Surrey, HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF, poet, was born between 1516 and 1518, most probably in Suffolk, either at Framlingham or Tendring Hall, the eldest son of Thomas Howard (q.v.), who in 1524 succeeded as third Duke of Norfolk. In 1532 he was married to Lady Frances Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, in the same year accompanied Henry VIII. to France, and afterwards spent about twelve months in study at Paris in company with Henry's natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, who was affianced to his only sister, but died an untimely death in 1536. Surrey's eldest son Thomas was born that same year, and it is interesting that the child's nativity, which still exists, foretold dark disaster to the father. It was soon after this that his romantic passion for the fair but disdainful Geraldine awoke, unless she is to be relegated to the domain of fancy in the same sense as Héloïse, Petrarch's Laura, and Tasso's Leonora. It seems certain, however, that if she had real existence she was the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, the second of the three daughters by his second marriage of Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare. But the story is surrounded with difficulties, and we are not helped by Thomas Nash's absurd account (Unfortunate Traveller, 1594) of how Surrey traversed Italy like a knight-errant for his mistress' sweet sake. His second son, afterwards Earl of Northampton, was born in 1539. In 1542 he was made a Knight of the Garter. Later in the same year he lay some time in the Fleet for challenging a gentleman with whom he had quarrelled, and next year he was again committed for roosting and breaking windows in the streets at night. Soon released, he went to serve in the camp before Landrecy near Boulogne, and returned in winter to complete his beautiful seat of Mount Surrey near Norwich. It was at this time that he admitted to his household the physician Hadrian Junius and the poet Churchyard. Again in 1544 Surrey went to France as marshal of the invading army, and distinguished himself at the siege of Montreuil, being severely wounded in the attempted storming (19th September). Again next year we find him holding command at Guisnes and at Boulogne, and defeated by a superior French force in the beginning of January, for which he was soon superseded by the Earl of Hertford, who, as uncle to the heir to the throne, looked forward to a regency on the king's death, and at once feared and hated the Norfolk party. For his bitter speeches against Hertford Surrey was imprisoned at Windsor in July, and on the 12th December was, like his father, committed to the Tower on a charge of high-treason. His offence was merely that he had assumed the arms of his ancestor Edward the Confessor, in conjunction with his own proper arms, a thing which by all the laws of heraldry and common usage he was perfectly entitled to do, and which, moreover, had been specially allowed the Duke of Norfolk by Richard II. His father's mistress and his own sister gave evidence against him, and, though he defended himself with singular ability at his trial at the Guildhall on the 13th January 1547, he was found guilty by the jury, condemned to death, and beheaded eight days later, 21st January 1547. His body was first buried in All Hallows-Barking, Tower Street, but was removed by his son, the Earl of Northampton, to Framlingham Church, where it rests under a stately monument of black and white marble.
Surrey's character would seem to have been much less amiable than it appeared to his eulogist, Dr Nott. He was proud, headstrong, and imprudent, and his unkindness to his mother remains a blot upon his memory, however unworthy of respect she may have been. His poems seem to have circulated freely in manuscript during his lifetime, but were not printed till 1557, when they appeared, together with poems by Wyatt and others, in Tottel's Miscellany (ed. Arber, 1870). They consist of sonnets, lyrics, elegies, translations, paraphrases of the Psalms of David and Ecclesiastes, besides translations in good blank verse—the first in English—of the second and fourth books of Virgil's Æneid, the last not given in Tottel. As a poet he shows grace, delicacy, a quick eye for the beauties of nature, and a sensitive ear to the harmonies of versification. His love-poetry follows Petrarch too closely, yet not without a truth and genuineness of feeling of its own. He was not only the first in English to employ the sonnet, but within his range he had mastered the difficulties of that artificial form.
See Surrey and Wyatt in two quartos, by Dr Nott (1815-16); of Surrey alone, in 'Aldine Poets' (1831; reprint 1866); and French Life by Bapst (1891).