Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard
Earl of Surrey
Spouse(s)	Frances de Vere
Issue Jane Howard Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk Margaret Howard Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton Catherine Howard
Noble family	House of Howard
Father	Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk
Mother	Lady Elizabeth Stafford
Born	c. 1517 Hunsdon, Hertfordshire
Died	19 January 1547 (aged 29-30) Tower Hill, Tower of London, London

Arms of Sir Henry Howard, styled Earl of Surrey, KG

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, KG (1516/1517 – 19 January 1547), was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry. He was a first cousin of both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the second and fifth wives of King Henry VIII.

Life

He was the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, the former Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham), so he was descended from kings on both sides of his family tree: King Edward I on his father's side and King Edward III on his mother's side. He was reared at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and they became close friends and, later, brothers-in-law upon the marriage of Surrey's sister to Fitzroy.^[1] Like his father and grandfather, he was a brave and able soldier, serving in Henry VIII's French wars as "Lieutenant General of the King on Sea and Land." He was repeatedly imprisoned for rash behaviour, on one occasion for striking a courtier, on another for wandering through the streets of London breaking the windows of sleeping people.^[2] He became Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his grandfather died and his father became Duke of Norfolk.^[3]

Hans Holbein, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, c.1542

In 1532 he accompanied his first cousin Anne Boleyn, the King, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for more than a year as a member of the entourage of Francis I of France. In 1536 his first son, Thomas (later 4th Duke of Norfolk), was born, Anne Boleyn was executed on charges of adultery and treason, and the Duke of Richmond died at the age of 17 and was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. In 1536 Surrey also served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion protesting against the Dissolution of the Monasteries.^[3]

Literary activity and legacy

He and his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, and Surrey was the first English poet to publish blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid. Together, Wyatt and Surrey, due to their excellent translations of Petrarch's sonnets, are known as "Fathers of the English Sonnet". While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyming meter and the division into quatrains that now characterizes the sonnets variously named English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets.^[4][5]

Death and burial

Surrey's tomb

Henry VIII, consumed by paranoia and increasing illness, became convinced that Surrey had planned to usurp the crown from his son Edward. The King had Surrey imprisoned—with his father—sentenced to death on 13 January 1547, and beheaded for treason on 19 January 1547 (his father survived impending execution only by it being set for the day after the king happened to die, though he remained imprisoned). Surrey's son Thomas became heir to the dukedom of Norfolk instead, inheriting it on the 3rd duke's death in 1554.

He is buried in a spectacular painted alabaster tomb in the church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.

Marriage and issue

Frances Howard, by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1535

He married Frances de Vere, the daughter of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth Trussell. They had two sons and three daughters:

• Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (10 March 1536 – 2 June 1572), married (1) Mary FitzAlan (2) Margaret Audley (3) Elizabeth Leyburne.
• Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, who died unmarried.
• Jane Howard, who married Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland.
• Margaret Howard, who married Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton.
• Katherine Howard, who married Henry Berkeley, 7th Baron Berkeley.

In popular culture

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was portrayed by actor David O'Hara in The Tudors, a television series which ran from 2007 to 2010.^[6]

Ancestry

Ancestors of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

16. Sir Robert Howard               8. John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk                       17. Lady Margaret de Mowbray               4. Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk                             18. William de Moleyns               9. Katherine de Moleyns                       19. Margery Whalesborough               2. Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk                                   20. Sir Philip Tilney               10. Sir Frederick Tilney                       21. Isabel Thorpe               5. Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey                             22. Sir Laurence Cheney               11. Elizabeth Cheney                       23. Elizabeth Cockayne               1. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey                                         24. Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford               12. Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham                       25. Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Stafford               6. Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham                             26. Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers               13. Lady Catherine Woodville                       27. Jacquetta of Luxembourg               3. Lady Elizabeth Stafford                                   28. Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland               14. Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland                       29. Eleanor Poynings               7. Lady Eleanor Percy                             30. William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke               15. Lady Maud Herbert, Countess of Northumberland                       31. Anne Devereux, Countess of Pembroke

References

1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Sixteenth/Early Seventeenth Century, Volume B, 2012, pg. 661
2. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Sixteenth/Early Seventeenth Century, Volume B, 2012, pg 661
3. Chisholm 1911.
4. The Shakespearean Sonnet
5. Sonnets
6. "Cast: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey". The Tudors. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.cbc.ca/. Retrieved January 2, 2015. External link in |publisher= (help)

Further reading

• Hutchinson, Robert (2009). House of Treason: the Rise and Fall of a Tudor Dynasty.
• Williams, Neville (1989). A Tudor Tragedy: Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
• Head, David M. (1995). The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune: Life of Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk.
•  Lee, Sidney (1891). "Howard, Henry (1517?-1547)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 28. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 23–28.
• Childs, Jessie (2008). Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times...
• Keene, Dennis (ed.). Selected Poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Fyfield Books.
• Yeowell, James (ed.). The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.—with a memoir by the editor
• Brigden, Susan. "Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13905. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Works by or about Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey at Internet Archive
• Works by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• "Complaint of the Absence of Her Lover Being upon the Sea" set to music From the 1990 concept album “Tyger and Other Tales”