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Henry Howard, The Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (ca. 1517-1547), was the oldest son of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk. He was the scion of an old aristocratic family, and both his father and his mother had royal ancestors. Two of his cousins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, were among Henry VIII's six wives--and both of them were executed. At the age of thirty, Surrey was also executed on a spurious charge of treason. In fact, he was the last person to be executed during the reign of Henry VIII. His father, the Duke of Norfolk, was spared only because King Henry died before the order of execution could be carried out.

From 1530-1532, Surrey lived at Windsor with his father's ward, Henry Fitzroy, King Henry's illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount. In 1533 Fitzroy, who was the Duke of Richmond, married Surrey's sister Mary.

Throughout his short life Surrey was involved, though only peripherally, in the court intrigues and jockeying for position that characterized the court of Henry VIII. Norfolk, his father, was more directly involved, however, and Norfolk's political maneuvering gave the family's enemies ammunition to bring down the son along with the father.

Among the most dangerous of the Howards' enemies were the Seymours, who had been in favor ever since King Henry had married Jane Seymour in 1536. The Seymours accused Surrey of having secretly sympathized with the rebellion of 1536 (also known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace"), which was provoked by the dissolution of the monasteries in England. The truth, however, was that Surrey had actually joined his father in helping to put down the rebellion. Nonetheless, the accusation of complicity in the rebellion led to Surrey's confinement at Windsor from 1537-1539.

By 1540, when Catherine Howard became King Henry's fifth wife, the family had returned to favor at court. Surrey served in the campaigns in Scotland (1542), Flanders and France (1543-1546). By the time he returned to England in 1546, the king was dying, and various court factions were struggling over who would control the new king, young Prince Edward, when he assumed the throne at the malleable age of nine.

If King Henry had not had any issue, Surrey's father would have been the presumptive heir. The Seymours used this fact to persuade the ever-suspicious king that the Howards intended to put Edward aside and assume the throne. The Seymours were particularly angry with Surrey, because he had interfered with a projected marriage between Sir Thomas Seymour, Jand Seymour's brother, and Surrey's sister Mary, the widowed Duchess of Richmond.

When Surrey was tried on the charge of treason engineered by the Seymours, his sister was called as a witness against him. Disastrously, she admitted that he was still a faithful Roman Catholic, a fact that was used to reinforce suspicion against him. Surrey was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was executed on January 13, 1547.

In addition to being a soldier and a courtier, the Earl of Surrey was also a major English poet. Along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, an older contemporary, Surrey was responsible for introducing several Italian poetic forms--most notably the sonnet--into English poetry. He and Wyatt both translated into English several of Petrarch's Italian sonnets, often the same ones. A comparison of the Petrarchan sonnets that both poets rendered into English shows Surrey to have been the more elegant and accomplished poet, though he himself acknowledged Wyatt as his master in poetry.