The Dukes (13 page)
From the beginning, it was made clear to the little boy that he was
very special. He was brought up by his uncle Lord Fitzalan of
Derwent in the full consciousness of his unique position as Earl
Marshal with precedence over almost every other subject in the kingdom, and trained by him to assume the rigorous duties of his office.
It was the kind of upbringing that would have turned any other
young man's head, but as he was a Howard, he knew in his blood
that all this was his by right, and he was not at all perturbed by it.
He was educated to think of himself almost as royalty.
The days when the Duke of Norfolk was preceded through the
streets by trumpeters and followed by a retinue of a hundred men,
when he was met five miles outside London by heralds who escorted
him into the capital, and when crowds lined the street to see him pass,
all that may be over;
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but enough of the aura of the dukedom remains
for him to be revered even in the twentieth century as folk-king of
Sussex. Some of that mystical, quasi-divine quality clings yet to the
Duke of Norfolk. On the late Duke's coming of age in 1929, there
were celebrations lasting three days in the town of Arundel. The
Duke made what amounted to a royal progress through the streets,
crowded with the townspeople, his "subjects", who turned out
symbolically to aver their allegiance. His Grace was received by the
Mayor, who made an appropriate speech. Then he drove in an open
carriage to Littlehampton (the greater part of the town belonged to
him), while people lined the route to see him, the streets were
decorated, and the town band gave him a rousing welcome. Shops
in Arundel closed after midday, and a public holiday was declared.
Schools were entertained at a fete in the grounds of the castle. A
month later, 20,000 people joined in similar celebrations at Norfolk
Park, Sheffield.
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There was yet more public rejoicing at the Duke's
marriage in 1937. The spirit of such occasions is medieval, even pagan
in its unconscious ritual. Deep veneration was felt for the antiquity
of the Duke's title and dignity, especially in Arundel where, as the
Earl of Arundel, he possessed the charisma of a divine king which
can only be explained by the people's innate, unconscious need for
local mythology to be passed from generation to generation.
Since William rose and Harold fell
There have been Earls of Arundel.
It is the oldest earldom in the peerage of England, and until 1627 it
was held as of right by anyone who owned Arundel Castle; in other
words, it was a title independent of patents of creation. This is why,
in 1572, the son of the attainted Duke of Norfolk was still known as
Earl of Arundel, although all other titles had been forfeited. It was
not within the power or jurisdiction of Parliament to withdraw the
earldom, which was Philip Howard's right as long as he held Arundel
Castle. Little wonder, then, that since the ancient earldom was allied
to the ancient dukedom, successive incumbents have exerted unseen
power upon the collective imagination of the local people.
The other singularity which sets Norfolk apart from all other dukes
is his hereditary post as Earl Marshal of England. Unlike some other
such positions (as, for example, the Duke of St Albans, who is
Hereditary Grand Falconer, but never goes near a falcon), the
Earl Marshal has a job to do, and a job of such complexity that
there are only a handful of people who would have the knowledge to
deputise for him. This is the work for which Bernard Norfolk was
trained by his uncle, and which he performed to the sound of universal
praise. The Earl Marshal is ultimate and alone in his responsibility to
the Sovereign for all ceremonial occasions, for which onerous charge
he is paid a fee of £20 per annum. The fee was fixed by Richard III
in 1483 when he appointed the 1st Duke of Norfolk Earl Marshal,
and fixed in perpetuity. The King also directed that the Earl Marshal
should carry a staff with the royal arms in gold at one end, and at the
other, the arms of the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke still carries this
staff. The first Earl Marshal had been even earlier, in 1385, when
the post was held by a Mowbray Duke of Norfolk; before that, they
had been simply Marshals.
The late Duke's first duty was to arrange the funeral of George V,
after which he was responsible for the proclamations of Edward VIII,
George VI and Elizabeth II, the funerals of George VI, Queen Mary,
and Sir Winston Churchill, and finally the investiture of Prince
Charles as Prince of Wales. At the first of these, he was only twenty-
seven years old. At all of them, he showed the same astonishing grasp
of detail as his father had, and the same relentless pursuit of
perfection. There was a time when the elaborate ceremonial of the
coronation was understood by no one. When Queen Victoria was
crowned, she was not told where to sit, what to say, when to get up,
or what happened next. Her coronation was not far short of a
shambles. Nowadays, thanks to the Duke, it is the most precise and
splendid pageant in the world.
The Earl Marshal is not merely a stage-manager of state occasions.
He is head of the College of Heralds, and as such exercises an
authority independent of his titles. It is he who may ultimately decide
what arms a newly created peer may bear, and by what title he may
be known. He decides on matters of precedence. The staff at the
College of Heralds is responsible to him.
The Duke was careful to avoid one embarrassing case of heraldry
on which he might have been called to make a decision, since it
affected his own coat of arms. The Norfolk coat bears an augmentation known as the Flodden augmentation, granted to the victor of
that battle, along with restoration of the dukedom of Norfolk and
regrant of some lands. The difficulty is that the Flodden augmentation
was granted with remainder to
heirs general
of the grantee, while the
dukedom was granted to
heirs male.
The result of this should be that
only Lords Mowbray and Petre have the right to bear the augmentation, and
not
the Duke of Norfolk. (Other Howard descendants, the
Earls of Carlisle and Suffolk for example, bear the augmentation on
their arms.) We were denied, however, the cheerful spectacle of the
Duke dragging himself before his own Court. It remains to be seen if
the new Duke will allow the matter to be examined. (The
Complete
Peerage,
Vol. X, Appendix N, says that this was all a mistake on the
part of the King, and that the Flodden augmentation was intended
to descend with the dukedom.)
The Earl Marshal was originally subordinate to the Constable (a
military office), and the historical precedence of the Lord High
Constable is marked to this day by his ranking on the
right
of the
monarch at coronations, while the Earl Marshal is on the
left.
The popular press has on occasion exaggerated the duties of the
Earl Marshal in its desire to make of him a 'superstar' in accordance
with the demands of modern public life. The late Duke was not
infallible or omnipotent. When the funeral of the Duke of Windsor
took place in London, for instance, many of the arrangements were
undertaken by the Lord Chamberlain's office, while Fleet Street
continued to assume that Norfolk was responsible for it all.
It is a curious tolerance, one likes to think peculiarly English, which
allows the most solemn ritual in the Church of England, when the
Head of the Church is crowned, to be within the total control of the
senior Roman Catholic in the country. The evening before the
coronation the keys of Westminster Abbey are handed to the Duke
of Norfolk. When Bernard Marmaduke became 16th Duke of Norfolk he
inherited nearly 50,000 acres. The restrictions of twentieth-century life
gradually encroached upon these holdings until he was left with
24,000 acres. In St James's Square stood Norfolk House, which had
been the London residence of the family since 1684. This was sold in
1937, and pulled down; the furniture was auctioned. In 1931 the
town of Littlehampton (or the half of it which belonged to the Duke)
was sold, and part of the Arundel estate went in 1950. In 1959 the
Duke moved out of Arundel Castle, which he had once said was to
him "practically everything there is",
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to a five-bedroomed house
which he built in the park. The castle itself, with its 150 rooms, and
forbidding aspect, had ceased to be an attractive or economical place
to live, although, undaunted, the 17th Duke has announced his
intention of living there. When Creevey saw it in the last century he
wrote: "The devil himself could make nothing of the interior.
Any
thing so horrid and dark and frightful in all things I never beheld."
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It is open to the public.
The most lucrative portion of the estate is three and a quarter acres
just south of the Strand, which have been in the family since 1549.
Arundel Street, Norfolk Street, Maltravers Street, and Howard
Street all form part of this site. Now, of course, the new Duke of
Norfolk has added to the family holdings the extensive lands he owned
before he came to the dukedom.
Bernard Norfolk was a taciturn, withdrawn man, shy but sure of
himself. He had few opinions, but they were all unshakeable, and
mostly half a century behind those of his contemporaries. His right
to be right was unassailable. When he received criticism he was not
resentful but amazed; he could not comprehend that another view
might be possible. In this he was like the 4th Duke of Norfolk, who
antagonised Elizabeth I so much and eventually lost his head. He
failed to enter Oxford, but since it was Oxford's loss, he did not
mind. At the entrance examination he found himself sitting next to
an Asian student. "If they preferred his presence to mine at the
university, they were welcome to him," he said. The newspapers,
obsessed with trivia and saturated with wrong opinions, annoyed him.
"If I had my way," he said, "I'd shut down half the newspapers in
the country, and keep a tight censorship on the others, except
The
Times."