Complete Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

by Henry Howard

  In August Surrey was sent in command of five thousand men to Calais. On 26 Aug. he was appointed commander of Guisnes, and in the following month the difficult post of commander of Boulogne was bestowed on him, in succession to William, lord Grey de Wilton q. v., together with the office of lieutenant-general of the king by land and sea in all the English possessions on the continent (Rymer, Fœdera, xv. 3 Sept.) Surrey actively superintended many skirmishes near Boulogne, but he was reprimanded by Henry (6 Nov.) for exposing himself to needless danger. In his despatches home he strongly urged Henry VIII to use every effort to retain Boulogne, but his father, writing to him from Windsor on 27 Sept., warned him that his emphatic letters on the subject were resented by many members of the council, and were not altogether to the liking of the king. In December he paid a short visit to London to consult with the king in council. In January 1545-6 the French marched from Montreuil with the intention of revictualling a fortress in the neighbourhood of Boulogne. Surrey intercepted them at St. Etienne; a battle followed, and the English forces were defeated. In his despatch to the king, Surrey fully acknowledged his defeat, and Henry sent a considerate reply (18 Jan. 1546). Early in March his request that his wife might join him at Boulogne was refused, on the ground that ‘trouble and disquietness unmeet for woman’s imbecillities’ were approaching. A week later Secretary Paget announced that Edward Seymour, lord Hertford, and Lord Lisle were to supersede him in his command. Surrey and Hertford had long been pronounced enemies, and Hertford’s appointment to Boulogne destroyed all hope of reconciliation. Negotiations which proved fruitless were pending at the time for the marriage of Surrey’s sister, the widowed duchess of Richmond, to Hertford’s brother, Sir Thomas Seymour. Surrey sarcastically denounced the scheme as a farce, and he indignantly scouted his father’s suggestion that his own infant children might be united in marriage with members of Hertford’s family. On 14 July Surrey complained to Paget that two of his servants, whom he had appointed to minor posts at Boulogne, had been discharged, and that false reports were abroad that he had personally profited by their emoluments. In August 1546 he took part in the reception at Hampton Court of ambassadors from France.

  In December Henry was known to be dying, and speculation was rife at court as to who should be selected by the king to fill the post of protector or regent during the minority of Prince Edward. The choice was admitted to lie between Surrey’s father and Hertford. Surrey loudly asserted that his father alone was entitled to the office. Not only the Seymours and their dependents, but William, lord Grey of Wilton, whom he had superseded at Boulogne, his sister, and many early friends whom his vanity had offended, all regarded him at the moment with bitter hostility. In December 1546 facts were brought by Sir Richard Southwell, an officer of the court at one time on good terms with Surrey, to the notice of the privy council, which gave his foes an opportunity of attack. Before going to Boulogne Surrey had discussed with Sir Christopher Barker, then Richmond Herald, his right to include among his numerous quarterings the arms of Edward the Confessor, which Richard II had permitted his ancestor, Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, to bear. The College of Arms, it was stated, forbade the proposed alteration, but Surrey, in his anxiety to prove the superiority of his own ancestry to that of the Seymours or any of the new nobility, caused the inhibited change in his arms to be made on 7 Oct. 1546, when at his father’s house at Kenninghall. His sister subsequently stated that he surmounted his shield with what seemed to her ‘much like a close crown and a cipher, which she took to be the king’s cipher H.R.,’ but this statement received no corroboration. Moreover, by virtue of his descent from Thomas of Brotherton, son of Edward I, Surrey, like all the Howards, and like many other noblemen who claimed royal descent, was entitled to quarter the royal arms. Hertford and his adherents affected to construe Surrey’s adoption of new arms into evidence of the existence of a treasonable design. They declared, although there is no extant proof of the allegation, that Edward the Confessor’s arms had always been borne exclusively by the heir-apparent to the crown, and that Surrey’s action amounted to a design to endanger Prince Edward’s succession and to divert the crown into his own hands. Norfolk, it must be remembered, had, before Prince Edward’s birth, been mentioned as a possible heir to the throne. The council at first merely summoned Surrey from Kenninghall to confront Southwell, his accuser. The earl passionately offered to fight Southwell (2 Dec.), and both were detained in custody. Other charges were soon brought before the council by Surrey’s personal enemies. According to a courtier, Sir Gawin Carew, he had tried to persuade his sister to offer herself as the king’s mistress, so that she might exercise the same power over him as ‘Madame d’Estampes did about the French king.’ Surrey had ironically given his sister some such advice when he was angrily rebuking her for contemplating marriage with Sir Thomas Seymour. Another accuser declared that Surrey affected foreign dress and manners, and employed an Italian jester. The council took these trivial matters seriously, and on 12 Dec. Surrey and his father were arrested and sent to the Tower. Commissioners were sent on the same day to Kenninghall to examine the Duchess of Richmond and Elizabeth Holland, the duke’s mistress. Much that they said was in Norfolk’s favour, but the duchess recklessly corroborated the charges against her brother, asserting in the course of her examination that Surrey rigidly adhered to the old religion. Soon after Surrey’s arrest Henry VIII himself drew up, with the aid of Chancellor Wriothesley, a paper setting forth the allegations made against him, and he there assumed, despite the absence of any evidence, that Surrey had definitely resolved to set Prince Edward aside, when the throne was vacant, in his own favour. On 13 Jan. 1546-7 Surrey was indicted at the Guildhall before Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and other privy councillors, and a jury of Norfolk men, of high treason, under the act for determining the succession (28 Hen. VIII. c. vii. sect. 12). No testimony of any legal value was produced beyond the evidence respecting the change in his arms. In a manly speech Surrey denied that he had any treasonable intention; but he was proved guilty, was sentenced to death, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 21 Jan. following. His personal property was distributed among the Seymours and their friends. Surrey’s body was buried in the church of All Hallows Barking, in Tower Street, but was removed to the church of Framlingham, Suffolk, by his son Henry, who erected an elaborate monument there in 1614, and left money for its preservation. In 1835 his body was discovered lying directly beneath his effigy.

  Surrey left two sons, Thomas, fourth duke of Norfolk q.v., and Henry, earl of Northampton q.v., and three daughters, Jane, wife of Charles Neville, earl of Westmorland, Catherine, wife of Henry, lord Berkeley, and Margaret, wife of Henry, lord Scrope of Bolton. His widow married a second husband, Thomas Steyning of Woodford, Suffolk, by whom she had a daughter Mary, wife of Charles Seckford, and died at Soham Earl, Suffolk, 30 June 1577.

  According to a poem by Surrey, which he entitled ‘A Description and Praise of his love Geraldine,’ he had before his confinement at Windsor in 1537 been attracted by the beauty of Lady Elizabeth q.v., youngest daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth earl of Kildare q.v.

  In 1537 Lady Elizabeth was only nine years old. It has been assumed that most of Surrey’s ‘songes and sonettes,’ written between this date and his death, were inspired by his affection for her; but only in the poem just quoted does Surrey mention Geraldine as the name of his lady-love, and the insertion of the name in the titles of other poems is an unjustifiable license first taken by Dr. G.F. Nott in his edition of Surrey’s poems in 1815. There is nothing to show positively that the verses inscribed by Surrey to ‘his lady’ or ‘his mistress’ were all addressed to the same person. At least two poems celebrate a passing attachment to Anne, lady Hertford, who discouraged his attentions (Bapst, p. 371 sq.); but in any case his love-sonnets celebrate a platonic attachment, and imitate Petrarch’s addresses to Laura. Surrey’s married life was regular. The poetic ‘complaint’ by Surrey in which a lady laments the absence of her lover, ‘he being upon th
e sea,’ describes his own affectionate relations with his wife. Thomas Nashe, in his ‘Unfortunate Traveller, or the Adventures of Jack Wilton’ (1594), supplied an imaginary account of Surrey’s association with Geraldine, and told how he went to Italy while under her spell; consulted at Venice Cornelius Agrippa, who showed him her image in a magic mirror; and at Florence challenged all who disputed her supreme beauty. Drayton utilised Nashe’s incidents in his epistles of ‘The Lady Geraldine’ and the Earl of Surrey, which appear in the ‘Heroical Epistles’ (1598). But Surrey, although he read and imitated the Italian poets, never was in Italy, and Nashe’s whole tale is pure fiction.

  Surrey circulated much verse in manuscript in his lifetime. But it was not published till 1557, ten years after his death. On 5 June in that year (according to the colophon) Richard Tottel published, ‘cum privilegio,’ in black letter (107 leaves), ‘Songes and Sonettes written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward, late Earle of Surrey and other.’ On 21 June following (according to the colophon) Tottel issued in another volume ‘Certain Bokes i.e. the second and fourth of Virgiles Aenæis turned into English Meter’ (26 leaves in black letter); ‘The fourth boke of Virgill … drawn into a straunge meter by Henry Earle of Surrey’ was again printed by John Day without date, and a reprint of the two books of Virgil was issued by the Roxburghe Club in 1814.

  The ‘Songes and Sonettes,’ known later as ‘Totters Miscellany,’ contained 271 poems, of which only forty were by Surrey — thirty-six at the beginning and four towards the end of the volume. Ninety-six were by his friend Wyatt, forty were by Nicholas Grimald q.v., and ninety-five were by ‘uncertain authors,’ who are known to have included Thomas Churchyard, Thomas, lord Vaux, Edward Somerset, John Heywood, and Sir Francis Bryan q.v. According to Puttenham, one of the poems ascribed to Surrey—’When Cupid scaled first the fort’ — was by Lord Vaux, and Surrey’s responsibility for some others assigned to him by Tottel may be doubted. Of the first edition, Malone’s copy in the Bodleian Library is the only one known; it was reprinted by J. P. Collier in his ‘Seven English Poetical Miscellanies,’ 1867, and by Professor Arber in 1870. A second edition (120 leaves in black letter), in which, among many other changes, Surrey’s forty poems, with some slight verbal alterations, are printed consecutively at the beginning of the volume, appeared (according to the colophon) on 31 July 1557. Of this two copies are extant — one in the British Museum and the other in the Capel Collection at Trinity College, Cambridge. A third edition was issued in 1559; a fourth in 1565; a fifth in 1567; a sixth in 1574 (the last printed by Tottel); a seventh in 1585 (printed by John Windet), and an eighth in 1587 (printed by Robert Robinson, and disfigured by gross misprints). Surrey’s ‘Paraphrase on the Book of Ecclesiastes,’ and his verse rendering of a few psalms, although well known in manuscript to sixteenth-century readers, were first printed by Thomas Park in his edition of ‘Nugæ Antiquæ’ (1804) from manuscripts formerly belonging to Sir John Harington. Two lines of the ‘Ecclesiastes’ were prefixed to Archbishop Parker’s translation of the Psalms (1569), and one line appears in Puttenham’s ‘Arte of Poesie’ (1589).

  The number of sixteenth-century editions of the ‘Songs and Sonettes’ attests the popularity of the poems, and they were well appreciated by the critics of the time. George Turberville includes in his ‘Epitaphs’ (1565), p.9, high-sounding verses in Surrey’s praise. Ascham, a rigorous censor, associates Surrey with Chaucer as a passable translator, and commends his judgment in that he, ‘the first of all Englishmen in translating the fourth booke of Virgill,’ should have avoided rhyme, although in Acsham’s opinion he failed to ‘fully hit perfect and true versifying’ (Schole-master, ed. Mayor, pp.177,181). Churchyard, when dedicating ‘Churchyard’s Charge,’ 1580, to Surrey’s grandson, describes him as a ‘noble warrior, an eloquent oratour, and a second Petrarch.’ Sir Philip Sidney, with whom Surrey’s career has something in common, wrote that many of Surrey’s lyrics ‘taste of a noble birth and are worthy of a noble mind’ (Apologie for Poetrie, ed. 1867, p. 62). Puttenham devoted much space in his ‘Arte of Poesie,’ 1589, to the artistic advance in English literature initiated by Wyatt and Surrey. In 1627 Drayton, in his verses of ‘Poets and Poesie,’ mentions ‘princely Surrey’ with Wyatt and Sir Francis Bryan as the ‘best makers’ of their day; and Pope, in his ‘Windsor Forest’ (1713), ll. 290-8, devoted eight lines to ‘noble Surrey … the Granville of a former age,’ which revived public interest in his career and his works, and led Curll to reprint the ‘Songes and Sonettes’ in 1717 (reissued in 1728), and Dr. T. Sewell to edit a very poor edition of Howard’s and Wyatt’s poems (1717). Bishop Percy and Steevens included Surrey’s verse in an elaborate miscellany of English blank-verse poetry, prior to Milton, which was printed in two volumes, dated respectively 1795 and 1807, but the whole impression except four copies, one of which is now in the British Museum, was burnt in Nichols’s printing office (February 1808). A like fate destroyed another edition of Surrey’s and Wyatt’s poems prepared by Dr. G. F. Nott and printed by Bensley at Bristol in 1812, but in 1815-16 Nott issued his elaborate edition of Surrey’s and Wyatt’s works, which contained some hitherto imprinted additions, chiefly from the Harington MSS., and much new information in the preface and notes. Nicholas edited the poems in 1831, and Robert Bell in 1854. Of the later editions the best is that edited by J. Yeowell in the Aldine edition (1866).

  Surrey, who although the disciple of Wyatt was at all points his master’s superior, was the earliest Englishman to imitate with any success Italian poetry in English verse. ‘Wyatt and Surrey,’ writes Puttenham, ‘were novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, and greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie’ (p.74). Their favourite model was redoubtably Petrarch, and two of Surrey’s sonnets, ‘Complaint of a lover rebuked’ (Arber, p. 8), and ‘Vow to love faithfully’ (ib. p. 11), are direct translations from Petrarch. Two lost works, attributed to Surrey by Bale, a translation of Boccaccio’s consolatory epistle to Pinus on his exile, and a book of elegant epistles, prove him to have been also acquainted with Boccaccio, and he imitates in one poem the banded three-lined staves of Dante. His verses entitled ‘The Means to attain happy life’ (ib. p. 27) are a successful translation from Martial, and the poem that follows, ‘Praise of meane and constant estates,’ is apparently a rendering of Horace’s odes, bk. ii. No. xi. His rendering of Virgil, especially of the second book, owes much to Gawin Douglas’s earlier efforts. Despite the traces to be found in his verse of a genuinely poetic temperament, Surrey’s taste in the choice of his masters and his endeavours to adapt new metres to English poetry are his most interesting characteristics. The sonnet and the ‘ottava rima’ were first employed by him and Wyatt. The high distinction of introducing into England blank verse in five iambics belongs to Surrey alone. His translations from Virgil are (as the title-page of the second edition of the fourth book puts it) drawn into this ‘straunge meter.’ Surrey’s experiment may have been suggested by Cardinal Hippolyto de Medici’s rendering into Italian blank verse (‘sciolti versi’) of the second book of Virgil’s ‘Æneid’ which was published at Castello in 1539, and was reissued with the first six books by various authors, translated into the Italian in the same metre (Venice, 1540). Webbe, in his ‘Treatise of English Poetrie’ (1579), asserts that Surrey attempted to translate Virgil into English hexameters, but the statement is probably erroneous. ‘The structure of Surrey’s blank verse is not very harmonious, and the sense is rarely carried beyond the line’ (Hallam). His sonnets are alternately rhymed, with a concluding couplet. In his religious verse he employed the older metre of alexandrines, alternating with lines of fourteen syllables.

  Dr. Nott describes eleven portraits of Surrey. The best, by Holbein, with scarlet cap and feather, is at Windsor (engraved in Nott’s edition); another painting by the same artist, dated 1534, belongs to Charles Butler, esq.; and drawings both of Surrey and his wire, by Holbein, are at Buckingham Palace (cf. Chamberlaine, Hea
ds). Two original portraits belong to the Duke of Norfolk; one by Guillim Stretes, which is assigned to the date of his arrest, is inscribed ‘Sat Superest Æt. 29,’ and has been often copied. A second portrait by Stretes, which is often attributed to Holbein, seems to have been purchased by Edward VI of the artist. It is now at Hampton Court. There are engravings by Hollar, Vertue, Houbraken, and Bartolozzi.

  Surrey is buried in an elaborately painted alabaster tomb in the church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham, Suffolk.

  Surrey’s tomb