[1] Much rice is cultivated in the vicinity of Houston by Japanese
farmers.
HOUWALD, CHRISTOPH ERNST, FREIHERR VON (1778-1845), German dramatist and
author, was born at Straupitz in Lower Lusatia, a son of the president
of the district court of justice, on the 28th of November 1778. He
studied law at the university of Halle, and on completion of his
academic studies returned home, married, and managed the family estates.
In 1816 he afforded a home to his friend K. W. S. Contessa (1777-1825),
himself a poet, who had met with serious reverses of fortune; Contessa
lived with Houwald, assisting and stimulating him in his literary work,
for eight years. In 1821 Houwald was unanimously elected syndic for
Lower Lusatia, an office which placed him at the head of the
administration of the province. He died at Neuhaus, near Lubben, on the
28th of January 1845.
Houwald is remembered as the author of several so-called "Fate
tragedies" (see GERMAN LITERATURE), of which the best known are _Das
Bild_, _Der Leuchtturm_, _Die Heimkehr_, _Fluch und Segen_ (all
published in 1821). They have, however, small literary value, and
Houwald is seen to better advantage in his narratives and books for
juvenile readers, such as _Romantische Akkorde_ (publ. by W. Contessa,
Berlin, 1817); _Buch fur Kinder gebildeter Stande_ (1819-1824); and
_Jakob Thau, der Hofnarr_ (1821). Houwald's collected works,
_Samtliche Werke_, were published in five volumes (Leipzig, 1851; 2nd
ed., 1858-1859). See J. Minor, _Die Schicksalstragodie in ihren
Hauptvertretern_ (Frankfurt, 1883), and _Das Schicksalsdrama_ in
Kurschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_; vol. cli. (Stuttgart, 1884);
O. Schmidtborn, _C. E. von Houwald als Dramatiker_ (1909).
HOVA, the name originally applied to the middle-class Malayo-Indonesian
natives of Madagascar (q.v.), as distinct from the noble class
_Andriana_ and the slave class _Andevo_. Hova has now come to mean the
most numerous and powerful of the tribes which form the native
population of Madagascar. The Hova, who occupy the province of Imerina,
the central plateau of the island, are of Malayo-Indonesian origin. The
period at which the Hova arrived in Madagascar is still a subject of
dispute. Some think that the immigration took place in very early times,
before Hinduism reached the Malay Archipelago, since no trace of
Sanskrit is found in Malagasy. Others believe that the Hova did not
reach the island until the 12th or 13th century. At the French conquest
of Madagascar (1895), the Hova were the most powerful and, politically,
the dominant people; but were far from having subjected the whole of the
island to their rule. The Hova are short and slim, with a complexion of
a yellowish olive, many being fairer than the average of southern
Europeans. Their hair is long, black and smooth but coarse. Their heads
are round, with flat straight foreheads, flat faces, prominent
cheekbones, small straight noses, fairly wide nostrils, and small black
and slightly oblique eyes. The physical contrast to the negro is usually
very obvious, but, especially among the lower classes, there is a
tendency to thick lips, kinky hair and dark skin. In many of their
customs, such as taboo, infanticide, marriage and funeral rites, they
show their Indonesian origin. Most of them now profess Christianity.
HOVE, a municipal borough of Sussex, England, adjoining the
watering-place of Brighton on the west, on the London, Brighton, & South
Coast railway. Pop. (1901) 36,535. The great seawall of Brighton
continues along the front at Hove, forming a pleasant promenade. Here is
the Sussex county cricket ground. The municipal borough, incorporated in
1898, includes the parishes of Hove and Aldrington, of which the first
is within the parliamentary borough of Brighton, but the second is in
the Lewes division of the county. The corporation consists of a mayor,
10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 1521 acres.
HOVENDEN, THOMAS (1840-1895), American artist, was born in Dunmanway,
Co. Cork, Ireland, on the 28th of December 1840. He was a pupil of the
South Kensington Art Schools and those of the National Academy of
Design, New York, whither he had removed in 1863. Subsequently he went
to Paris and studied in the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but
passed most of his time with the American colony in Brittany, at
Pont-Aven, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry. Returning to
America in 1880, he became an academician in 1882, and attracted
attention by an important canvas of "The Last Moments of John Brown"
(now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). His "Breaking Home Ties," a
picture of American farm life, was engraved with considerable popular
success. Hovenden was mortally injured in a heroic effort to save a
child from a railroad train in the station at Germantown, near
Philadelphia, and died at Norristown, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of
August 1895. Among his principal works are:--"News from the Conscript"
(1877), "Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendee" (1879). "A Breton
Interior," "Image Seller" and "Jerusalem the Golden" (in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art).
HOW, WILLIAM WALSHAM (1823-1897), English divine, son of a Shrewsbury
solicitor, was born on the 13th of December 1823, and was educated at
Shrewsbury school and Wadham College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1846,
and for upwards of thirty years was actively engaged in parish work at
Whittington in Shropshire and Oswestry (rural dean, 1860). He refused
preferment on several occasions, but his energy and success made him
well known, and in 1879 he became a suffragan bishop in London, under
the title of bishop of Bedford, his province being the East End. There
he became the inspiring influence of a revival of church work. He
founded the East London Church Fund, and enlisted a large band of
enthusiastic helpers, his popularity among all classes being immense. He
was particularly fond of children, and was commonly called "the
children's bishop." In 1888 he was made bishop of Wakefield, and in the
north of England he continued to do valuable work. His sermons were
straightforward, earnest and attractive; and besides publishing several
volumes of these, he wrote a good deal of verse, including such
well-known hymns as "Who is this so weak and helpless," "Lord, Thy
children guide and keep." In 1863-1868 he brought out a _Commentary on
the Four Gospels_; and he also wrote a _Manual for the Holy Communion_.
In the movement for infusing new spiritual life into the church
services, especially among the poor, How was a great force. He died on
the 10th of August 1897. He was much helped in his earlier work by his
wife. Frances A. Douglas (d. 1887).
See his _Life_ by his son, F. D. How (1898).
HOWARD (FAMILY). Among English families, the house of Howard has long
held the first place. Its head, the duke of Norfolk, is the first of the
dukes and the hereditary earl marshal of England, while the earls of
Suffolk, Carlisle and Effingham and the Lord Howard of Glossop represent
in the peerage its younger lines.
Its founder was a Norfolk lawyer, William Howard or Haward, who was
summoned to parliament as a justice in 1295, being appointed a justice
of the common pleas in 1297. Over the parentage of this man genealogists
have disputed for centuries. The pedigree-makers have hailed him in turn
as the descendant of a Norman "Auber, earl of Passy" and as the heir of
Hereward, "the last of the English." But out of the copies of Norfolk
deeds and records collected for Thomas, earl of Arundel, in the early
part of the 17th century, it seems clear enough that he sprang from a
Norfolk family, several of whose members held lands at Wiggenhall near
Lynn. These notes from deeds, evidently collected by an honest inquirer,
make no extravagant claims of ancient ancestry or illustrious origin for
the Howards, although the facts contained in them were recklessly
manipulated by subservient genealogists. Doubtless the judge was the son
of John Howard of Wiggenhall, living about 1260, whose widow Lucy,
called by the genealogists the daughter of John Germund, was probably
the wife of John Germund by her second marriage. William Howard was
employed as counsel by the corporation of Lynn, and it is worthy of note
that the "crosslets fitchy" in his shield of arms suggest the cross with
which the dragon was discomfited by St Margaret, the patroness of Lynn.
Prospering by the law, William Howard of Wiggenhall rose to knight's
rank and acquired by purchase Grancourt's manor in East Winch, near
Lynn, where he had his seat in a moated house whose ruins remain. He was
probably dead and buried in his chapel at East Winch before November 27,
1308, the date of the patent by which Henry Scrope succeeded him as a
commissioner of trailbaston. His two wives, Alice Ufford and Alice
Fitton--heir of Fitton's manor in Wiggenhall--were both daughters of
knightly houses. Before his death his eldest son, John Howard, was a
knight and already advanced by his marriage with Joan of Cornwall, one
of the bastard line founded by Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans.
Sir John Howard served in Edward II.'s wars in Scotland and Gascony, was
sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk and governor of Norwich Castle. When he
died in 1331 he was seised of many Norfolk manors. His son and heir,
another Sir John, admiral of the king's navy in the north, was a
banneret who displayed his banner in the army that laid siege to Calais.
By the admiral's wife Alice, sister and heir of Sir Robert de Boys, the
Howards had the Boys manor of Fersfield, near Diss, which is still among
the possessions of the dukes of Norfolk. His son Sir Robert Howard, who
had married a daughter of Sir Robert Scales (Lord Scales), died in 1388.
From Sir John Howard, the only son of Sir Robert, two branches of the
house of Howard spring. The elder line was soon extinct. By his first
wife, Margaret, daughter and heir of Sir John Plays, Sir John Howard had
a son who died before him, leaving a daughter through whom descended to
her issue, the Veres, earls of Oxford, the ancient Norfolk estates of
the Howards at East Winch and elsewhere, with the lands of the houses of
Scales, Plays and Walton, brought in by the brides of her forefathers.
After the death of Margaret Plays, her widower found, with the peculiar
instinct of his race, a second well-endowed wife. By her, the heir of
the Tendrings of Tendring, he had a second son, Sir Robert Howard, a
knight who fought under Henry V. in France, and died, like his
half-brother, before the old knight's career ended in 1436.
It is to the marriage of this young knight that the house of Howard owes
the tragedy of its greatness. He was a younger son, although he had some
of his mother's inheritance. Had he married the landless daughter of a
neighbour he might have been the ancestor of a line of Essex squires,
whose careers would have had the parish topographer for chronicler. But
his bride was Margaret Mowbray, daughter of the banished duke of
Norfolk. Although this was a noble alliance, it is probable that the
lady had no great portion. The head of her elder brother, the boy earl
marshal, had been stricken off in the cornfield under the walls of York,
but her younger brother's right to his father's dukedom was allowed by
parliament in 1425.
Sir John Howard, only son of the match between Howard and Mowbray, took
service with his cousin the third duke of Norfolk, who had him returned
as knight of the shire for Norfolk, where, according to the _Paston
Letters_, this Howard of the Essex branch was regarded by the gentry as
a strange man. He followed the White Rose and was knighted at the
crowning of King Edward IV., who pricked him for sheriff of Norfolk and
Suffolk. In the duke's quarrel he brawled with the Pastons, his wife
boasting that, should her husband's men meet with John Paston "there
should go no penny for his life." "And Howard," writes Clement Paston,
"hath with the king a great fellowship." Offices and lands came to John
Howard by reason of that fellowship. Henry VI., when restored, summoned
him to parliament in 1470 as Lord Howard, a summons which may have been
meant to lure him to London into Warwick's power, but he proclaimed the
Yorkist sovereign on his return and fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury.
When peace was made, Edward summoned him again as a baron and gave him
the Garter and the treasurership of his household. After Edward's
burial, at which he bore the king's banner, Howard, an enemy of the
Wydviles, linked his fortunes with those of the duke of Gloucester. At
this time came his sudden lifting to the highest rank in the peerage.
The last of the dukes of Norfolk had left a child heir, Anne Mowbray,
married to the infant duke of York, the younger of the princes doomed by
Richard in the Tower. By the death of this little girl, John Howard
became one of the coheirs of her illustrious house, which was now
represented by the issue of Margaret Mowbray, his mother, and of her
sister Isabel, who had married James, Lord Berkeley. A lion's share of
the Mowbray estates, swollen by the great alliances of the house, heir
of Breouse and Segrave, and, through Segrave, of Thomas of Brotherton,
son of Edward I., fell to Howard, who, by a patent of June 28, 1483, was
created duke of Norfolk and earl marshal of England with a remainder to
the heirs male of his body. On the same day the lord Berkeley, the other
coheir, was made earl of Nottingham. High steward at Richard's crowning,
the duke bore the crown and rode as marshal into Westminster Hall. For
the rest of his life he was Richard's man, and though warned by the
famous couplet that "Dykon his master" was bought and sold, "Jack of
Norfolk" led the archer vanguard at Bosworth and died in the fight, from
which his son the earl of Surrey was carried away a wounded prisoner. An
attainder by the first parliament of Henry VII. extinguished the honours
of the father with those of the son, who had been created an earl when
the lord Howard was raised to the dukedom. Their estates were forfeit.
Thomas Howard, a politic mind, loyal to the powers that be, was released
from the Tower of London in 1489, his earldom of Surrey and his Garter
restored. Accepting the position in which the Tudor king would have his
great nobles, he became the faithful soldier, diplomatist and official
of the new power. In his seventieth year, as lieutenant-general of the
North, he led the English host on the great day of Flodden, earning a
patent of the dukedom of Norfolk, dated 1 February 1513/4, and that
strange patent which granted to him and his heirs that they should bear
in the midst of the silver bend of their Howard shield a demi-lion
stricken in the mouth with an arrow, in the right colours of the arms of
the king of Scotland. This augmentation has been interpreted as a golden
scocheon with the demi-lion within the Scottish tressure. Thus charged
on the silver bend, it makes bad armory and it is worthy of note that,
although the grant of it is clearly to the duke and his heirs in fee
simple, Howards of all branches descending from the duke bear it in
their shields, even though all right to it has long passed from the
house to the duke's heirs general, the Stourtons and Petres.
The victor of Flodden is the common ancestor of all living Howards that
can show a descent from the main stock. The second duke, twice married,
was father of at least eleven sons and six daughters, the sons including
Edward the lord high admiral, killed in boarding Pregent's galleys at
Brest, Edmund the knight marshal of the army at Flodden, and William the
first Lord Howard of Effingham. The eldest son, Thomas, succeeded as the
third duke of his name, although the second under the patent of 1514. He
had fought as captain of the vanguard at Flodden and after the victory
was created earl of Surrey. When Richard III. was allying himself with
the Howards, Thomas Howard, a boy of eleven, had been betrothed to Anne,
daughter of the late King Edward IV., and Henry VII. allowed the
marriage with his queen's sister to take place in 1495. This royal bride
died of consumption, leaving no living child, and her husband took in
1513, as his second wife, Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of that duke of
Buckingham upon whom the old duke of Norfolk, the tears upon his cheeks,
was forced to pass sentence of death. Succeeding his father in 1524,
Norfolk was created earl marshal in 1533. An unsuccessful diplomatist,
his chief services in arms were the butchery in the north after the
Pilgrimage of Grace and the raid into Scotland which ended with the rout
of Solway Moss. He left his wife for a mistress, Elizabeth Holland, was
in discord with his family, and lived to see his two nieces, Anne Boleyn
and Catherine Howard, and his son Surrey, the fiery-tempered poet, go in
turn to the block. He himself was attainted and was lying a prisoner in
the Tower, doomed to die in the morning, on the night of the death of
Henry VIII. He was not released until the accession of Mary, parliament
restoring his dukedom on his petition for reversal of the attainder. His
grandson Thomas succeeded him in 1554, and in 1556 made the second of
those marriages which have given the Howards their high place among the
English nobility. The bride was Mary, sole heir in her issue of her
father Henry, the last of the Fitzalan earls of Arundel. Her father's
line and the royal Stewards of Scotland sprang from one forefather,
Alan, son of Flaald the Breton. The Mowbray match had already brought to
the Howards the representation of an elder line of the Fitzalan earls,
who sat in the seats of their ancestors, the Aubignys and Warennes,
great earls near akin to their sovereigns. And now the younger line,
earls of Arundel and Lords Mautravers, were also to have a Howard to
represent them. From this time the spreading genealogy of the Howards
drew its origins from most of the illustrious names of the houses
founded after the Norman Conquest.
The young duchess died in her seventeenth year after giving birth to a
son, and the duke took a second wife from a humble stock, newly enriched
and honoured, the daughter of Henry VIII.'s subservient chancellor, the
Lord Audley of Walden. Within ten years he married a third time, the
lady being Elizabeth Leybourne, the widow of Lord Dacre of Gilsland. She
survived her marriage but a few months and her husband then obtained the
wardship of her Dacre offspring, a son who died young, and three
daughters whom the duke, with the true Howard eye for a rich
inheritance, gave as brides to three of his sons. After three such good
fortunes by marriage Norfolk in his folly looked for a crown with a
fourth match, listening to the laird of Lethington when he set forth the
scheme by which the duke was to marry a restored queen of Scots and rule
Scotland with her who should be recognized as Elizabeth's successor. Ten
months in the Tower under strong suspicion would have warned another
man, but Norfolk was unstable and false. After promising fidelity and
the abandonment of the Scots marriage scheme, Cecil took him
corresponding with Mary and tampering with the Ridolfi plot. He died on
Tower Hill in 1572 for an example to the disloyal counties, protesting
innocence and repentance, warning his children in a last letter to
discredit all "false bruits" that he was a papist.
By his attainder the Norfolk titles were once more forfeited. But Philip
Howard, the son and heir, succeeded to the ancient earldom of Arundel in
1580, on the death of his maternal grandfather, while the Lord Lumley,
his uncle by marriage, surrendered to him his life interest in the
castle and honour of Arundel. The next year an act of parliament
restored the earl in blood. After a profligate youth at court, he
followed his wife in professing the Roman faith, and in 1585 made an
attempt to leave England to seek safety from the penal laws. But his
ship was boarded in the Channel and the earl, condemned by the
Star-Chamber to a heavy fine and to imprisonment during the queen's
pleasure, suffered a harsh captivity in the Tower. After the defeat of
the Armada he had been condemned to death on a charge of high treason,
founded on the tale drawn by torture from a priest, that Arundel had
urged him to say a mass for the success of the Spaniards. But he was
allowed to linger in his prison until 1595 when he died, the sight of
his wife and children being cruelly refused to the dying man. Thus it
befell that, of the chiefs of the Howards born since the great Mowbray
alliance, two had died by the axe and one in the prison from which a
fourth had hardly escaped. A fifth had fallen in a lost battle, and only
one had died in peace in his own house.
The ill fate of the Howards seemed to be appeased by the death of
Philip, earl of Arundel. Tudor policy did its work well, and noblemen,
however illustrious their pedigrees, could no longer be counted as
menaces by the Crown, which was, indeed, finding another rival to its
power. In the first year of James I., Thomas, the young son of Earl
Philip, was restored in blood and given the titles of Arundel and
Surrey. But the lands belonging to these titles remained with the Crown
and he had to repair his fortunes by one of those marriages which never
failed his house, his wife being Alathea Talbot, who was at last the
heir of Gilbert, earl of Shrewsbury. To the grief of his mother he left
the Roman church. A knight of the Garter, he was in 1621 created earl
marshal for life, and revived the jurisdiction belonging to the office.
An act of 1627, one of several such aimed at aggrandizing families by
diverting the descent of dignities in fee from heirs general, entailed
the earldom and castle of Arundel upon Thomas, earl of Arundel and
Surrey and the heirs male of his body "and for default of such issue, to
the heirs of his body." His pride and austerity made him unpopular at
court and he left the country in 1642, settling at last in Padua, where
he died in 1646, impoverished by the sequestrations of the parliament,
whose forces had taken and retaken his castle of Arundel. In answer to
his petition for the dukedom, the king had, on the 6th of June 1644,
given him a patent of the earldom of Norfolk, in order, as it would
seem, to flatter him by suggesting that the title of Norfolk would at
least be refused to any other family. He is celebrated as a collector of
paintings, books, gems and sculptures, his "Arundel marbles" being given
by his grandson in 1667 to the University of Oxford. The dukedom for
which Arundel had petitioned Charles I. in vain was restored by act of
the first parliament of Charles II. to his grandson Thomas, a lunatic
living at Padua, on whose death in 1677 it passed to this Thomas's
brother, Henry Frederick, who had been created earl of Norwich and
hereditary earl marshal of England in 1672. In 1777 Edward, the ninth of
the Howard dukes, died childless in his ninety-second year. With him
ended the earldom of Norwich, while the representation of the Mowbrays
and Segraves passed to his nieces, the Ladies Stourton and Petre, the
abeyance of the two baronies being determined in 1878 in favour of Lord
Stourton. Under the act of 1627 the earldom of Arundel and the castle
passed with the dukedom to a second cousin, Charles Howard of Greystock
(d. 1786), an eccentric recluse. At his death in 1786 he was succeeded
by his son Charles, the notorious "Jockey of Norfolk," the big, coarse,
generous, slovenly, hard-drinking Whig of whom all the memoir-writers of
his age have their anecdotes. He conformed to the Church of England and
spent a vast sum in restoring Arundel Castle. A third cousin succeeded
him in 1815, Bernard Edward Howard, who, although a Roman Catholic, was
enabled, by the act of 1824, to act as earl marshal. This was the
grandfather of the fifteenth duke, earl of Arundel, Surrey and Norfolk,
and hereditary earl marshal of England.
The eldest of the cadet branches of the ducal house has its origin in
William (c. 1510-1573), eldest son of the victor of Flodden by his
second marriage. He survived the reign of Henry VIII., that perilous
age for the Howards, with no worse misadventure than the conviction of
himself and his wife of misprision of treason in concealing the
offences of his niece, Queen Catherine. But both were pardoned. In
1553 he had the office of lord admiral of England, and in the next
year the Garter. For his services against Sir Thomas Wyat he was
created (March 11, 1553/4) Lord Howard of Effingham, the title being
taken from a Surrey manor granted him by Edward VI. Queen Elizabeth
continued his employment in diplomacy, and had he been richer he might
have had an earldom. His eldest son Charles (1536-1624), lord admiral
of England in 1585, sailed as commander in chief against the Spanish
Armada, and, although giving due weight to the counsel of Drake and
his other officers, showed himself a leader as prudent as courageous.
He was created earl of Nottingham in 1596 and died in 1624. The legend
that the admiral was a Roman Catholic has no authority. Two of his
sons succeeded in turn to the earldom of Nottingham, extinct on the
death of Charles, the third earl in 1681. Sir William Howard of
Lingfield, younger brother of the great admiral, carried on the
Effingham line, his great-grandson succeeding to the barony on the
extinction of the earldom. Francis, seventh Lord Howard of Effingham,
was created earl of Effingham in 1731, a title extinct in 1816 with
the fourth earl, but revived again in 1837 for the eleventh baron, who
had served as a general officer in the Peninsular campaign, the
great-grandfather of the present peer.
A patent of 1604 created Henry Howard (1540-1614), younger son of
Surrey the poet, earl of Northampton, a peerage which ended with the
death of this, the most unprincipled of his house.
Thomas, son of the fourth duke of Norfolk's marriage with the daughter
and heir of Thomas, Lord Audley of Walden, founded the line of the
present earls of Suffolk and Berkshire and of the extinct Lords Howard
of Escrick. His barony of Howard of Walden has descended to his heirs
general. Lord William Howard (1563-1640), the "belted Will" of Scott's
Lay and the "bauld Willie" of more authentic legend, was another of
the sons of the fourth duke and Margaret Audley. Married in 1577 to
one of the three co-heirs of the Lord Dacre of Gilsland he suffered
under Elizabeth more than one imprisonment with his brother the
unfortunate earl of Arundel. But in 1603 he was able, on the partition
of the Dacre lands, to make his home at Naworth Castle, where he
lived, a border patriarch, cultivating his estates and serving as a
commissioner of the borders. His great-grandson Charles Howard,
although fledged in a nest of cavaliers, changed sides and fought at
Worcester for the parliament. The Protector summoned him in 1657 to
his House of Lords, but he was imprisoned in 1659 on suspicion of a
share in Booth's insurrection and, after the Restoration, was created,
in 1661, earl of Carlisle, Viscount Morpeth and Lord Dacre of
Gilsland, titles which are still held by his descendants. From Sir
Francis Howard, a cavalier colonel and a younger son of "bauld
Willie," come the Howards of Corby Castle in Cumberland, a branch
without a hereditary title.
William Howard, Viscount Stafford, was the fifth son of Thomas, earl
of Arundel, and grandson of Philip the prisoner. Marrying the sister
and heir of the fifth Lord Stafford, who died in 1637, he and his wife
were created Baron and Baroness Stafford by a patent of 1640, with
remainder, in default of heirs male, to heirs female. A grant of the
precedence enjoyed by the bride's father being held illegal, her
husband was in the same year created Viscount Stafford. Roger
Stafford, the impoverished heir male of the ancient Staffords, had
been forced to surrender his barony to the king by a deed dated in the
preceding year, a piece of injustice which is in the teeth of all
modern conceptions of peerage law. The Viscount Stafford was one of
the "five Popish lords" committed to the Tower in 1678 as a result of
the slanders of Titus Oates and he died by the axe in 1680 upon
testimony which, as the diarist Evelyn protested, "should not be taken
against the life of a dog." But three earls of his own
house--Carlisle, Suffolk and Berkshire--and the Lord Howard of
Escrick, an ex-trooper of Cromwell's guard and an anabaptist sectary,
gave their votes against him, his nephew Mowbray being the only peer
of his name in the minority for acquittal. In 1688 his widow was
created countess of Stafford for life, and his eldest son, Henry, had
the earldom of Stafford, with special remainder to his brothers. This
earldom ended in 1762, but the attainder was reversed by an act of
1824 and in the following year Sir George Jerningham, the heir
general, established his claim to the Stafford barony of 1640.
AUTHORITIES.--State papers; patent, close and plea rolls. Tierney,
_History of Arundel_; G. E. C., _Complete Peerage_; J. H. Round,
_Peerage Studies_; Howard of Corby, _Memorials of the Family of
Howard_; Brenan and Statham, _House of Howard_; Howard, _Historical
Anecdotes of the Howard Family_; Morant, _Essex_; Blomefield,
_Norfolk_. (O. Ba.)
HOWARD, CATHERINE (d. 1542), the fifth queen of Henry VIII., was a
daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and a granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd
duke of Norfolk (d. 1524). Her father was very poor, and Catherine lived
mainly with Agnes, widow of the 2nd duke of Norfolk, meeting the king at
the house of Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester. Henry was evidently
charmed by her; the Roman Catholic party, who disliked the marriage with
Anne of Cleves, encouraged his attentions; and after Anne's divorce he
was privately married to Catherine at Oatlands in July 1540. Soon
afterwards she was publicly acknowledged as queen. Before her marriage
Catherine had had several lovers, among them being a musician, Henry
Mannock, or Manox; her cousin, Thomas Culpepper; and Francis Dereham, to
whom she had certainly been betrothed. After becoming queen she
occasionally met Dereham and Culpepper, and in November 1541 Archbishop
Cranmer informed Henry that his queen's past life had not been
stainless. Cranmer had obtained his knowledge indirectly from an old
servant of the duchess of Norfolk. Dereham confessed to his relations
with Catherine, and after some denials the queen herself admitted that
this was true; but denied that she had ever been betrothed to Dereham,
or that she had misconducted herself since her marriage. Dereham and
Culpepper were executed in December 1541 and their accomplices were
punished, but Catherine was released from prison. Some fresh
information, however, very soon came to light showing that she had been
unchaste since her marriage; a bill of attainder was passed through
parliament, and on the 13th of February 1542 the queen was beheaded.
See A. Strickland, _Lives of the Queens of England_ (vol. iii. 1877).
HOWARD, JOHN (1726-1790), English philanthropist and prison reformer,
was born at Hackney, probably on the 2nd of September 1726. His
childhood was passed at Cardington, near Bedford, where his father, a
retired merchant of independent means, had a small estate. He was
apprenticed to a firm of grocers in the city of London, but on the death
of his father in 1742, by which he inherited considerable property, he
bought up his indenture, and devoted more than a year to foreign travel.
Never constitutionally strong, he became, on his return to England, a
confirmed invalid. Having been nursed through an acute illness by an
attentive landlady, a widow of some fifty-three years of age, Howard, in
return for her kindness, offered her marriage and they were united in
1752. Becoming a widower in less than three years, he determined to go
abroad again, Portugal being his destination. The ship, however, in
which he sailed was taken by a French privateer, the crew and passengers
being carried to Brest, where they were treated with great severity.
Howard was permitted to return to England on parole to negotiate an
exchange, which he accomplished, as well as successfully representing
the case of his fellow-captives. He now settled down on his Cardington
property, interesting himself in meteorological observations. He was
admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1756. In 1758 he married
Henrietta, daughter of Edward Leeds, of Croxton, Cambridgeshire. He
continued to lead a secluded life at Cardington and at Watcombe,
Hampshire, busying himself in the construction of model cottages and the
erection of schools. In 1765 his second wife died after giving birth to
a son. In the following year Howard went for a prolonged foreign tour,
from which he returned in 1770.
In 1773 the characteristic work of his life may be said to have begun by
his acceptance of the office of high sheriff of Bedford. When the
assizes were held he did not content himself with sitting out the trials
in open court, his inquisitiveness and his benevolence alike impelled
him to visit the gaol. Howard found it, like all the prisons of the
time, wretchedly defective in its arrangements; but what chiefly shocked
him was the circumstance that neither the gaoler nor his subordinates
were salaried officers, but were dependent for their livelihood on fees
from the prisoners. He found that some whom the juries had declared not
guilty, others in whom the grand jury had not found even such appearance
of guilt as would warrant a trial, others whose prosecutors had failed
to appear, were frequently detained in prison for months after they had
ceased to be in the position of accused parties, until they should have
paid the fees of gaol delivery (see Introduction to _The State of the
Prisons of England and Wales_). His prompt application to the justices
of the county for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees was met by
a demand for a precedent in charging the county with an expense. This he
undertook to find if such a thing existed. He went accordingly from
county to county, and though he could find no precedent for charging the
county with the wages of its servants he did find so many abuses in
prison management that he determined to devote himself to their reform.
In 1774 he gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, and
received the thanks of the house for "the humanity and zeal which have
led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communicate
to the House the interesting observations which he has made on that
subject." Almost immediately an act was passed which provided for the
liberation, free of all charges, of every prisoner against whom the
grand jury failed to find a true bill, giving the gaoler a sum from the
county rate in lieu of the abolished fees. This was followed in June by
another requiring justices of the peace to see that the walls and
ceilings of all prisons within their jurisdiction were scraped and
whitewashed once a year at least; that the rooms were regularly cleaned
and ventilated; that infirmaries were provided for the sick, and proper
care taken to get them medical advice; that the naked should be clothed;
that underground dungeons should be used as little as could be; and
generally that such courses should be taken as would tend to restore and
preserve the health of the prisoners. It was highly characteristic of
the man that, having caused the provisions of the new legislation to be
printed at his own private cost in large type, he sent a copy to every
gaoler and warder in the kingdom, that no one should be able to plead
ignorance of the law if detected in the violation of its provisions. He
then set out upon a new tour of inspection, from which, however, he was
brought home by the approach of a general election in September 1774.
Standing as one of the anti-ministerial candidates for Bedford, he was
returned by a narrow majority but was unseated after a scrutiny.
After a tour in Scotland and Ireland, he set out in April 1775 upon an
extended tour through France, the Low Countries and Germany. At Paris he
was at first denied access to the prisons; but, by recourse to an old
and almost obsolete law of 1717, according to which any person wishing
to distribute alms to the prisoners was to be admitted, he succeeded in
inspecting the Bicetre, the Force l'Eveque and most of the other places
of confinement, the only important exception being the Bastille. Even in
that case he succeeded in obtaining possession of a suppressed pamphlet,
which he afterwards translated and published in English, to the
unconcealed chagrin of the French authorities. At Ghent he examined with
special interest the great Maison de Force, then recently erected, with
its distinctive features--useful labour, in the profits of which the
prisoners had a share, and complete separation of the inmates by night.
At Amsterdam, as in Holland generally, he was much struck with the
comparative absence of crime, a phenomenon which he attributed to the
industrial and reformatory treatment there adopted. In Germany he found
little that was useful and much that was repulsive; in Hanover and
Osnabruck, under the rule of a British sovereign, he even found traces
of torture. After a short tour in England (Nov. 1775 to May 1776), he
again went abroad, extending his tour to several of the Swiss cantons.
In 1777 appeared _The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with
Preliminary Observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons_. One
of the immediate results was the drafting a bill for the establishment
of penitentiary houses, where by means of solitary imprisonment,
accompanied by well-regulated labour and religious instruction, the
object of reforming the criminal and inuring him to habits of industry
might be pursued. New buildings were manifestly necessary; and Howard
volunteered to go abroad again and collect plans. He first went to
Amsterdam (April 1778), and carefully examined the "spin-houses" and
"rasp-houses"[1] for which that city was famous; next he traversed
Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria and Italy, everywhere inspecting
prisons, hospitals and workhouses, and carefully recording the merits
and defects of each. The information he thus obtained having been placed
at the service of parliament, a bill was passed for building two
penitentiary houses, and Howard was appointed first supervisor, but he
resigned the post before anything practical had been achieved. In 1780
he had published a quarto volume as an appendix (the first) to his
_State of Prisons_; about the same time also he caused to be printed his
translation of the suppressed French pamphlet on the Bastille; but on
obtaining release from his employments at home his passion for
accumulating statistics urged him to new and more extended continental
tours, as far as to Denmark, Sweden and Russia in 1781, and to Spain and
Portugal in 1783. The results of these journeys were embodied in 1784 in
a second appendix, with the publication of which his direct labours in
connexion with the subject of prison reform may be said to have ceased.
The five remaining years of his life were chiefly devoted to researches
on the means for prevention of the plague, and for guarding against the
propagation of contagious distempers in general. After an extended tour
on the continent his researches seemed to be complete; and with a great
accumulation of papers and memoranda, he was preparing to return
homewards from Constantinople by Vienna, when it occurred to his
scrupulous mind that he still lacked any personal experience of
quarantine discipline. He returned to Smyrna, and, deliberately choosing
a foul ship, took a passage to Venice. A protracted voyage of sixty
days, during which an attack by pirates gave Howard an opportunity of
manifesting his personal bravery, was followed by a weary term of
confinement which enabled him to gain the experience he had desired.
While imprisoned in the Venetian lazaretto he received the information
that his only son, a youth of twenty-two years of age, had lost his
reason and had been put under restraint. Returning hastily by Trieste
and Vienna (where he had a long and singular interview with the emperor
Joseph II.), he reached England in February 1787. His first care related
to his domestic concerns; he then set out upon another journey of
inspection of the prisons of the United Kingdom, at the same time
busying himself in preparing for the press the results of his recent
tour. The somewhat rambling work containing them was published in 1798
at Warrington, under the title _An Account of the Principal Lazarettos
in Europe: with various Papers relative to the Plague, together with
further Observations on some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals, and
additional Remarks on the present State of those in Great Britain and
Ireland_.
In July 1789 he embarked on what proved to be his last journey.
Travelling overland to St Petersburg and Moscow, and so southwards, and
visiting the principal military hospitals that lay on his route, he
reached Kherson in November. In the hospitals of this place and of the
immediate neighbourhood he found more than enough to occupy his
attention while he awaited the means of transit to Constantinople.
Towards the end of the year his medical advice was asked in the case of
a young lady who was suffering under the camp fever then prevalent, and
in attending her he himself took the disease, which terminated fatally
on the 20th of January 1790. He was buried near the village of Dauphigny
on the road to St Nicholas. There is a statue by Bacon to his memory in
St Paul's, London, and one at Bedford by A. Gilbert. In personal
appearance Howard is described as having been short, thin and
sallow--unprepossessing apart from the attraction of a penetrating eye
and a benevolent smile.
AUTHORITIES.--_Anecdotes of the Life and Character of John Howard,
written by a Gentleman_ (1790); Aikin, _View of the Character and
Public Services of the late John Howard_. (1792); _Memoirs_ by J.
Baldwin Brown (1818); T. Taylor (1836), Hepworth Dixon (1849), J.
Field (1850), and J. Stoughton, _Howard the Philanthropist_ (1884).