Alfred the Great.  The earldom was given by the Conqueror to Roger of Montgomery; in addition to the castle and its immediate neighbourhood it comprised wide and rich possessions in the surrounding country.  By their treason to the Crown the Montgomerys soon forfeited the estates and the Earldom passed through the hands of Queen Adeliza, and her son de Albrin, and then to the Fitz-Alans, who held it for over three hundred years.  The daughter of the last Earl married the fourth Duke of Norfolk and this family have held it ever since.  They have made it their principal home and have built in recent years the magnificent temple of the older faith which dwarfs and overshadows the parish church.  This itself has felt the might of the great family who, as we shall presently see, imposed their will on the representatives of the Establishment.

[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 it surrendered.  By Stephen, on its giving hospitality to the Empress Maud; and by Waller, who captured it after seventeen days’ siege with a thousand prisoners.  Artillery mounted on the tower of the church played great havoc with the building and it remained in a ruinous condition until practically rebuilt by the tenth Duke in the latter part of the eighteenth century.