Miles Fitzalan-Howard, who has died aged 86, had so many titles that it would have taken a medieval herald nearly a minute to shout. He was - to name but a few of the more sonorous - 17th Duke of Norfolk, premier peer of the realm and hereditary earl marshal of England.
Yet he was, for most of his life, set apart from the limelight by the eminence and devotion of his Roman Cath- olicism. He was Britain's most senior Catholic layman, leader of one of the oldest families in a faith which, for nearly 300 years, lay under a civil and political shadow, until it was emancipated from state restrictions in the 19th century. The Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote in Brideshead Revisited that such people were almost a secret tribe. The duke him self was once quoted as saying with a small grin, "I believe in living my life under a bushel". But he also said: "We are like the British infantry in defence. We never give in".
His personal librarian John Martin Robinson observed of the whole 500-year Norfolk dynasty: "They were in the middle of things, yet shut out. Their religion, as well as their dukedom, was medieval. With one or two exceptions, adherence to a prescribed religion is their great trait. They have always had an unpompous independence of character".
This divided inheritance left Howard as a largely invisible duke - the title he inherited from a cousin, with some reluctance, in 1975. His only duty as earl marshal was to organise the state opening of parliament. His predecessor, Duke Bernard, did the 1953 coronation, though any repetition of that grand role was denied to Howard by the Queen's longevity. He effectively retired as earl marshal on his 86th birthday, passing the work to his son Eddie.
His full titles, collected by forebears since the 12th century, were: Earl of Arundel; Baron Beaumont; Baron Maltravers; Earl of Surrey; Baron FitzAlan, Clun and Oswaldestre; Earl of Norfolk; Baron Howard of Glossop; earl marshal and hereditary marshal and chief butler of England; Duke of Norfolk and - as he added in his Who's Who entry - "premier duke and earl".
He tended, however, to be more proud of his 30-year record as an active soldier, military cross-winner and military civil servant before he inherited the dukedom. Although only occasional speeches in the House of Lords brought him to public attention, he was, in private, an active, energetic, tren chant man. His idea of happy exercise was splitting wood, building walls and working with horses.
Howard, whose titles before he inherited the dukedom were Beaumont and Baron Howard, was the great-grandson of the second son of the 13th Duke of Norfolk. He had known long before 1975 that what he called "the wavy line of the succession" might come to him because of the inability of the 16th duke, Bernard, to produce heirs. "It was just going to bloody well happen, and one tried to prepare for it", he told an interviewer.
Educated at Ampleforth, the Roman Catholic public school, he got a third-class history degree at Christ Church, Oxford, and joined the Grenadier Guards as a lieutenant in 1937. Two years later, the second world war brought him promotion to command of an anti-tank pla toon. He served at Dunkirk and in north Africa, then earned his MC in the battle of the Sangro river during the German army's tenacious resistance to the allied conquest of Italy. After D-day, he was posted to Washington, where he met his wife, Anne.
In 1957, he headed the British military mission to Soviet forces - "Great characters, the Russians, rather like Irish Guard sergeants" - in Potsdam. Later, as brigade comander with the King's African Rifles, he had responsibility for steering the Kenyan army towards independence, winning credit for his determination to integrate blacks and whites.
As a major-general, he commanded the first division of the Rhine army from 1963 to 1965. Looking back on this, he declared once, "It took no effort on my part to inherit the dukedom of Nor folk and all the other titles I have. But I am justly proud to have commanded the first division ... as I had to work for that off my own bat."
His final gong before retirement, as director of service intelligence at the Ministry of Defence, exasperated him. The ministry was a disgrace, he said - insufferable and overstaffed. But, with his command of German and French, he found what he saw as a second spring, as director in charge of euro dollars and eurobonds at the City merchant bank Robert Fleming.
When he took his ducal seat in the Lords at the age of 59, he did so in the robes worn by his ancestor, the 12th duke, the first Catholic peer after emancipation in 1829. He was briefly headlined as "the reluctant duke who cleans his own shoes".
One of his first deeds was to call his whole family together for a service of rededication and rehabilitation for their ancestor, the Tudor poet Henry Howard, who was executed for high treason. The duke called him "a sublime poet, who suffered unjustly". In 1982, to his delight, the Queen asked him to officially welcome Pope John-Paul II to Britain on the first papal visit since the Reformation.
In 1980, though staunchly Conservative, the duke summoned his powers of organisation, tactics and noblesse oblige to inflict a crushing defeat on the young Thatcher government over legislation to charge for school buses. "Why should we penalise poor people in the country compared with those who live in the town?" he asked.
Four years later, he shocked his co-religionists by denouncing Catholic teaching on birth control to a conference of Catholic teachers. "How can you ask a married couple to do it by thermometers and what not?", he asked, "My wife and I did that - it didn't bloody work. Has everybody got to have eight children like my mother?" It was another frank question in a spirited and - in the circumstances - by no means inactive life.
He is survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters.
· Miles Francis Stapleton Fitzalan-Howard, KG, GCVO, CB, MC, 17th Duke of Norfolk, born July 21 1915; died June 24 2002.