Life History:

Notes:

• Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey (1517?-1547) , poet;
  son of Thomas *Howard (afterwards third duke of Norfolk) ;
  educated by John *Clerk (d. 1552);
  proposed as husband for Princess Mary;
  married Frances Vere, 1532;
  in France, 1532-3;
  earl marshal at *Anne Boleyn's trial, 1536;
  accompanied his father against Yorkshire rebels, 1536;
  steward of Cambridge University, 1539-40; KG, 1541;
  imprisoned for a quarrel, 1542, and for annoying London citizens, 1543;
  with imperial troops at Landrecy, 1543; wounded when marshal before Montreuil, 1544;
  when commander of Boulogne (1545-6) defeated at St Etienne, 1546;
  superseded by his enemy, Lord *Hertford , 1546;
  condemned and executed on frivolous charge of treasonably quartering royal arms and advising his sister to become the king's mistress;
  his body discovered at Framlingham Church, Suffolk, 1835.
  Forty poems by Surrey, including `Description and Praise of his love Geraldine', were printed in *Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (1557, reprinted 1867 and 1870).
  His translations of the Aeneid (books ii and iii, reprinted 1814) introduced blank verse in five iambic feet. The poems (with those of *Wyatt ) were edited by Dr George Frederick *Nott (1815-16) and others, and for Aldine Poets by James *Yeowell (1866). Surrey first imitated Italian models, especially Petrarch, and (with Wyatt) introduced the sonnet from Italy into England.
  
  The Ages of Man, by Surrey.
  1         Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
  2     I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear,
  3         And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,
  4     That now I sigh'd, and then I smil'd, as cause of thought did rise.
  5         I saw the little boy, in thought how oft that he
  6     Did wish of God to scape the rod, a tall young man to be;
  7         The young man eke, that feels his bones with pains oppress'd,
  8     How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest;
  9         The rich old man, that sees his end draw on so sore,
  10   How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.
  11       Whereat full oft I smil'd, to see how all these three,
  12   From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and change degree.
  13       And musing thus, I think the case is very strange
  14   That man from wealth, to live in woe, doth ever seek to change.
  15       Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my wither'd skin,
  16   How it doth show my dinted jaws, the flesh was worn so thin;
  17       And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way,
  18   That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say:
  19       "Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,
  20   That show like lines of true belief that this life doth assuage,
  21       Bids thee lay hand and feel them hanging on thy chin,
  22   The which do write two ages past, the third now coming in.
  23       Hang up, therefore, the bit of thy young wanton time,
  24   And thou that therein beaten art, the happiest life define."
  25       Whereat I sigh'd and said: "Farewell, my wonted joy,
  26   Truss up thy pack and trudge from me to every little boy,
  27       And tell them thus from me: their time most happy is,
  28   If to their time they reason had to know the truth of this."
  
  Sonnet:
  1     The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
  2     With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
  3     The nightingale with feathers new she sings,
  4     The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
  5     Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
  6     The hart hath hung his old head on the pale,
  7     The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,
  8     The fishes float with new repaired scale,
  9     The adder all her slough away she slings,
  10   The swift swallow pursueth the flyës smale,
  11   The busy bee her honey now she mings--
  12   Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
  13   And thus I see, among these pleasant things
  14   Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
  
  A PRAISE OF HIS LOVE WHEREIN HE REPROVETH THEM THAT COMPARE THEIR LADIES WITH HIS
  1     Give place, ye lovers, here before
  2     That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
  3     My lady's beauty passeth more
  4     The best of yours, I dare well sayn,
  5     Than doth the sun the candle-light,
  6     Or brightest day the darkest night.
  
  7     And thereto hath a troth as just
  8     As had Penelope the fair;
  9     For what she saith, ye may it trust,
  10   As it by writing sealed were;
  11   And virtues hath she many mo
  12   Than I with pen have skill to show.
  
  13   I could rehearse, if that I wold,
  14   The whole effect of Nature's plaint,
  15   When she had lost the perfit mould,
  16   The like to whom she could not paint;
  17   With wringing hands, how she did cry,
  18   And what she said, I know it, I.
  
  19   I know she swore with raging mind,
  20   Her kingdom only set apart,
  21   There was no loss by law of kind,
  22   That could have gone so near her heart;
  23   And this was chiefly all her pain;
  24   She could not make the like again.
  
  25   Sith Nature thus gave her the praise,
  26   To be the chiefest work she wrought;
  27   In faith, methink, some better ways
  28   On your behalf might well be sought,
  29   Than to compare, as ye have done,
  30   To match the candle with the sun.
  
  Translation of Martial:
  1     My friend, the things that do attain
  2     The happy life be these, I find:
  3     The riches left, not got with pain,
  4     The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;
  
  5     The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
  6     No charge of rule nor governance;
  7     Without disease the healthy life;
  8     The household of continuance;
  
  9     The mean diet, no dainty fare;
  10   True wisdom joined with simpleness;
  11   The night discharged of all care,
  12   Where wine the wit may not oppress;
  
  13   The faithful wife, without debate;
  14   Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
  15   Content thyself with thine estate,
  16   Neither wish death, nor fear his might.
  
  
  Henry Howard, King Henry VIII & his last execution
  
  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (ca. 1517-1547), was the oldest son of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of
  Norfolk. He was the scion of an old aristocratic family, and both his father and his mother had royal
  ancestors. Two of his cousins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, were among Henry VIII's six
  wives--and both of them were executed. At the age of thirty, Surrey was also executed on a spurious
  charge of treason. In fact, he was the last person to be executed during the reign of Henry VIII. His
  father, the Duke of Norfolk, was spared only because King Henry died before the order of execution could  be carried out.
  
    From 1530-1532, Surrey lived at Windsor with his father's ward, Henry Fitzroy, King Henry's illegitimate  son by Elizabeth Blount. In 1533 Fitzroy, who was the Duke of Richmond, married Surrey's sister Mary.
  
    Throughout his short life Surrey was involved, though  only peripherally, in the court intrigues and jockeying  for position that characterized the court of Henry VIII.  Norfolk, his father, was more directly involved,  however, and Norfolk's political maneuvering gave the family's enemies ammunition to bring down the son along with the father.
  
    Among the most dangerous of the Howards' enemies were the Seymours, who had been in favor ever since King Henry had married Jane Seymour in 1536. The Seymours accused Surrey of having secretly
  sympathized with the rebellion of 1536 (also known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace"), which was provoked by the dissolution of the monasteries in England. The truth, however, was that Surrey had actually joined his father in helping to put down the rebellion. Nonetheless, the accusation of complicity in the rebellion led to Surrey's confinement at Windsor from 1537-1539.
  
    By 1540, when Catherine Howard became King Henry's fifth wife, the family had returned to favor at
  court. Surrey served in the campaigns in Scotland (1542), Flanders and France (1543-1546). By the time he returned to England in 1546, the king was dying, and various court factions were struggling over who
  would control the new king, young Prince Edward, when he assumed the throne at the malleable age of
  nine.
  
  If King Henry had not had any issue, Surrey's father would have been the presumptive heir. The Seymours used this fact to persuade the ever-suspicious king that the Howards intended to put Edward aside and assume the throne. The Seymours were particularly angry with Surrey, because he had interfered with a projected marriage between Sir Thomas Seymour, Jand Seymour's brother, and Surrey's sister Mary, the widowed Duchess of Richmond.
  
  When Surrey was tried on the charge of treason engineered by the Seymours, his sister was called as a witness against him. Disastrously, she admitted that he was still a faithful Roman Catholic, a fact that was used to reinforce suspicion against him. Surrey was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was executed on January 13, 1547.
  
  In addition to being a soldier and a courtier, the Earl of Surrey was also a major English poet. Along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, an older contemporary, Surrey was responsible for introducing several Italian poetic forms--most notably the sonnet--into English poetry. He and Wyatt both translated into English several of Petrarch's Italian sonnets, often the same ones. A comparison of the Petrarchan sonnets that both poets rendered into English shows Surrey to have been the more elegant and accomplished poet, though he himself acknowledged Wyatt as his master in poetry.
  
  Surrey is also credited with introducing blank verse into English poetry, in his translations of the second
  and fourth books of Vergil's "Aeneid," and with being the originator of the English sonnet form, which was
  so masterfully employed by William Shakespeare that it is now widely known as the Shakespearean
  sonnet.
  Written by Tina Blue
  
  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)
  http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/henrybio.htm
  
     Henry Howard was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, in 1517, as the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of the Duke of Buckingham). Surrey was descended from kings on both sides of his family; he was brought up at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, at Windsor. He was given his title by courtesy in 1524 on the passing away of his grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Surrey Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, when his father became 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
  
     In 1532, after marrying Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, he accompanied his first cousin Anne Boleyn, the king, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for over a year as a member of the entourage of Francis I. In 1536 his first son, Thomas, was born, Anne Boleyn was executed, and Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, died at age seventeen. Surrey's childhood friend, who was also his brother-in-law, was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. Also in 1536, Surrey served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion which protested against the King's dissolution of the monasteries.
  
     Surrey, like his father and grandfather, was an able soldier, and the Howards had long been loyal to the crown. But the Howards' fortunes at court depended on Henry's queens. They were in trouble when Jane Seymour became queen in 1536, and the Seymours, a rival faction at court, began their scheming in earnest. The Seymours accused the Howards for secretly sympathizing with the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Surrey was briefly imprisoned on that suspicion.
     In the Early 1540s, Surrey was back in favor. He was made Knight of the Garter in 1541. Surrey served in the war with Scotland in 1542, and in 1543 he fought in Flanders with the English army on the side of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was seeking to acquire the Netherlands. The following year he was wounded at the siege of Montreuil; in 1545-1546 he became Commander of the garrison of Boulogne.
  
  When Henry VIII's health was failing in 1546, Surrey made the mistake of announcing his opinion of the obviousness of his father's becoming Protector to Prince Edward. The Seymour's finally had their day, when Surrey ill-advisedly displayed royal quarterings on his shield. Arrested with his father on trumped-up charges of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower, condemned and executed on January 19, 1547 on Tower Hill.
  
     Surrey continued the practice of the sonnet in English as instituted by Wyatt and established a form for it that was used by Shakespeare and that has become known as the English sonnet form: three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Even more significant, he was the first English poet to publish in blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—a verse form so popular in the succeeding four centuries that it seems almost indigenous to the language. The work in which he used this "strange meter," as the publisher called it, was a translation of part of Virgil's Aeneid. Book 4 was published in 1554 and book 2 in 1557.
  
  Surrey's poetry circulated in manuscript form in court circles. He published his Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt, but most of his poetry first appeared in 1557, ten years after his death, in printer Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard late Earl of Surrey and other. Until modern times it was called simply Songs and Sonnets; but now it is generally known as Tottel's Miscellany. Sir Philip Sidney appreciated Surrey's lyrics for "many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind".1
  
  Sources:
  
  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Ian Ousby, Ed.
  Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Vol 1.
  New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1993. 450-1.
  Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century. Douglas Brooks-Davies, ed.
  New York: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1992. 86.
  Microsoft® Encarta® 96 Encyclopedia
  ©1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation.
  
  
  http://www.heraldryunlimited.com/world/politics/dangers1.htm:
  The dangers of heraldry
  
  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
  
  The Howard family did not do well under King Henry VIII. The two queens whom he executed (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard) were both members of this house, and their cousin Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the son of the Duke of Norfolk, was another of his victims. Henry Howard probably has the distinction in history of being the only person executed on the evidence of his heraldic arms.
  
  Henry Howard
  As with the Staffords and others, the problem was that the Howards were descendents of the Royal Family; through a series of heiresses they had ultimately inherited their Norfolk title from Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk (d. 1338) - a younger son of King Edward I. Unlike the Staffords, their claim to the throne was very tenuous indeed and was not a factor during the Wars of the Roses. But by 1546, the Wars of the Roses were a distant memory; more pressing was the problem that King Henry VIII was dying and that a Regent would soon be needed to reign whilst his young son Edward grew to adulthood.
  
  Infighting between the different factions at court was intense. Henry Howard felt that his father the Duke of Norfolk had a natural right to the Regency and made several incautious remarks criticising the King's councillors. It was also suspected that he had designs on marrying Henry's daughter, the Princess Mary. Henry Howard and his father were arrested in December 1546. They were tried for treason and both condemned - the way in which Henry had marshalled his arms was thought to be proof enough of their treasonable intentions. Henry was executed in January the following year, but his father escaped by the skin of his teeth, for Henry VIII died just before he could sign the death warrant.
  
  So what had Henry done wrong? The Howards were entitled to bear the Royal arms on their shield because of their Royal descent, but like the Staffords, they got into trouble over how and where they used these arms.
  
  Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham (later Duke of Norfolk).
  As mentioned before, the Royal ancestor of the Howards was Thomas of Brotherton. Click here for a pop-up showing the full lineage of the Norfolks. Brotherton's arms showed the lions of England with a white label to show that he was a younger son. Thomas' eventual heir was Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was later created Duke of Norfolk. Although he was only descended from Thomas of Brotherton through two heiresses, the then King, Richard II nevertheless allowed him to bear the arms of Brotherton on their own, impaled with the arms of Edward the Confessor.  Normally, Thomas de Mowbray would have borne his own paternal arms of Mowbray, quartered with the arms of these heiresses. Bearing the arms of Brotherton alone could imply that Mowbray was a direct descendant of Thomas de Brotherton, through the male line (which in those patriachal days bore much more weight than descent through the female line). Not only that, but as Mowbray was also one of the Dukes that was allowed to impale the arms of Edward the Confessor in imitation of the King himself, his arms, therefore looked very regal indeed. (See under Richard II for information about the arms of Edward the Confessor).
  
  These were the arms usually borne by the Howards at this time.
  Although the right to bear Edward the Confessor's arms had never been formally withdrawn from the Mowbray family, once the reign of Richard II was over, later generations of Mowbrays clearly thought it unwise to bear these arms. They reverted to using Thomas de Brotherton's arms alone, to avoid antagonising the new kings. The Howard family later inherited the Duchy of Norfolk from the Mowbrays, through yet another heiress. The link to Thomas de Brotherton was getting more and more tenous with each succeeding generation, although the Howard family were still entitled to quarter Brotherton's arms with their own. They used arms which quartered their ancestral coat of Howard with the lions of Brotherton, the checks of Warenne and the white lion of Mowbray.
  
  These were the arms which Henry Howard proposed to bear in 1544. (See Ancestors file)
  However Henry Howard did not seem to be content with these arms, and he made several huge misjudgements. Sir Christopher Barker, the King of Arms testified that in 1544, the Earl of Surrey had come to him with a design for a shield quartering Mowbray, Brotherton, Edward the Confessor and the arms of the Dukes of Anjou. Apparently Henry claimed that he had seen this coat of arms on a stone engraving in a house in Norfolk. Using Edward the Confessor's arms was now very unwise, for Henry VIII had decreed that they "appertain only to the King of this realm". Sir Christopher testified that he had objected to this coat, but that Henry Howard had been determined to bear it. In 1546 a visitor to his house at Lambeth noticed that the arms of the Confessor had been incorporated into the glass panels.
  
  The drawing of the coat of arms for which Henry Howard was eventually to be executed over, is even more offensive. It contains twelve quarterings; including Edward the Confessor's arms and those of Brotherton but crucially, without the label. Only the King was entitled to bear the royal arms without some kind of distinguishing feature like a label, because he was the head of the family. Everyone else who was descended from the royal family was supposed to bear some kind of mark of cadency as a way of saying that they were part of a junior branch, with no claim to the throne. This, together with using Edward the Confessor's arms, might have seemed very suspicious to a dying, and paranoid King, like Henry VIII in 1546.
  
  It is not clear whether Henry Howard actually ever used these arms. However, during the 1540s he did do a lot of experimenting with the Howard coat of arms, and so the drawing over which he was arrested might well have been one of his designs. But his motivation was almost certainly not treacherous; just an intense pride in his family combined with an over-active imagination - at one stage he even included the attributed arms of Sir Lancelot on his coat. He was guilty of little more than arrogance and naivety. However, in the dangerous world of 16th century English politics, this, combined with his royal lineage, was enough to lead him to his death.[Parsons_merge11.FTW]
  
  Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey (1517?-1547) , poet;
  son of Thomas *Howard (afterwards third duke of Norfolk) ;
  educated by John *Clerk (d. 1552);
  proposed as husband for Princess Mary;
  married Frances Vere, 1532;
  in France, 1532-3;
  earl marshal at *Anne Boleyn's trial, 1536;
  accompanied his father against Yorkshire rebels, 1536;
  steward of Cambridge University, 1539-40; KG, 1541;
  imprisoned for a quarrel, 1542, and for annoying London citizens, 1543;
  with imperial troops at Landrecy, 1543; wounded when marshal before Montreuil, 1544;
  when commander of Boulogne (1545-6) defeated at St Etienne, 1546;
  superseded by his enemy, Lord *Hertford , 1546;
  condemned and executed on frivolous charge of treasonably quartering royal arms and advising his sister to become the king's mistress;
  his body discovered at Framlingham Church, Suffolk, 1835.
  Forty poems by Surrey, including `Description and Praise of his love Geraldine', were printed in *Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (1557, reprinted 1867 and 1870).
  His translations of the Aeneid (books ii and iii, reprinted 1814) introduced blank verse in five iambic feet. The poems (with those of *Wyatt ) were edited by Dr George Frederick *Nott (1815-16) and others, and for Aldine Poets by James *Yeowell (1866). Surrey first imitated Italian models, especially Petrarch, and (with Wyatt) introduced the sonnet from Italy into England.
  
  The Ages of Man, by Surrey.
  1         Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
  2     I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear,
  3         And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,
  4     That now I sigh'd, and then I smil'd, as cause of thought did rise.
  5         I saw the little boy, in thought how oft that he
  6     Did wish of God to scape the rod, a tall young man to be;
  7         The young man eke, that feels his bones with pains oppress'd,
  8     How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest;
  9         The rich old man, that sees his end draw on so sore,
  10   How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.
  11       Whereat full oft I smil'd, to see how all these three,
  12   From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and change degree.
  13       And musing thus, I think the case is very strange
  14   That man from wealth, to live in woe, doth ever seek to change.
  15       Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my wither'd skin,
  16   How it doth show my dinted jaws, the flesh was worn so thin;
  17       And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way,
  18   That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say:
  19       "Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,
  20   That show like lines of true belief that this life doth assuage,
  21       Bids thee lay hand and feel them hanging on thy chin,
  22   The which do write two ages past, the third now coming in.
  23       Hang up, therefore, the bit of thy young wanton time,
  24   And thou that therein beaten art, the happiest life define."
  25       Whereat I sigh'd and said: "Farewell, my wonted joy,
  26   Truss up thy pack and trudge from me to every little boy,
  27       And tell them thus from me: their time most happy is,
  28   If to their time they reason had to know the truth of this."
  
  Sonnet:
  1     The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
  2     With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
  3     The nightingale with feathers new she sings,
  4     The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
  5     Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
  6     The hart hath hung his old head on the pale,
  7     The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,
  8     The fishes float with new repaired scale,
  9     The adder all her slough away she slings,
  10   The swift swallow pursueth the flyës smale,
  11   The busy bee her honey now she mings--
  12   Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
  13   And thus I see, among these pleasant things
  14   Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
  
  A PRAISE OF HIS LOVE WHEREIN HE REPROVETH THEM THAT COMPARE THEIR LADIES WITH HIS
  1     Give place, ye lovers, here before
  2     That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
  3     My lady's beauty passeth more
  4     The best of yours, I dare well sayn,
  5     Than doth the sun the candle-light,
  6     Or brightest day the darkest night.
  
  7     And thereto hath a troth as just
  8     As had Penelope the fair;
  9     For what she saith, ye may it trust,
  10   As it by writing sealed were;
  11   And virtues hath she many mo
  12   Than I with pen have skill to show.
  
  13   I could rehearse, if that I wold,
  14   The whole effect of Nature's plaint,
  15   When she had lost the perfit mould,
  16   The like to whom she could not paint;
  17   With wringing hands, how she did cry,
  18   And what she said, I know it, I.
  
  19   I know she swore with raging mind,
  20   Her kingdom only set apart,
  21   There was no loss by law of kind,
  22   That could have gone so near her heart;
  23   And this was chiefly all her pain;
  24   She could not make the like again.
  
  25   Sith Nature thus gave her the praise,
  26   To be the chiefest work she wrought;
  27   In faith, methink, some better ways
  28   On your behalf might well be sought,
  29   Than to compare, as ye have done,
  30   To match the candle with the sun.
  
  Translation of Martial:
  1     My friend, the things that do attain
  2     The happy life be these, I find:
  3     The riches left, not got with pain,
  4     The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;
  
  5     The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
  6     No charge of rule nor governance;
  7     Without disease the healthy life;
  8     The household of continuance;
  
  9     The mean diet, no dainty fare;
  10   True wisdom joined with simpleness;
  11   The night discharged of all care,
  12   Where wine the wit may not oppress;
  
  13   The faithful wife, without debate;
  14   Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
  15   Content thyself with thine estate,
  16   Neither wish death, nor fear his might.
  
  
  Henry Howard, King Henry VIII & his last execution
  
  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (ca. 1517-1547), was the oldest son of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of
  Norfolk. He was the scion of an old aristocratic family, and both his father and his mother had royal
  ancestors. Two of his cousins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, were among Henry VIII's six
  wives--and both of them were executed. At the age of thirty, Surrey was also executed on a spurious
  charge of treason. In fact, he was the last person to be executed during the reign of Henry VIII. His
  father, the Duke of Norfolk, was spared only because King Henry died before the order of execution could  be carried out.
  
    From 1530-1532, Surrey lived at Windsor with his father's ward, Henry Fitzroy, King Henry's illegitimate  son by Elizabeth Blount. In 1533 Fitzroy, who was the Duke of Richmond, married Surrey's sister Mary.
  
    Throughout his short life Surrey was involved, though  only peripherally, in the court intrigues and jockeying  for position that characterized the court of Henry VIII.  Norfolk, his father, was more directly involved,  however, and Norfolk's political maneuvering gave the family's enemies ammunition to bring down the son along with the father.
  
    Among the most dangerous of the Howards' enemies were the Seymours, who had been in favor ever since King Henry had married Jane Seymour in 1536. The Seymours accused Surrey of having secretly
  sympathized with the rebellion of 1536 (also known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace"), which was provoked by the dissolution of the monasteries in England. The truth, however, was that Surrey had actually joined his father in helping to put down the rebellion. Nonetheless, the accusation of complicity in the rebellion led to Surrey's confinement at Windsor from 1537-1539.
  
    By 1540, when Catherine Howard became King Henry's fifth wife, the family had returned to favor at
  court. Surrey served in the campaigns in Scotland (1542), Flanders and France (1543-1546). By the time he returned to England in 1546, the king was dying, and various court factions were struggling over who
  would control the new king, young Prince Edward, when he assumed the throne at the malleable age of
  nine.
  
  If King Henry had not had any issue, Surrey's father would have been the presumptive heir. The Seymours used this fact to persuade the ever-suspicious king that the Howards intended to put Edward aside and assume the throne. The Seymours were particularly angry with Surrey, because he had interfered with a projected marriage between Sir Thomas Seymour, Jand Seymour's brother, and Surrey's sister Mary, the widowed Duchess of Richmond.
  
  When Surrey was tried on the charge of treason engineered by the Seymours, his sister was called as a witness against him. Disastrously, she admitted that he was still a faithful Roman Catholic, a fact that was used to reinforce suspicion against him. Surrey was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was executed on January 13, 1547.
  
  In addition to being a soldier and a courtier, the Earl of Surrey was also a major English poet. Along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, an older contemporary, Surrey was responsible for introducing several Italian poetic forms--most notably the sonnet--i

Sources:

• 1. Parsons_merge11.FTW
• 2. Source GED2GO40