THE DUKE OF NORFOLK

New Zealand Tablet, 10 May 1917, Page 49

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK

The passing of Henry, Duke of Norfolk, from the scene emphasises more than ever the break which is taking place in England in matters both of Church and State. For more than fifty years he upheld the great title which made him equally the doyen of the English Peerage and the first Catholic layman in the British Empire. His position was lonely and unique. The respect and reverence which he commanded might be compared to that of Charles Carroll of Carrollton when he was the surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence as well as the leading Catholic in America. The position of the Duke as hereditary Earl Marshal was one which never allowed the Court to regard itself as wholly non-Catholic. Whatever King or Queen might be, the ace in the pack was -always Catholic. In a country where, all ceremonial, except religious, is zealously guarded, his position at royal coronations and funerals was a national one. Westminster Abbey was on such occasions officially under his orders and surveillance. At the last coronation it was his duty to marshal the procession, including a motley group of Anglican bishops, several of whom were wearing copes or substitutes for copes. One or two were without their * wedding garment.’ The Duke, having an eye for what was seemly and picturesque, hastily borrowed a decent cope or two from the neighboring Catholic authorities, and the dazzling scene proceeded! His Life was Almost That of a Recluse, for he admitted no intimates except his kinsfolk. Only on state occasions the British crowd learned to recognise the lonely but gorgeous figure which left the keep at Arundel to share in making a Cockney holiday. Peculiar and difficult his position was always, but he upheld it without trespassing either on his civil, or ecclesiastical duties. He was the only link between the throne and the ancient Faith. Though it was necessary for him to stand by King Edward when the latter swore the offensive and blasphemous portion of the- coronation oath, his tact was rewarded by the royal sympathy and the emendation of the wording at the next coronation.

To the public he was only a medieval figure, a supreme church warden and builder. In his largess to the Church he was munificent and magnificent. Apart from the unnumbered charities which his left hand was called upon to support without the knowledge of his right, he was an avowed church-builder in a materialised age and country. The delicate and lofty fane with which he crowned the town of Arundel forever proclaims to the South Saxons that one corner of Sussex is still set aside for Holy Church. In Norwich, the capital of Norfolk, he erected a church that is little less than a cathedral. The Oratory and Westminster he helped to build. To build churches he sold some of his finest pictures to the National Gallery. Unendowed with powers of eloquence or script he disheartened the Anglican schism by the splendor of builded stone. If the old cathedrals could not be given back, he set out to build as great and beautiful again. His Private Life was Sad and Spiritual. His only child by his first marriage, a son, was a helpless cripple, to whom he devoted himself for twenty years, refusing to marry again while his son lived. It required the combined influence of his father, ‘ his cousin,* Queen Victoria, and the Pope to prevent him t ,at one time from entering the religious life. But he took up the most wearisome duties instead, the perpetual patronage of Catholic charities and bazaars. His sense of duty held him to the wheel. He allowed himself no luxuries or pleasures out of his quarter of a million pounds of income. He raced neither horses nor yachts. His fortune was no temptation to him, for he despised it as he despised the gorgeous livery which it was his alone to wear at Court. In civil life he took pleasure in wearing shabby clothes and assuming a neglected aspect. In the Middle Ages he would have worn a hairshirt. In this age he wore the mockery of illfitting clothes. With quiet humor he once accepted a

tip from a tourist to whom he had shown his grounds and allowed himself while leading, the English national pilgrimage to Rome to be mistaken for Cook’s agent. He gladly accepted humiliation incurred in the course of duty. Though he came near to compromising England, when the so-called Italian Kingdom was her only friend, the Duke did not mince 'matters at Rome when he openly deplored the spoliation of the Church. The Duke’s indiscretion * was the ’subject of violent recrimination in the press and the cause of veiled apologies in diplomacy. To criticism he made no answer but went his way, giving always a self-sacrificing though stiff example to his fellow-Catholics. 3 After his fashion he labored to ‘ build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.’ ;■ ’. v ; His Lawsuits and his Excursions Abroad were typically unlike those generally accredited to the English aristocracy. When he travelled on the Continent it was not to Monte Carlo but to Rome, not to Paris but to Lourdes. This pathetic pilgrimage to Lourdes on behalf of his crippled son brought him an envenomed allusion in Zola’s novel of that name. The great lawsuit of his life was not with Jew or moneylender, but with the Anglican Vicar of Arundel to recover possession of the Fitzalan Chapel in which his ancestors were buried. The courts gave him practically one-half of an Anglican building, which he walled off and restored to Catholic usage. It was an important ecclesiastical decision, as it admitted the break in Anglican continuity to the extent of a wall between the old Catholicism and the Elizabethan hybrid. The Duke’s selflessness and pure devotion to duty gave him the respect of friend and foe. At Rome his word on English affairs was weightier than a bishop’s, except when he indulged in his political predilections. A solemn sense of duty seemed to account for his every public and every private act. His public life was a constant endeavor to show that ultramontanism was compatible with patriotism. He resigned a comfortable place in the Cabinet in order to take a quixotic part in the South African War. Duty took him into politics, to Court, to war, to the platform and to church. Many who loved his religion detested his politics. Others who praised his politics detested his religion. But he went his way unflinching, accepting the kicks with the praise. As an Oratory Boy the congenial duty fell to him of asking Leo XIII. to make Newman a Cardinal. When the matter seemed delayed, he went with Lord Ripon to invoke Manning’s aid, which indeed Manning claimed was essential. Bluntly and frankly he asked Manning to request his rival’s honor. As Manning still associated Newman with all that was liberal and opposed to him personally in English Catholicism, it was a hard task for the Duke, but it was perhaps harder for Manning to control his features. Lord Ripon used to describe the grim look which flashed in the great Ultramontane’s face followed by an instantaneous change of expression as he realised when hard pressed that he could not wisely or honestly refuse to help Newman’s promotion. He had already prepared the way by his private vindication of Newman’s orthodoxy to the Pope, but it was undoubtedly the Duke of Norfolk who exerted the touch necessary to the result. To him in many indirect ways was due the gratitude of Catholics, but he lives in history as the Duke of Norfolk to whom Newman wrote his famous letter and through whom Newman reaped his earthly reward.— Shane Leslie in America.