Henry HOWARD

(2nd V. Bindon)

Born: 1542

Acceded: 1582

Died: 16 Jan 1590

Father: Thomas HOWARD (1º V. Bindon)

Mother: Elizabeth MARNEY

Married: Frances MEAUTYS (V. Bindon) (dau. of Sir Peter Meauwtys and Jane Ashley) (See her Biography) 10 Feb 1566, London, England

Children:

1. Douglas HOWARD

The Complete Peerage vol.VI,pp.584-5.

Eldest son of Thomas Howard, first Viscount Bindon, by his wife, Elizabeth Marney, Henry, Lord Bindon, is described as a spendthrift and as a squalid and dissolute creature with a temper verging on insanity. Henry was ‘very mean’, as a contemporary put it, referring to his habit of going about in a peasant’s smock. His neighbours suffered cruelly from his brutish behaviour.

When he came to inherit the title at his father's death, he was totally incapable of fulfilling his duties in the county. He was also a pirate who had little fear of who he attacked and this included his wife Frances. His behaviour finally came to a head in 1580 when he attacked the High Sheriffs of Hampshire and Dorset who were riding together near Wimborne. Howard rode with them becoming increasingly more abusive and determined to discover evidence that either man was a Catholic. He was imprisoned for just a month for his activities and Queen Elizabeth I took in Frances as lady in waiting. The Queen sent a messenger to collect Frances. He was her brother, an effete individual named Hercules Meautys, and was accompanied by John Strangways, Sheriff of Dorset. Strangways reported much abusive behaviour from Henry Howard.

An act of 1581 had made it high treason to reconcile anyone to Rome, or to be reconciled. After this, the arrest was ordered of any Jesuit or seminary priest. This enforcement followed hard upon riots against the sheriff, instigated by Lord Bindon. With such a climate of suspicion against Catholics and a Lord of the Manor like Henry Bindon it was hardly surprising that, the parish priest of Martinstown, John Adams, left the village to join other local clerics to train as a Catholic priest at the Seminary of Rheims in France under William Allen. It was at this time that the Spanish invasion under Mendoza was planned with support from English Catholic exiles.

Lord Bindon died early in 1590, and, as he had no child, his heir was his younger brother, Thomas Howard, who became the third Viscount Howard of Bindon.

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