Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Howard, Edward Henry
HOWARD, EDWARD HENRY (1829– 1892), cardinal, born at Nottingham on 13 Feb. 1829, was eldest son of Edward Gyles Howard (grandson of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk), by his marriage with Frances Anne, eldest daughter of George Robert Heneage of Hainton Hall, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Oscott, and afterwards continued his studies at Edinburgh. In his youth he served the queen as an officer in the 2nd life guards, but he afterwards studied theology, was ordained priest by Cardinal Wiseman in the English College at Rome on 8 Dec. 1854, and attached himself to the service of Pius IX. He learned Arabic, Coptic, Hindustani, and Russian, and became an accomplished linguist. For about a year he was employed in India in connection with a mission to put an end to the Goa schism, and the rest of his ecclesiastical career was spent in Italy. His graceful and dignified bearing was familiar to frequenters of St. Peter's, in which basilica he held the office of archpriest's vicar. He was consecrated archbishop of Neocæsaria in partibus infidelium in 1872, and made coadjutor bishop of Frascati, an office which he retained for only a few weeks. He was created a cardinal-priest by Pius IX on 12 March 1877, the titular church assigned to him being that of St. John and St. Paul on the Coslian Hill. As protector of the English College in Rome to which he afterwards bequeathed his magnificent library he took possession of that institution on 24 March 1878. In December 1881 he was nominated archpriest of the basilica of St. Peter, and in that capacity he also became prefect of the congregation which has the care of the edifice itself. In the spring of 1884 he was raised by Leo XIII to the dignity of cardinal bishop, and translated to the suburbican see of Frascati. Having been seized with a serious illness in 1887, he was brought to England in the Spring of the following year. He died on 16 Sept. 1892 at Hatch Beauchamp, a villa on the London Road, in the extreme outskirts of Brighton, and was buried at Arundel on 1 Oct.
[Oscotian, 1888, p. 47, with portrait; Illustrated London News, 24 Sept. 1892, p. 390; Times, 17 Nov. 1892; Men of the Time, llth edit.; Tablet, 24 Sept. 1892, p. 481.]