(Vol. iii., p. 185.)
The following observations, though slight in themselves, may tend to show
that Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, was,
or professed to be, a Protestant.
1st. On his embassy to Spain, Carte says (I quote from Collins's _Peerage_,
vol. iv. p. 272.)--
"On Friday the last of this Month His Catholick Majesty ratified the
peace upon Oath in a great chamber of the palace.... It was pretended
that the Clergy would not suffer this to be done in a Church or Chapel
where the neglect of reverence of the Holy Sacrament would give
scandal."
I presume the "neglect of reverence" was apprehended in the case of the
English ambassador.
2nd. In Fuller's _Worthies_ (Surrey), speaking of Lord Nottingham, it is
said--
"He lived to be very aged, who wrote 'man,' (if not married) in the
first of Queen Elizabeth, being an invited guest at the solemn
consecration of Matthew Parker at Lambeth; and many years after, by his
testimony, confuted those lewd and loud lies which the papists tell of
the Nag's Head in Cheapside."
3rd. He was one of the commissioners on the trial of Garnet and others; and
told him, as he stood in a box made like a pulpit--
"Sir, you have this day done more good in that pulpit wherein you now
stand, than you have done in any other pulpit all the days of your
life."--_Archæologia_, vol. xv.
His coffin-plate has been engraved somewhere, and, if his will exists, it
might probably settle the question.