Matthew Arundell

Sir Matthew Arundell of Wardour Castle in Wiltshire (ca. 1533 – 24 December 1598), known between 1552 and 1554 as Matthew Howard and after his death sometimes called Matthew Arundell-Howard, was an English gentleman, landowner, and member of parliament in the West of England.

Although the ancestor of a family of Roman Catholic recusants, Arundell himself conformed to the Church of England.

A member of the ancient knightly family of Arundell of Cornwall, Arundell was the son of Sir Thomas Arundell (attainted and executed in 1552) and of Margaret Howard (died 1571), a sister of Queen Catherine Howard. His maternal grandparents were Lord Edmund Howard (died 1539), the third son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and Joyce Culpeper (c. 1480–1531). His great aunt Elizabeth, Countess of Wiltshire, was the mother of Anne Boleyn, who was thus the first cousin of Arundell's mother as well as being the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. He was a descendant of the 11th century landowner Roger de Arundell, who possessed a substantial estate of twenty-eight manors in Wiltshire and Dorset at the Domesday Book survey, and his ancestors on his mother's side included the Varangian chieftain Rurik (ca. 830–879), founder of the Rurikid dynasty.