styled 1661-85 Visct. Morpeth; suc. fa. 24 Feb. 1685 as 2nd earl of CARLISLE
First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 7 May 1690
MP Morpeth 27 Sept. 1666, 1679 (Mar.); Cumb. 1679 (Oct.); Carlisle 1681
b. 27 Nov. 1646, 1st and o. surv. s. of Charles Howard, later earl of Carlisle, and Anne, da, of Edward Howard, Bar. Howard of Escrick. educ. travelled abroad 1662-6.1 m. lic. 27 Apr. 1668, Elizabeth (d. 15 Dec. 1696), da. and coh. of Sir William Uvedale‡, of Wickham, Hants, wid. of Sir William Berkeley, 5s. (2 d.v.p.) 4da. (3 d.v.p.).2 d. 23 Apr. 1692; will 7 Mar. 1690-29 June 1691, pr. 6 May 1692.3
Ld. lt. (jt.), Cumb. and Westmld. 1668-85; dep. gov. Carlisle 1678-85;4 alderman, Carlisle by 1680-June 1688, Oct. 1688-d.; mayor, Carlisle 1683-4.
Cornet, English Gens d’Armes (French army) 1667;5 capt., Sir John Sayer’s Regt. of Ft. 1667, earl of Carlisle’s Regt. of Ft. 1673-4, Carlisle garrison regt. 1678-85;6 col., Ld. Morpeth’s Regt. of Ft. 1678-9.
Freeman, Merchant Adventurers, 1664.7
Associated with: Naworth Castle, Cumb.;8 Carlisle House, Soho Square, Westminster.9
Likeness: oil on canvas, 1691, Castle Howard, N. Yorks.
Edward Howard, styled Viscount Morpeth, the heir of Charles Howard earl of Carlisle, first entered Parliament in September 1666 when, while still underage, he was returned as Member for his namesake borough, Morpeth in Northumberland. Morpeth may have sat for a Northumbrian borough, but it was in neighbouring Cumberland where he, with his father, exercised his predominant local influence. As early as 1664, well before he was of age, he was first appointed by Parliament as a commissioner of assessment for that county and he was consistently placed on its commission of the peace from 1667 until his death. In December 1668 Morpeth was appointed joint lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland with his father to govern those counties while Carlisle was absent, serving as ambassador in Sweden.10 Over the following years Morpeth increased his influence in Cumberland and especially in the garrison town of Carlisle by acting as deputy during his father’s frequent travels abroad, and especially in 1678-81 when Carlisle was in Jamaica as governor.11
Morpeth was not a particularly active member of the Cavalier Parliament and appears to have followed his father in his political allegiances, adhering to the court and to Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), by spring 1677, if not earlier.12 He was rewarded for his loyalty with a commission to command his own regiment for the projected war against France in 1678. He became dangerously ill while stationed in Flanders.13 Having recovered, he was returned again for Morpeth in the first Exclusion Parliament, when he voted against the commitment of the exclusion bill and was considered ‘vile’ by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury. He was chosen a knight of the shire for Cumberland for the second Exclusion Parliament and sat for Carlisle in 1681.14
After succeeding to his father’s peerage in February 1685, the new earl of Carlisle came to only 19 meetings of James II’s Parliament, most of them in June and early July. Undoubtedly, he felt little warmth for the new regime as James II had quickly appointed others to replace the late earl of Carlisle – Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, as lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland and Sir Christopher Musgrave‡ as governor of Carlisle – even though the second earl had been effectively acting in those posts for several years. By 1687 Carlisle was consistently listed as an opponent of the king’s attempt to repeal the Test Act and penal laws. He supported the seven bishops in their trial in 1688 and was suggested as a surety for the bail of John Lake, bishop of Chichester.15 His attitude towards James would not have been improved by the borough of Carlisle’s new charter of spring 1688, in which the king explicitly ordered the removal of Carlisle from his offices in the corporation. On 10 July Carlisle addressed a letter to William of Orange pledging to him his loyalty and service.16 In light of this, it is surprising that he refused to subscribe to the petition for a free Parliament in November 1688. Carlisle did regularly attend the meetings of the provisional government of December 1688 and signed the Guildhall Declaration of 11 December.17 When the council of lords was debating on 13 Dec. what to do with the king, recently seized at Faversham while trying to escape to France, Carlisle insisted that they had to inform William of this development, as they had presented their Declaration to the Prince on the grounds that the king had removed himself from the kingdom.18
Carlisle supported William of Orange’s claims to the throne during the scant six days during which he came to meetings of the Convention. His brief period of attendance was concentrated on the crucial days of late January and early February 1689. Although he was marked as ‘sick’ at a call of the House on 25 Jan. he made his way into the House four days later and appears to have been there on 31 Jan. when Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, recorded him as voting to declare William and Mary king and queen, although his name does not appear in that day’s presence list in the Journal. Carlisle voted to agree with the Commons on the use of the word ‘abdicate’ on 4 Feb. and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, included him among the four peers ‘who never used to come’ whose unexpected appearance, ‘brought [in] upon his crutches’, in the House on 6 Feb. was decisive in tipping the crucial division that day in William’s favour.19 Carlisle’s northern neighbour Sir John Lowther, later Viscount Lonsdale, also described Carlisle in early 1689 as ‘a cripple with the gout’ and explained that he, Lowther, was granted the lord lieutenancy of Cumberland and Westmorland in April 1689 ‘for want of a proper person to give it to’, the debilitated earl ‘refusing to act or be concerned with the lieutenancy of these counties’.20
So weakened by illness was Carlisle that he stopped attending the Convention altogether after 18 Feb. 1689. On 28 May 1689 the House sent a summons demanding his presence by 16 June, but formally excused him on 6 June ‘in regard of great lameness’.21 He still managed to drag himself into the House on 11 Apr. 1690, when he took the oaths for the new Parliament, but he did not attend again until 7 May, which was his last appearance in Parliament. On 9 Jan. 1692 he registered his proxy for the first and only time, entrusting it to Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham. Carlisle died on 23 Apr. 1692, ‘after a life of so much pain that he scarce had any ease in this world’, at his wife’s property of Wickham in Hampshire, where he was also buried.22 His will included complicated arrangements for his three younger children, assigning to each of them a portion of the income he received from over £15,000 worth of mortgages he held. He did not make specific provisions for his first son Charles Howard as he inherited his father’s vast northern estates.
C.G.D.L.- 1 CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 364.
- 2 Berry, Hants Genealogies, 75; Castle Howard, A5/38.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/409.
- 4 CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 677; 1679-80, p. 177; 1685, p. 55.
- 5 HMC Le Fleming, 53.
- 6 CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 677; 1685, p. 55.
- 7 Add. 28079, ff. 59-60.
- 8 Hutchinson, Hist. of Cumb. i. 133.
- 9 Survey of London, xxxiii. 44, 73.
- 10 Bulstrode Papers, i. 76; CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 88.
- 11 CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 677; 1679-80, pp. 177, 581; 1680-1, p. 139; 1685, p. 55.
- 12 BIHR, xliii. 101.
- 13 HEHL, HM 30315 (no. 159); HMC Rutland, ii. 53.
- 14 HMC Le Fleming, 169, 170, 171, 174, 178, 396; HMC Dartmouth, i. 75-76; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 362.
- 15 Add. 28091, f. 172; Add. 34510, f. 134; Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 76; Carte 76, f. 28.
- 16 Ferguson and Nanson, Municipal Recs. of Carlisle, 20; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 233.
- 17 Bodl. ms Eng. hist. d. 307, f. 6r.
- 18 Kingdom without a King, 72, 93.
- 19 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261.
- 20 EHR, xxx. 93.
- 21 Add. 17677 II, ff. 79-80.
- 22 Verney ms mic. M636/45, A. Nicholas to Sir R. Verney 26 Apr. 1692.