Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard
Earl of Surrey
Spouse	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	Elizabeth Stafford
Born	1517
Died	19 January 1547

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey KG (1517 – 19 January 1547) was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry.

Life

He was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, England, the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham), so he was descended from kings on both sides of his family tree. He was reared at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond, and they became close friends and, later, brothers-in-law. He became Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his grandfather died and his father became Duke of Norfolk.

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 Henry Fitzroy died at the age of 17 and was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. That was also the year Henry — who took after his father and grandfather in military prowess — served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion protesting the dissolution of the monasteries.

Death and burial

He was imprisoned with his father by Henry VIII, who, consumed by paranoia, was convinced that Henry Howard had planned to usurp the crown from his son Edward. He was sentenced to death on 13 January 1547, and beheaded for treason on 19 January 1547 (his father was saved from execution only by its being set for the day after Henry happened to die). His 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 at St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.

Marriage and issue

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

He married Lady Frances de Vere, the daughter of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford and Elizabeth Trussell, Countess of Oxford. They had five children:

• Jane Howard
• Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (10 March 1536 – 2 June 1572) married (1) Mary FitzAlan (2) Margaret Audley (3) Elizabeth Leyburne
• Margaret Howard, married Henry Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Bolton
• Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton
• Catherine Howard, married Henry Berkeley, 7th Baron Berkeley, by whom she had issue.

Ancestry

Literary legacy

He and his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, and Henry was the first English poet to publish blank verse 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."

Further reading

• House of Treason: the Rise and Fall of a Tudor Dynasty by Robert Hutchinson, 2009
• A Tudor Tragedy: Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk by Neville Williams, 1989
• The Ebbs and Flows of Fortune: Life of Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk by David M. Head, 1995
• Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times... by Jessie Childs, 2008
• Selected Poems (Fyfield Books) by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Dennis Keene
• The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: Edited with a Memoir by James Yeowell

External links

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• biography, and poems