Saint Philip Howard

He was born at Arundel House in London on June 28, 1557. ¹² His grandfather, the poet Earl of Surrey, had been executed by Henry VIII in 1547. ¹ His father, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, would be executed by Elizabeth in 1572. ¹² He was baptized in the chapel of Whitehall Palace by the Archbishop of York, and one of his godfathers was Philip II of Spain, then king of England as Mary Tudor's husband, after whom he was named. ¹²

His father had conformed to the new religion and had him taught partly by John Foxe, the Protestant martyrologist. ¹ The Arundel Ordo adds that for a time his tutor was the Catholic Gregory Martin, later the translator of the Douai Bible, until his guardian dismissed Martin and sent the boy to Cambridge. ⁴ He graduated from St. John's College in 1574. ²

The duke had married, as his third wife, the widow of Lord Dacre, and he matched her daughters to his sons. ¹ Philip was married to Anne Dacre at fourteen. ²⁴

He was about eighteen when he came to court, and the cathedral's account calls him handsome, "high-born, quick-witted and articulate." ² The diocese describes him as a cousin and great favorite of the queen. ³ Before his execution his father had warned him not to become entangled in the court and to cherish his wife. The Ordo says he ignored both pieces of advice: he spent extravagantly, competed for the queen's favor, neglected Anne, and seems to have been unfaithful to her. ⁴ The encyclopedia says it without decoration. His life was "the reverse of virtuous, and for a time he deserted his wife." ¹

Anne went to live with his grandfather, the old Earl of Arundel. ⁴ When the earl died Philip inherited the title through his mother, on February 24, 1580, by the encyclopedia's date, or in 1581 by the Ordo's. ¹⁴ He could not inherit his father's dukedom. ¹⁴

In 1581 he was present in the Tower of London when Edmund Campion, a prisoner there, was made to debate a panel of Protestant divines. ¹²⁴ Every source treats it as the turn. The encyclopedia calls it "the first step in his conversion," and the cathedral says that the "bearing and simplicity of the suffering confessors for the faith awakened Philip Howard's soul." ¹² He went back to Arundel to think about what reconciliation with the Catholic Church would cost him, which he knew could be his life. ²

It took three years. In that time Anne came back to him and, in the Ordo's words, "gradually won him over by her gentleness and patience." ⁴ She returned to the Catholic Church herself in 1583, afraid of what it would do to their new peace, and found that he had been moving the same way. ⁴ The queen had her arrested as a recusant, and their first child, a daughter, was born while she was in custody. ⁴

On September 30, 1584, he was received into the Church by the Jesuit William Weston. ¹ The cathedral places it in London, at the old Charterhouse his father had acquired; the Ordo says he reached his decision at Arundel Castle. ²⁴ He kept a priest in the house so that he could hear Mass daily, and prayer became a regular part of his life. ⁴

The change was noticed at court. ¹ He decided to leave England, and before he went he wrote the queen a long letter explaining why. ¹ He sailed from Littlehampton in April 1585 and was taken at sea. ¹² The encyclopedia says he was caught "probably through treachery"; the cathedral says a servant betrayed him; the Ordo says the Council had intercepted his letter to William Allen and sent back a forged reply advising him to go. ¹²⁴ He was lodged in the Tower on April 25 by the encyclopedia's date, April 15 by the cathedral's. ¹²

The Star Chamber fined him £10,000 and committed him to prison at the queen's pleasure. ¹² He was twenty-eight. ⁴ His only son was born after he was imprisoned, and he never saw him. ¹⁴

He spent the first two years alone in the Beauchamp Tower. ³⁴ Over the fireplace of his cell he cut a Latin sentence that can still be read, signed "Arundell" and dated June 22, 1587. The cathedral translates it: "The more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall obtain with Christ in the next." ² Letters from the Jesuit poet Robert Southwell, who was living secretly in Arundel House as Anne's chaplain, were smuggled in to him. ⁴

Later he was moved to the Lanthorn Tower, where a fellow prisoner, the priest William Bennett, could say Mass. ³⁴ When the Spanish Armada threatened, the Ordo says, he and others kept an all-night vigil of prayer for the safety of Catholics, and it was reported. ⁴ He was tried for treason on the charge of having prayed for the invaders. ¹²⁴ The encyclopedia dates the trial to March and April 1589 and says the prosecution quoted a papal bull that had never been published; the cathedral and the diocese put the trial in 1588. ¹²³ He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and sent back to the Tower, never to know whether the sentence would be carried out. ²⁴

The sentence was never carried out. He prayed for hours each day, fasted, and translated books of devotion; the encyclopedia lists his version of Lanspergius's "Epistle of Christ to the Faithful Soul." ¹²⁴ His dog stayed with him, and the Ordo records that when Southwell was himself brought to the Tower the two men never met, "although Philip's dog did find his way to Southwell's cell." ³⁴

As he was dying he asked once more to see his wife and son. The Ordo gives the queen's answer: "if Philip would go but once to their church, not only would she grant his request, but he would be restored to his estates and honours with as much favour as she could show." ⁴ He declined. ¹⁴ He died about noon on Sunday, October 19, 1595, at thirty-eight. ²⁴ The cathedral says he was weakened by malnutrition and possibly poisoned; the diocese and the Ordo think dysentery the likelier cause. ²³⁴

Saint Philip Howard is a patron of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in the south of England. The diocese calls him its "diocesan Patron Saint," and its calendar gives him the title of co-principal patron. ³⁴ The cathedral at Arundel was rededicated to Our Lady and Saint Philip Howard in 1973, after his remains had been carried there from the Fitzalan Chapel on March 10, 1971. ²⁴ None of the sources consulted names him patron of anything else. ¹²³

Saint Philip Howard's feast day is October 19, the day he died. The calendar of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, as Universalis publishes it, lists that day as the solemnity of "Saint Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, Martyr, Co-principal Patron of the Diocese." ⁴ In 2021 the bishop of the diocese wrote of "the Feast of our Diocesan Patron, St. Philip Howard" being marked with a Mass at the cathedral on October 17. ⁷

He is also among the martyrs honored across England on May 4, the feast of the English Martyrs. ⁵ He was beatified in 1929 and canonized by Paul VI on October 25, 1970, and the pope named him in the homily that day. ²⁶

Nobody in these sources pretends he started well. He took the Oath of Supremacy, chased the queen's favor and left his wife, and the people who keep his shrine say so plainly. ²⁴ His conversion began as a spectator, watching imprisoned priests argue for their faith, and it then took three years of thinking before he acted. ¹²

His marriage was mended before his faith was. Anne's patience is the hinge of the Ordo's account, and the note printed with it says that shortly before he died he wrote her a long letter asking forgiveness for the way he had treated her. ⁴ The price of seeing her again was one visit to a Protestant church, and he would not pay it, though it would also have freed him. ¹⁴

He was never asked to die in public. He was asked to wait, under a sentence that might be carried out on any morning, for years after his trial. ¹² What he did with that was pray, fast, translate and scratch a sentence into a wall about affliction and glory. ²⁴

Robert Southwell wrote to him that his cause, "by whatever name it may be disfigured, by whatever colour deformed in the eyes of men, is religion." ⁴ The Ordo and the encyclopedia both read the queen's offer the same way: freedom in exchange for one visit to her church showed what he was really being held for. ¹⁴