Arundell had a younger brother,
Charles, and two sisters, Dorothy and Jane. Little is known of their early lives, except that after the execution of their father in 1552 their mother took her children to live in the
Holy Roman Empire, where the family used the name of Howard. For this reason, Arundell is sometimes referred to as Matthew Arundell-Howard. In 1554, two years after his father's death, when he was about twenty-one, the Arundells were "restored in blood", meaning that their father's attainder was reversed so far as it affected them, and Arundell gradually succeeded in regaining most of his father's lost estates in Dorset and Wiltshire. In 1559 Arundell married Margaret Willoughby, a daughter of Sir Henry Willoughby, of
Wollaton,
Nottinghamshire, and wife Lady Anne Grey, the youngest daughter of
Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, and second wife
Margaret Wotton. As a child Margaret and her sister and brother had been taken in by
Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, and his wife,
Frances Brandon, after their father was slain in the suppression of
Kett's Rebellion in 1549, and had grown up with Dorset's daughters,
Lady Jane Grey,
Lady Katherine Grey, and
Lady Mary Grey. Margaret was present at Mary Grey's secret marriage on 16 July 1565 to the Queen's serjeant porter,
Thomas Keyes, and was bequeathed a tankard of gold and silver in Mary Grey's will. As a young lady Margaret had previously served in the household of
Princess Elizabeth at
Hatfield House. Sir Thomas Arundell's main seat, Wardour Castle, had been held by knight service of the
Earl of Pembroke, so had escheated to Pembroke in 1552. In 1570 Arundell was able to buy it back to live in, together with the manor of
Sutton Mandeville, and the next year Lord Pembroke granted him the site of
Shaftesbury Abbey. As well as living at Wardour, the Arundells kept a town house in London. Arundell served in several official capacities, including as
Sheriff,
custos rotulorum, and
Deputy Lieutenant of
Dorset. Apart from his administrative tasks in the West of England, where his estates lay, Arundell was twice a
Member of Parliament. The
borough of
Shaftesbury in Dorset sent him to sit as one of its burgesses in the
House of Commons in the parliament of 1555. In 1563 he was elected as the
knight of the shire for
Breconshire in
Wales. At Westminster he followed the powerful
William Cecil, and in 1574 was knighted by his cousin Queen Elizabeth. Arundell's own elder son was imprisoned as a suspected
Imperial spy, but Arundell himself conformed to the Church of England. In 1588, Arundel was one of a small number of knights considered for a peerage on account of "great possessions". The following year he was appointed a
Deputy Lieutenant for Wiltshire. In his final months Arundell was in pain from
bladder stones. Following his death on 24 December 1598 he was buried at the
parish church of
Tisbury. In his Will,
proved on 6 February 1598/99, he gave
£2,000 – at the time an enormous sum, equal to almost twice the annual income of his more powerful connection the Earl of Southampton – to the poor. As Custos Rotulorum of Dorset he was succeeded by
Sir Walter Raleigh. ==Posterity==