Henry Howard, earl of
Surrey
born 1517, Hunsdon, Hertfordshire,
Eng.?
died Jan. 13, 1547, London
poet who, with Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42),
introduced into England the styles and metres of
the Italian humanist poets and so laid the
foundation of a great age of English poetry.
The eldest son of Lord Thomas Howard, Henry
took the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey in
1524 when his father succeeded as 3rd Duke of
Norfolk. It was Surrey’s fate, because of his
birth and connections, to be involved (though
usually peripherally) in the jockeying for place
that accompanied Henry VIII’s policies. From
1530 until 1532 he lived at Windsor with his
father’s ward, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond,
who was the son of Henry VIII and his mistress
Elizabeth Blount. In 1532, after talk of
marriage with the princess Mary (daughter of
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon), he married
Lady Frances de Vere, the 14-year-old daughter
of the Earl of Oxford, but they did not live
together until 1535. Despite this marriage, an
alliance between him and the princess Mary was
still discussed. In 1533 Richmond married
Surrey’s sister Mary, but the two did not live
together because Mary preferred to stay in the
country. Richmond died three years later, under
suspicious circumstances.
Surrey was confined at Windsor (1537–39)
after being charged by the Seymours (high in
favour since the king’s marriage to Jane Seymour
in 1536) with having secretly favoured the Roman
Catholics in the rebellion of 1536. He had in
fact joined his father against the insurgents.
In 1540 he was a champion in court jousts, and
his prospects were further improved by the
marriage of his cousin Catherine Howard to the
king. He served in the campaign in Scotland in
1542 and in France and Flanders from 1543 to
1546. He acted as field marshal in 1545 but was
reprimanded for exposing himself unnecessarily
to danger.
Returning to England in 1546, he found the
king dying and his old enemies the Seymours
incensed by his interference in the projected
alliance between his sister Mary and Sir Thomas
Seymour, Jane’s brother; he made matters worse
by his assertion that the Howards were the
obvious regents for Prince Edward, Henry VIII’s
son by Jane Seymour. The Seymours, alarmed,
accused Surrey and his father of treason and
called his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, to
witness against him. She made the disastrous
admission that he was still a close adherent to
the Roman Catholic faith. Because Surrey’s
father, the Duke of Norfolk, had been considered
heir apparent if Henry VIII had had no issue,
the Seymours urged that the Howards were
planning to set Prince Edward aside and assume
the throne. Surrey defended himself unavailingly
and at the age of 30 was executed on Tower Hill.
His father was saved only because the king died
before he could be executed.
Most of Surrey’s poetry was probably written
during his confinement at Windsor; it was nearly
all first published in 1557, 10 years after his
death. He acknowledged Wyatt as a master and
followed him in adapting Italian forms to
English verse. He translated a number of
Petrarch’s sonnets already translated by Wyatt.
Surrey achieved a greater smoothness and
firmness, qualities that were to be important in
the evolution of the English sonnet. Surrey was
the first to develop the sonnet form used by
William Shakespeare.
In his other short poems he wrote not only on
the usual early Tudor themes of love and death
but also of life in London, of friendship, and
of youth. The love poems have little force
except when, in two “Complaint[s] of the absence
of her lover being upon the sea,” he wrote,
unusual for his period, from the woman’s point
of view.
The short poems were printed by Richard
Tottel in his Songes and Sonettes, Written by
the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Haward Late
Earle of Surrey and Other (1557; usually known
as Tottel’s Miscellany). “Other” included Wyatt,
and critics from George Puttenham onward have
coupled their names.
Surrey’s translation of Books II and IV of
the Aeneid, published in 1557 as Certain Bokes
of Virgiles Aenaeis, was the first use in
English of blank verse, a style adopted from
Italian verse.
