Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, KG, GCVO, VD, PC (27 December 1847 – 11 February 1917), styled Lord Maltravers until 1856 and Earl of Arundel and Surrey between 1856 and 1860, was a British Unionist politician and philanthropist.

The Duke was first educated at The Oratory School, but owing to restrictions from the Catholic Hierarchy he was unable to attend either Oxford or Cambridge Universities.

[2] In 1895, he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Postmaster General[3] by Lord Salisbury, a post he held until early 1900, when he resigned in order to serve in the Boer War.

[4] In 1895 he also became Mayor of Sheffield; serving two terms during which he arranged the city's monumental celebrations in honour of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

[6] Aged 53, he volunteered for active service in the Second Boer War, and was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Yeomanry,[7] leaving Southampton for South Africa in early April 1900 on the SS Carisbrooke Castle.

Norfolk's commission proposed a Home Defence Army raised by conscription, which was unpopular with the Volunteers and Yeomanry, and was quickly shelved.

[16][17] He was three-time chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations, grand chancellor of the Primrose League, and commanding officer of the 4th (Volunteer) Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment.

This church was also later chosen to serve as St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich when the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia was re-established in 1976.

In the 1890s Norfolk was instrumental in the campaign that convinced the Vatican authorities to relax its restrictions on Catholic students enrolling at the great English universities, culminating with the co-founding of St Edmund's College, Cambridge along with Baron Anatole von Hugel.

From 1898 on, he edited, together with Charles Tindal Gatty, the hymnal Arundel Hymns, to which Pope Leo XIII contributed a preface in the form of a personal letter.

They had one child: Their son was born with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, and "all the resources of medical science were applied on behalf of the affected infant, but only with partial effect".

[21] When his death was announced at age 22, it was reported that "he had never grown up, remaining all his life a boy, with a sweet face, half-blind, blond, with almost albino-like fairness, and suffering from a general failure of nervous power."