Hundreds of people packed Arundel Cathedral to pay their last respects to the 17th Duke of Norfolk.

Miles Francis Stapleton Fitzalan-Howard died last week at the age of 86.

Five of the Duke's grandchildren read prayers and spoke about his life at the Requiem Mass yesterday.

More than 150 members of the Duke's family attended the funeral as well as dozens of local townspeople and castle workers.

His widow Anne, the Duchess of Norfolk, sat in the front row, along with Lord and Lady Arundel and their five children.

The service was a mixture of traditional ceremony and more modern tributes.

In one moving speech, his youngest granddaughter, Grace, told mourners how the Duke loved to walk through the forest and look at snowdrops in the spring.

In his homily, the Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor described the Duke as a "good Christian nobleman".

It had been his privilege to know the Duke for 25 years.

The Duke was England's leading lay Roman Catholic and the Cardinal said he had been of great support to himself and the previous Archbishop of Westminster, the late Cardinal Basil Hume.

He said: "He was a friend to so many of us but he was first and foremost a family man. He lived the fullest of lives.

"He was devoted to Arundel Castle and was aware of the real responsibility heritage bestows as well as the rights."

He mentioned the Duke's sense of humour and the jokes they had shared.

On one occasion, after members of a European royal family had been partying into the early hours at Arundel Castle, the Duke had quipped: "Don't they know they have palaces to go home to?"

Members of Arundel Town Council led a procession into the cathedral at the start of the service.

They were followed by representatives from local organisations, including the fire brigade, police and the Royal British Legion.

This was followed by heralds in traditional dress and about a dozen clergy, including Cardinal O'Connor, who took the Mass, and the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton Kieran Conry.

Canon Tony Whale, the cathedral's former administrator and a friend of the family, read the second reading.

The first was read by the Duke of Norfolk's eldest son, Edward, Lord Arundel.

After the Mass, the Last Post was sounded by a trumpeter from the Duke's regiment, the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.

The coffin, draped in the Duke of Norfolk's standard, was carried out by Grenadier Guardsmen.

The procession made its way along London Road, which was lined with dozens of people, to Arundel Castle, the Duke's ancestral home.

There, behind closed doors, the Duke was laid to rest in the Fitzalan Chapel family vault.

Edward, Lord Arundel, who lives at the castle, becomes the 18th Duke of Norfolk from Saturday.