Lord William Howard is surely the least known of the fourth Duke of Norfolk's three sons. Although a Catholic, he was not a martyr like his half-brother Philip. Unlike his elder brother Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, he had no spectacular public career. But because he was not a martyr, he was a more typical Catholic layman than his half-brother; because he lacked high public office and never sought the position of a courtier, but spent his time managing his estates and participating, though as a Catholic unofficially, in local government, he was more typical of landowners of the period than his brother Thomas. Between the two extremes of martyrdom and hypocrisy were the great majority of English Catholics; between these two extremes we can place Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, Cumberland. In this paper I should like to consider Lord William's Catholicism in three contexts: his own position; in relation to other Catholics through the marriages he arranged for his children; in the attempts he made to protect individual Catholics.