Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel. Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel KG, was a prominent English courtier during the reigns of King James I and King Charles I, but he made his name as a Grand Tourist and art collector rather than as a politician.
When he died he possessed 700 paintings, along with large collections of sculpture, books, prints, drawings, and antique jewellery. Most of his collection of marble carvings, known as the Arundel marbles, was eventually left to the University of Oxford.
He is sometimes referred to as the 21st Earl of Arundel, ignoring the supposed second creation of 1289, or the 2nd Earl of Arundel, the latter numbering depending on whether one views the earldom obtained by his father as a new creation or not. He was also 2nd or 4th Earl of Surrey; and was later created 1st Earl of Norfolk.
He is also known as the Collector Earl. Arundel was born in relative penury, at Finchingfield in Essex on 7 July 1585.
His aristocratic family had fallen into disgrace during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I owing to their religious conservatism and involvement in plots against the Queen. He was the son of Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel, and Anne Dacre, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre of Gilsland. He never knew his father, who was imprisoned before Arundel was born, and owing to his father's attainder he was initially styled Lord Maltravers. Arundel's great-uncles return