Anne Howard, Countess of Arundel

Anne Howard, née Dacre, was the Countess of Arundel. She lived from 1557 to 1630 and was a Catholic conspirator. Her husband was imprisoned and became a Catholic saint.

Family background

Anne was born in Carlisle, England, on 21 March, 1557, the daughter of Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre of Gilsland, and Elizabeth Leybourn of Cumbria. After her father's death in 1566, Anne's mother married Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, one of the highest peers in the land; she was his third wife. Her mother was openly Catholic during the reign of the Protestant Elizabeth I."Howard (née Dacre), Anne, countess of Arundel (1557–1630), noblewoman and priest harbourer" in "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" (Oxford University Press, 2004)]

Marriage and conversion

Anne married her stepbrother, Philip Howard, then Earl of Surrey, in 1569, with both bride and groom aged twelve. It was not a happy marriage and the couple saw little of each other.She converted to Catholicism in the early 1580s, as did her husband. After her husband was imprisoned in the Tower of London and Anne was sent to her estates, Mary, Queen of Scots made contact with Anne. Her husband died in 1595 of dysentery and was later canonised as St. Philip Howard. The Countess was involved in hiding priests and financially supporting the Jesuits in England. Despite her close links with the Catholic conspiracy to replace Elizabeth I with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth did not have the Howards executed. In fact Mary Stuart wrote to Anne addressing her as "cousin" in 1585. Anne died of natural causes on 19 April 1630, twenty-seven years after the Queen, aged seventy-three.

Legacy

Howard had poetry published under her name although its authenticity is not certain. The verse is written in Latin and concerns her great-great-grandmother Eleanor Percy, Duchess of Buckingham. The choice of Eleanor as a subject of her verse is seen as evidence of her piety. [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OwNx-BA84vcC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=Anne+Howard,+Countess+of+Arundel&source=web&ots=sPSK7Vq034&sig=Qy-50O5pSDUZxeA1bO-i9mdY-mI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA36,M1 Tudor and Stuart Women Writers] By Louise Schleiner, Connie McQuillen, Lynn E. Roller, 1994, ]

References