the subject of the succeeding poem, was the eldest son of Charles Howard,
earl of Nottingham, (lord high admiral of England, and defeater of the
Spanish Armada in the reign of Elizabeth, a nobleman of high estimation
during greater part of the reign of her successor,) by Catharine,
daughter of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon; celebrated for concealing the ring
by which the life of the earl of Essex might have been saved, and upon
whose death-bed discovery of the concealment Elizabeth told her, “God may
forgive you, but I never can.”
Lord Howard makes no conspicuous figure in the page of history: he was
summoned by writ to several parliaments during his father’s life, whom
he accompanied on his embassy to the court of Spaine (1604), but died
before him 10th Dec. 1615, and was buried at Chelsea.
He married in 1597 Anne, daughter and sole heiress to John lord St. John
of Bletsoe, by whom he left one daughter, who became the wife of John
lord Mordaunt, afterwards earl of Peterborough.