EARL MARSHAL OF ENGLAND

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 7

EARL MARSHAL OF ENGLAND

CORONATION DUTIES HEREDITARY TASK OF DUKE OF NORFOLK (From a Reuter Correspondent.) LONDON. A millionaire duke who lost a rebel ancestor to the executioner’s axe under Queen Elizabeth I is today planning the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11. Owner of a string of titles going back to the beginnings of English nobility, the 44-y ear-old Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, will reach the climax of a year’s preparations when he leads the Queen into Westminster Abbey on June 2. By hereditary right, as England’s Premier Duke and Earl, the Earl Marshal is the organising brain behind all high State occasions, whether Coronations or Royal weddings or funerals. For centuries, the Dukes of Norfolk have carried the gold baton which gives the family the privilege to plan the pageantry of the great occasions of the realm. Several times in the past, the Dukes of Norfolk fell foul of the Monarch and lost their rights, but the title of Earl Marshal has now been theirs without interruption since 1672. It was then that King Charles II decreed that for all time the Duke of Norfolk was to be “the next and immediate officer under us for determining and ordering all matters touching arms, ensigns, nobility, honour and chivalry.” The present Duke, Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, sixteenth in the line of succession, has inherited large estates and high honours. Nine titles follow his name. He is Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Arundel, Earl of Surrey, Earl of Norfolk, Baron Maltravers, Baron Fitzalan, Baron Clun, Baron Oswaldestre and Baron Herries. He is the squire of 49,000 acres and four estates. His fortune was once estimated at £15,000,000.

Experience of Ceremonial In spite of his comparative youth, the sixteenth Duke has had more experience than most of his predecessors. Seventeen years ago, as a man of 27, he organised the funeral of King George V. The next year, he prepared the Coronation of King George VI. In 1947 he planned the wedding of the then Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Edinburgh, and last February he walked before the gun-carriage which carried King George VI to his grave. The .Duke is a devout Roman Catholic. But his duties make him one of the chief figures in the essentially Protestant Coronation rites of a Queen who by law must be a Protestant. But when, in Westminster Abbey in June, he walks with the Queen towards the Archbishop of Canterbury under the gaze of foreign monarchs, statesmen, and 8000 nobles and - commoners, the Duke will wear on his elaborate scarlet tunic, the blue and gold Order of Pius IX awarded to him by the Pope. As Earl Marshal, the Duke began making plans for the Coronation soon after the funeral of King George VI. To him falls the duty of issuing invitations, arranging the long processional drive through London qfter the ceremony, and arranging for press, radio, and television coverage. He must also decide many problems of precedence. One of the most difficult problems he has had to solve was how to choose which peers were to be given seats in the Abbey. For although every peer has a right to be present restrictions of space within the Abbey make it impossible this year to accommodate them all. After many discussions, peers were offered two free seats in stands outside the Abbey if they gave up their claim to be inside. The names of those who did not take advantage of this offer were personally drawn by lot by the Earl Marshal himself. The Earl Marshal’s duties are unpaid, though he gets an annual honorarium of £2O, a grant ordered in 1483 when Sir John Howard was made first Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal. Later, the Dukes of Norfolk were given the right “to bear a golden staff, tipped at each end with black, the upper part thereof to be adorned with the Royal Arms, and the lower with those of his own family, and for the better support of the dignity of the said office.” That the Earl Marshal cannot please everyone is evident from a leading article published by “The Times,” criticising the present Duke’s ancestor after Queen Victoria’s Coronation. “Our seat, obtained by favour of the Earl Marshal, did not enable us to obtain a full view,” the newspaper grumbled. , , , . When the present Duke ordered that “all persons do put themselves into mourning” at the death of King George VI, some critics complained that orders were no longer fitting in a democratic age.

Television Controversy Recently, the Earl Marshal was swept into controversy by an edict issued from his office barring television cameras from showing the actual crowning of the Queen. A Parliamentary storm and a barrage of newspaper protests led him and his officials to bow to public opinion. Televiewers will now see the actual Coronation, though not the whole of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. To prepare for the Coronation, the Earl Marshal has to take over Westminster Abbey for alterations months in advance. One of his tasks is to demand all the keys of the Abbey for safe keeping. . , From his office in London s» fashionable Belgrave square, the Duke of Norfolk, with a staff of 60 and 43 telephones in constant use, will be issuing a stream of orders from now until Coronation day, in an attempt to ensure that no detail is overlooked and that everything works to a strict time schedule. Earl Marshals had a tempestuous career long before the title passed to the present Duke’s ancestors. An Earl Marshal served William the Conqueror, who invaded England from Normandy in 10S6. Often, as the leading noble in the land, the dukes defied the King in those early days. In 1297. Roger Bigod, Earl Marshal, refused to lead King Edward I’s army to Gascony unless the King came with it. "As belong' to me by hereditary right, I will go in front of the host before your face, but without you, Sire King, I am not bound to go and go

I will not,” he told the monarch. That Earl Marshal won his argument—and kept his head. Another Earl Marshal, the Earl of Essex, clashed with Queen Elizabeth I. Records say that “quite forgetting himself and neglecting his duty, he (the Earl) uncivilly turned his back upon the Queen as it were in contempt, and gave her a scornful look. She, not enduring such contempt, returned him a box on the ear ’ ’

The Howards, the family of the Dukes of Norfolk, rose to power in the Middle Ages and like most other noble families suffered many vicissitudes through the years. The first Duke was assassinated as he lay in his tent at Bosworth in 1485. The fourth Duke was beheaded in 1572 on suspicion of being the lover of Mary, Queen of Scots. His son, Philip, died in the Tower of London after refusing Queen Elezibeth’s demand that he should renounce his Catholic faith. The present Duke lives with his wife and four small daughters—he has, as yet no heir —in an 800-year-old Ndrman castle at Arundel in Sussex. A serious, aloof man—he is often described as poker-faced—the Duke impressed men twice as old with his grasp of ritual when he first became Earl Marshal at the age of 21, 12 years after his father’s death. A master of foxhounds and keenly interested in horse racing, he once had a passion for jazz and even conducted an amateur jazz band. His heir at present is his cousin, Viscount Fitzalan. who is 69 and also the father of daughters. If no son is born to the Duke or his heir, the title and all its honours will eventually pass to another relative, Lord Howard, a descendant of the thirteenth Duke, who has four spns.