Effingham lie there, each in his day Lord High Admiral of the
English navy. Charles, the second Lord Howard, died at Haling House near
Croydon, and was buried at dead of night in the family vault on December
23, 1624. Incredible as it sounds, from that day until 1888, the
three-hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Armada, not a single
record of the Admiral who met and destroyed it was to be seen in Reigate
Church, except the inscription on the coffin in the Howards' vault.
Then, at last, the inscription was copied and placed on a brass in the
chancel. Its terseness fits the dead man's name:--

Here in the vault beneath
at midnight the Dec. 23: 1624
lyeth the body of Charles Howarde
Earl of Nottingham
Admyrall of
Englande
Generall of Queen Elizabeth's
Royale Navey at sea
Against the
Spanyards Invinsable
Navye
In the Year of our Lord
1589, who departed this
Life at Haling House the 14
Day of December in the
Year of our Lorde, 1624
Aetatis Suae 87

We saw the Howards at Effingham and Great Bookham, and shall find them
again at Lingfield. Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower, in the _Surrey
Archaeological Collections_, has brought together some interesting
particulars of the antiquities of the family. The second Duke of
Norfolk, who was father of the first Lord Howard of Effingham, and now
lies at Lambeth, left a remarkable will. He was, as his epitaph informs
us, a "High and Mighty Prince," and he writes of himself in the royal
plural. He orders a tomb to be erected before the high altar of Thetford
"with pictures of us and Agnes our wife to be set together thereupon."
The Lambeth Parish Registers do not read so respectfully. This is the
entry recording the passing of the Prince's widow--"Oct. 13, 1545, my
Lady Agnes, olde Dutchesse Norf., buried."

Reigate churchyard holds the gravestones of two neighbours in name and
place. A Goose and a Gosling are buried side by side.

When Reigate had a castle, it also had a priory. It was founded for
Austin Canons by one of the de Warennes, and its first prior was an
Adam. After the Dissolution, the Priory estate saw some strangely
different owners and guests. The first Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord
High Admiral, had it; Foxe, perhaps meditating his _Book of Martyrs_,
stayed there as tutor to the son of the