Anne Dacre

d. 1631 CONFESSOR

ANNE Dacre, confessor - Anne was one of the heiresses of Thomas Dacre of Gilsland, who was married to Philip Howard, baron Greystoke and Earl of Arundel. Her life was a way of the cross, a pilgrimage of deeply tested trust. Philip soon left his quiet, young wife for the glamour of Elizabeth's court, where he wasted their money and property to flatter the queen. Anne was driven from her home and rumours came to her of infidelities of doubts cast on the validity of her marriage and always there was the indifference of Philip and the contempt of the Court for her simple goodness.

This part of her pilgrimage lasted about eleven years. Then there was a brief togetherness with Philip which had its own pain and dangers. Anne returned to the full practice of her faith, and Philip was moved by the influence of Edmund Campion to seek reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. The Queen was furious with rage. Anne had to bear her first child away from home, and, as part of a last, desperate appeasement by Philip, the child was christened a Protestant and named Elizabeth!

Philip however went boldly and rashly into his new convictions, and minds subtler than his duped him into treasonous plots. For Anne there was to be a new twist on her way of the cross. Philip was thrown into the Tower, to stay for eleven years. She could not visit him and the Queen ordered the gaoler to lie to Philip that his second child was a girl, not the longed-for son and heir. All these years Anne could never see Philip and, as he drew near to death, only by renouncing their faith would they be allowed to meet. They met in death and lie together at Arundel. Anne lived to 73 years of age, revered for good works. Her last cross was the apostasy (during her lifetime) of her son Thomas, again for advancement at Court.
Anne hoped against hope, trusted to the end, with the persistent love of a wife and mother. By a final quirk of providence, her husband Philip was canonised as a martyr in 1970.

Fr. Tom Walsh

Lord William Howard

1563 . 1640

LATER nicknamed 'Belted Will', he was the third son of the 4th Duke of Norfolk. At an early age he was the victim of a matrimonial alliance aimed at securing the property of the great Dacre family for the Howards. The widowed Duke and Lady Dacre were married and their little children married too. William was only thirteen and his wife Elizabeth a year younger. In the meanwhile the Duke had been beheaded for high treason in plotting against Queen Elizabeth and planning to marry yet again Mary, Queen of Scots. Late in life William and Elizabeth were proud to claim how happy their marriage had been, and that whereas they had only 25 years between them when they married, they had then
achieved over 150.

The Duke was an Anglican, but he chose as tutor for his sons, Philip and William, a fine scholar called Gregory Martin, who had leanings toward Rome and was later ordained at Douai. His influence on the young men was profound, both in turning them towards the old faith, and in instilling a love of literature and scholarship. After a time at Cambridge, William and his wife lived at Enfield Chase, where their fifteen children were born. In 1583 Philip declared himself a Roman Catholic and William soon followed his example. This immediately placed them in a dangerous position, as the Pope's excommunication of the Queen resulted in all Roman Catholics being regarded as treasonable. Both were imprisoned in the Tower on more than one occasion, and Philip, who had planned to leave the country, eventually died there. He has in recent years been canonised as a saint. The Dacre family did not allow the estates to pass to the Howards peacefully. Elizabeth's uncles 'stomached it much that so goodly an inheritance descended by law to their nieces' and years of lawsuits resulted. It was not till 1601 that Elizabeth at last allowed them to receive their estates, and then only on a payment to the Crown of about £10,000 each. Soon afterwards William made his home in Cumberland, restoring the old Dacre fortress of Naworth.

After a century and more of war and pillage the barony was laid waste and William set about restoring order and prosperity. By a careful survey of the area, a careful system of accounting (both of which are recorded and of fascinating interest) and the re-establishment of a market at Brampton, he began the building up of a prosperous and peaceful countryside. He was never Lord Warden of the Marches as Scott would have it, but he was active in bringing moss-troopers to justice. Legends of his summary executions are belied by the records but he was certainly active with his sons in establishing peace. William Howard was a scholar of note, a friend of Camden and Cotton and one of the little group who set up the short-lived Society of Antiquaries. He built up a large library, mainly of history and theology, was a pioneer in collecting Roman remains and edited a monastic chronicle. Camden described him as 'a singular lover of venerable antiquities and learned withal'.

Elizabeth died in 1639 and a year later, when Naworth was endangered by a Scots army, the sick and aged man was taken by horse-litter to Greystoke, his sister-in-law's castle. He only lived a few days and was buried in Greystoke church. The families of two of his sons remained in the area at Naworth and Corby Castles, and are there to this day. The great-grandson who became the first Earl of Carlisle became an Anglican, as his family have remained, while the Corby branch has always been Roman Catholic. Although his books have gone, his spirit still seems to inhabit his tower at Naworth, where his bedroom, his library, with a wonderful ceiling, and his oratory are little touched. In the last is an early sixteenth-century German painting of the Passion and a priest's hole. His portrait and that of his wife is in the great hall. His devotion to his faith, apparently without bigotry (for he came to the help of Master William Warwick, the vicar of Brampton, with loans on several occasions, once saving him from the hands of the 'pursivantes'), his charity, generosity and hospitality are evident. The Brampton secondary school has been named after him. George Ornsby, who edited his papers a hundred years ago wrote:

The strength and resolution of Lord William's character,
his stern determination to uphold, at all hazards, the
majesty of the law, his high-minded integrity of purpose,
and his abhorrence of all that was base and ignoble,
left unquestionably an impress, strong and lasting,
upon the country over which his influence extended.

COMMEMORATION: 7th October.

SOURCES: George Ornsby (ed.), Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle. (Surtees Society, 1878). (William Howard is denounced as a Papist 1616)

Anne Dacre

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