[Illustration: ARUNDEL CASTLE.]

"What house has been so connected with our political and religious
annals as that of Howard? The premiers in the roll-call of our nobility
have been also among the most persecuted and ill-fated. Not to dwell on
the high-spirited Isabelle, Countess Dowager of Arundel, and widow of
Hugh, last earl of the Albini family, who upbraided Henry III to his
face with 'vexing the church, oppressing the barons, and denying all
his true born subjects their right'; or Richard, Earl of Arundel, who
was executed for conspiring to seize Richard II--we must think with
indignation of the sufferings inflicted by Elizabeth on Philip, Earl of
Arundel, son of the 'great' Duke of Norfolk, beheaded by Elizabeth in
1572 for his dealings with Mary Queen of Scots. In the biography of
Earl Philip, which, with that of Ann Dacres his wife, has been well
edited by the fourteenth Duke, we find that he was caressed by
Elizabeth in early life, and steeped in the pleasures and vices of her
court by her encouragement, to the neglect of his constant young wife,
whose virtues, as soon as they reclaimed him to his duty to her,
rendered him hated and suspected by the Queen, so that she made him the
subject of vindictive and incessant persecution, till death released
him at the age of thirty-eight. To another Howard, Thomas, son of Earl
Philip, the country is indebted for those treasures of the East, the
Arundel marbles."

(_Quarterly Review_: Hare.)

[Illustration: THE KEEP, ARUNDEL.]

The castle, though not that portion at which we have been looking, has
been besieged on three important occasions; in 1102 by Henry I, to whom