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FITZALAN ‘THE LEADING CATHOLIC ARISTOCRAT IN ENGLAND’?

Published in Issue 1 (January/February 2022), Letters, Volume 30

Sir,—Seán Beattie (‘The lasting legacy of the last viceroy’, HI 29.5, Sept./Oct. 2021) is not quite correct in saying that Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent was ‘the leading Catholic aristocrat in England’. He was the younger brother of the 15th Duke of Norfolk (who died in 1917), and by 1921 he was the uncle of the 16th duke, the thirteen-year-old Bernard Marmaduke, who was, by virtue of his peerage, the premier duke in England and hereditary Marshal of England. As the head of the Fitzalan-Howard family is Catholic, it was the incumbent duke, and not his uncle, who was the premier Catholic aristocrat.—Yours etc.,

RICHARD PINE
Corfu

On this Day

April 26

1937 During the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica, a bastion of Republican resistance, was pounded by the German Condor Legion with high-explosive bombs and at least 3,000 incendiary bombs. Over 1,600 people were killed in the subsequent firestorm.
1900 Queen Victoria concluded her final, three-week visit to Ireland, the purpose of which was to encourage Irishmen to join the British Army and fight in the Second Boer War. Nationalist opposition to her visit was led by Arthur Griffith and his newspaper, The United Irishman.
1974 Nineteen Old Masters paintings were stolen from the Blessington, Co. Wicklow, home of Sir Alfred and Lady Beit by a Provisional IRA gang which included Dr Rose Dugdale.

FITZALAN ‘THE LEADING CATHOLIC ARISTOCRAT IN ENGLAND’?

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 26