1911).
Apart from serving as Earl Marshal between 1860 and 1917, Norfolk was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex between 1905 and 1917.
He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1886, and received the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) from King Edward VII on 11 August 1902, following the King's coronation two days earlier.
He was three-time chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations, and grand chancellor of the Primrose League.
A portrait of the Duke as Mayor of Westminster, painted by Philip Tennyson Cole in 1902, is owned by the City of Westminster.
Philanthropy and Religious Work
As is common with the Dukes of Norfolk, but exceptional within the British aristocracy, Norfolk was a Roman Catholic. In his dual role as Premier Duke and most prominent Catholic in England, he undertook a programme of philanthropy which served in part to reintegrate Catholics into civic life. He was born a generation after the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 but before the reconstitution of Roman Catholic dioceses in 1850. By the time he came of age as Duke in 1868, the process of Catholic Emancipation had made the establishment of Catholic institutions legal, but the reality of two hundred years of legislation in favour of the Church of England left Catholics with few structures of their own.
Norfolk's first major benefaction commemorated his coming of age as Duke. At his ancestral seat of Arundel Castle (being also one of the Earls of Arundel), he sponsored the construction of the Church of Our Lady and St Philip Neri between 1868 and 1873. This church was later chosen to serve as Arundel Cathedral in 1965 and rededicated in 1971 to include Saint Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, one of his ancestors.
In 1875 John Henry Newman wrote his response to the anti-Catholic views of William Gladstone which took the form of a public letter to Norfolk (after Norfolk agreed to this proposal), being titled Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.
In 1877, he married his first wife, Lady Flora Hastings. He later wrote, 'Shortly after my most happy marriage, I wished to build a church as a thank-offering to God.' To commemorate this occasion, he undertook the construction of a church in his titular ancestral seat in Norwich, Norfolk. After commencing in 1882 with a gift of £200,000, construction would not be completed until 1910, nearly 23 years after Lady Flora's death in 1887. This church was also later chosen to serve as St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich when the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia was re-established in 1976.
In the 1890s Norfolk was instrumental in the campaign that convinced the Vatican authorities to relax its restrictions on Catholic students enrolling at the great English universities, culminating with the co-founding of St Edmund's College, Cambridge along with Baron Anatole von Hugel. He was a significant contributor to the Father Damien fund to fight leprosy. He also donated funds for the building of the University of Sheffield and was its initial Chancellor between 1905 and 1917.
Family
On 18 March 1878, Norfolk married his first wife, Lady Flora Paulyna Hetty Barbara Abney-Hastings (13 February 1854 – 11 April 1887), daughter of Charles Abney-Hastings, 1st Baron Donington and Edith Rawdon-Hastings, 10th Countess of Loudoun. They had one child:
Philip Joseph Mary Fitzalan-Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey (7 September 1879 – 8 July 1902)
Their son was born with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, and "all the resources of medical science were applied on behalf of the affected infant, but only with partial effect".
When his death was announced at age 22, it was reported that "he had never grown up, remaining all his life a boy, with a sweet face, half-blind, blond, with almost albino-like fairness, and suffering from a general failure of nervous power." His parents exhausted all financial and spiritual efforts to seek medical and rehabilitative help for him.
After the Duchess's death from Bright's disease in April 1887, aged 33, Norfolk remained unmarried for nearly seventeen years. His sister, Lady Mary Adeliza Fitzalan-Howard, moved in to Arundel Castle to help care for her nephew. The Duke built a large house in Wimbledon, where he would still be able to spend two hours a day with his son while the House of Lords was in session. Near the end of his life, the Earl was able to ride a tricycle for long periods around the grounds. He died in 1902.
On 7 February 1904, at age 56, Norfolk married, as his second wife, his first cousin once removed, the Hon. Gwendolen Constable-Maxwell, eldest daughter of Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell, 11th Lord Herries of Terregles and the Hon. Angela Mary Charlotte, daughter of Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Glossop. She was 30 years his junior, and aged 27 at their wedding. They had four children:
Lady Mary Rachel Fitzalan-Howard (27 June 1905 – 17 August 1992)
Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk (1908–1975)