Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/178

 142 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io» s. iv. A™. 19, iocs. " an Act of Parliament to provide for her out of her own estate, and confirm to her the house and goods she brought, and a yearly maintenance. In spite of proposals of mediation offered her by her husband, she dares not trust him ; although she brought him 2,00(M. a year, besides personalty, he first left her with a few goods, in a house in Lin- coln's Inn Fields, to support herself on 6V. a week, and then took that away, to compel her to lie at his mercy; which she dares not do, her jointure being mortgaged, she cannot prosecute for relief in ordi- nary courts." These and subsequent proceedings (such as the disinheriting of all his children save the favourite, Thomas) shed an unenviable light on the character of Sir Robert. He was now a rich man, having received a number of important offices and fat sinecures after the Restoratiou. Among his other posts was that of Auditor of the Exchequer, which he continued to hold almost to his death. An episode, however, which occurred in August, 1661, tends to show that in the beginning, at least, he was not persond grata at Court, for he was then sent to the Tower, with his brothers James and Philip, and Sir Robert Killigrew. (Jan any reader explain this im- prisonmeut, which followed so soon after the Order of the Bath and a Privy Councillorship had been conferred upon Howard 1 Sir Robert, after years of persistent neglect, finally succeeded in getting rid of his second wife's landed estates altogether. In the Verney MSS. ('Hist. MSS. Com. Seventh Report') is a letter, dated 26 April. 1676, from John Verney, in which it is stated that " Sir Robert Howard has sold Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire, to Mr. Lau. Hyde for 36,OOOZ., of which his lady (who consents to the sale) is to have eight." Poor Lady Honour did not long survive. On 19 September, 1676. Lady Chaworth writes to Lord Roos ('Rutland Correspondence,' vol. ii. p. 29) that "Lady Honour Howard is dead." The couple had no children. Howard now began to sue for the hand of his mistress, Mrs. Uphill, in legitimate marriage. A work ('A Seasonable Argu- ment for a new Parliament') published in 1677, says of him, " Many other places and boons he had ; but his whore, Uphill, spends all, and now refuses to marry him." Marry him she did, nevertheless, being his third wife. In 1680 Howard bought the e_states of Ashstead, in Surrey, and Castle Rising, in Norfolk, from his cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, and these properties he made over during his lifetime to his third son, Thomas, to the exclusion of his other children. I have not been able to find any record of the death of Mrs. Uphill, who was the original of Shad- well's "Lady Vaine." She was dead, how- ever, in 1695, when Sir Robert, now seventy, married Annabella Dives, daughter of John Dives, and sister of a hanger-on of the Court, Sir Lewis Dives. This lady, who had been a maid of honour to Mary II., survived him, and was remarried at Stepney to the Rev. Edmund Martyn. Sir Robert's will is dated 26 May, 1697, and was proved 7 September, 1698. He disinherits all his children, save Thomas (now Teller of the Exchequer), for whom he had already abundantly provided, and leaves his remaining goods to his widow. He died 3 September, 16_98, and was buried five days later in Westminster Abbey, at the entrance of St. John the Baptist's Chapel. I hope at some future time to deal with the descendants of this typically selfish and cynical courtier. The general impression seems to be that his male descendants failed with his grandson, Thomas, son of Thomas Howard of Ashstead. However, there has lately come to light much evidence to the contrary. Certainly the eldest son of Sir Robert, Robert Howard, Jun. (who is omitted by all the authorities, such as Paget's 'Ashstead,' Causton's 'Howard Papers,' H. Howard's ' Memorials,' Burke's * Peerage,' <fec., but whose birth I have established above), lived to matriculate at St. Edmund's Coll., Oxford, as " son and heir of Sir Robt. Howard of Fabyans, Hants, aged 17," on 25 November, 1663 ; and in 1666 (his father having meanwhile married the widowed owner of Vasherne) was entered at the Inner Temple as " Robert Howard esquire of Vas- herne, Wilts." On 15 March, 1665/6, a licence to marry, at St. Mary Somerset's, was issued to "Robert Howard gent, of St. Giles-in- the-Fields, bachelor, about 22, and Susanna Oliver, of the same, widow, about 26." The age of this Robert Howard corresponds very nearly with that of Robert, eldest son of Sir Robert, and there are other important evidences (which I am not yet at liberty to publish) tending to show that the two were identical. The registers of St. Giles, and St. Botolphs, Bishopgate Street, record the baptisms of several children of Robert and Susanna Howard. It is probable that the younger Robert was cast off by his father, as his sister, Mary, Abbess of the Poor Clares at Rouen, had been. A tradition exists that he fell in a skirmish at Marshfield, Gloucester- shire, in 1689, while on his way to Ireland to join the army of James II. The proof of existing male descendants of Sir Robert Howard, K.B., would, of course, seriously affect the succession to the earldoms of Suffolk and Berkshire. GERALD BRENAN. Willesden.