Free The Dukes by Brian Masters Page A

a hundred years, from 1473 until the 4th Duke went to the block in 1572, but thereafter their religion barred them from holding political office. Not for 250 years were the Norfolks allowed to take their seats in the Houses of Parliament. In 1829 Roman Catholic Relief Bill repaired the injustice, and at last the 12th Duke of Norfolk (11765-1842), known as "Scroop" or "Twitch", or "Our Barney", took his seat in the House of Lords, while his son was the first Roman Catholic to  sit in the Commons since the Reformation.
    By then the damage of being in a back seat for so long had had its effect. Successive Dukes of Norfolk in the seventeenth and eight­eenth centuries degenerated into a series of amiable eccentrics, obsessed with their own family history and living on the past. The year 1572 might have marked the end of the dukedom were it not for the generosity of Charles II, who revived the title in 1660 by Act of Parliament, after it had lain dormant for nearly a hundred years. The man who was thus restored as 5th Duke of Norfolk (1626-1677) was a gibbering idiot who had suffered brain fever at the age of eighteen from which he never recovered. So dangerous a lunatic was he, that his next brother Lord Henry Howard had packed him off to Italy where he was kept in confinement and never allowed to set foot in England again. The titular Earl Marshal was "unapproachable ... an incurable maniac". 25 Reresby saw him in exile and declared that "he laboured under all the Symptoms of Lunacy and Distraction". His younger brothers suspected that this madness was a fiction fostered by Henry Howard, who acted as Earl Marshal in the idiot's place, and they petitioned the House of Com­mons in 1676 to send for the Duke, saying that he was perfectly in command of his senses. The petition was not granted. Reresby and others, who had no axe to grind, were believed, and the risk of having a lunatic let loose on the country's ceremonial was not taken. 26 He died unmarried in Italy, his body brought back by laboursome journey, to England, where it was buried one whole year after death. His brother Henry Howard succeeded him as 6th Duke of Norfolk (1628-1684).
    The 7th Duke of Norfolk (1655-1701) is remembered for a witty remark he is reputed to have made to James II, 27 and for the notorious affair his wife had with that handsome soldier of fortune, Sir John Germain. The Duchess's adultery was flaunted about town in a way which made a laughing-stock of the poor Duke. Germain would frequently stay at one of the Norfolks' country seats, where he was allocated a bedroom adjacent to the Duchess's own bedroom. The two rooms communicated by a false cupboard, which one walked into, then climbed over a wooden partition, and walked out of again into the next room. The partition inside the cupboard was six feet high, but did not reach the ceiling. One day the Duke came unex­pectedly to his wife's bedroom, and finding the door locked, demanded entry. Germain was of course in bed with her. He had time only to leap out of bed, and on to the partition, where he sat perilously and uncomfortably, naked but for a shirt, not daring to drop down the other side for fear that he would be heard. To make matters worse, the Duchess's pet lap-dog followed him to the par­tition, and barked at him all the time, wagging his tail and thoroughly enjoying the fun. The Duke, strange to say, in spite of the racket, did not discover Germain hiding on his perch. 28 The affair finally exploded in the courts in 1692. The Duke sued Germain for damages "for lying with the Duchess", claiming £100,000. He won his case, but the jury awarded him a miserable 100 marks only, presumably because they knew that he had a mistress himself and London was anyway bored with the spectacle of the Duke and Duchess fighting over lovers. The judge fulminated against him, telling the jury that "he was sorry the world should know how low virtue and chastity were held in England". 29 Anne Bagnalls wrote: