Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour

On the death of his father, who had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Stratton, on 19 May 1643 he succeeded to his estates and to his titles, which included that of Count of the Holy Roman Empire.

In May 1643 the parliamentarians wrested his ancestral home Wardour Castle, in Wiltshire, from his mother Lady Blanche Arundell who was defending it.

By springing a mine and ruining the building, he finally dislodged the enemy under General Edmund Ludlow in March 1644,[1] partly destroying it to prevent it being used as a fortress.

In that year Arundell appears to have petitioned Oliver Cromwell for pardon, and in 1656 to have received permission to take refuge in France.

At the Restoration of Charles II, Arundell, on paying £35,000, was confirmed in all his family estates, many of which had been sold by the Commonwealth to Humphrey Weld.

In 1678 Titus Oates and his associates announced that Arundell was a chief mover in the Popish Plot against Charles II, which they professed to have discovered; it was a complete fabrication.

The charges were patently absurd: among other unlikely accusations, Arundell was alleged to have conspired with his fellow Catholic peer, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (who was executed in 1680 for his supposed part in the Plot), although it was common knowledge that following a bitter quarrel they had not spoken to each other for some 25 years.

In the following June Arundell presented an address to the King on behalf of the Roman Catholics, thanking him for the Declaration of Indulgence; uncharacteristically, he strongly opposed the admission of the Jesuit Edward Petre to the privy council.

After the deposition of King James II, Arundell retired to his house at Breamore, Hampshire, and took no further part in public life.

He was a noted gambler and sportsman, and kept at Breamore a celebrated pack of hounds, which became the property of the Earl of Castlehaven, and subsequently of Hugo Meynell.