teries, the duke was bitterly hostile to Cromwell's administration, and through the influence of his niece, Queen Catherine Howard, he contributed powerfully to the ruin of that statesman, as well as to the subsequent persecution of the protestants, and the enforcement of the "six bloody articles." The discovery of Catherine's guilt, however, followed by her trial and execution, greatly diminished his influence at court; the Hertford faction, who were his enemies, poisoned the king's mind against him, and he and his son, the accomplished earl of Surrey, were arrested on a charge of high treason, and condemned on the most ridiculous pretences. Surrey was put to death, but the duke was saved from the same fate by the death of Henry on the very day before his intended execution. He was not released, however, till the beginning of Queen Mary's reign in 1553. He died in the following year, aged eighty-one. He was a man of ability and courage, but ambitious, mean-spirited, and licentious. His brother—
Lord William Howard of Effingham, lord high-admiral, was the father of Charles Howard, Lord Effingham and earl of Nottingham, a celebrated naval commander, who was born in 1536. In his youth he served under his father with much distinction both by land and sea. As general of the horse under the earl of Sussex, he took an active part in 1569 in suppressing the rebellion of the north, headed by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. On the death of his father, he succeeded him in his title and in his office of lord chamberlain, and in 1585 was appointed lord high-admiral of England. When the Spanish armada threatened the shores of England, the chief management of the preparations for the defence of the country devolved upon Lord Effingham, and the defeat of that vast armament was greatly owing to his valour and skill. In 1596 he was joined with the earl of Essex in the expedition against Cadiz, and was rewarded for his success by being created Earl of Nottingham—much to the annoyance of Essex, who had not acted very cordially with his colleague throughout the expedition, and had ungenerously sought to prejudice the queen against him. In 1599 when the country was alarmed with the threat of another Spanish invasion, the earl of Nottingham was intrusted with the sole command both of the army and navy, with the title of lieutenant-general of all England, which he held for six weeks. He commanded the troops which suppressed the ill-judged insurrection of his rival Essex, whom, however, he treated with forbearance and even generosity. At the coronation of King James, Nottingham officiated as lord high-steward, and was frequently employed by him in delicate and important services. Some years before his death, he resigned his office of lord high-admiral in favour of the royal favourite Villiers, duke of Buckingham, receiving in exchange a pension of £1000. He died 14th December, 1624, at the age of eighty-seven, after a lengthened career of remarkable usefulness and honour, during which he had deservedly retained both the confidence of the sovereign, and the favour of the people.
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, a gallant and accomplished nobleman and elegant poet, was the eldest son of Thomas, third duke of Norfolk, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham. He was born about the year 1516 or 1517. At an early age he was introduced to court, where he formed a close intimacy with Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, natural son of Henry VIII., and afterwards accompanied him to Christ church, Oxford. Dr. Nash is of opinion, however, that Surrey was educated at Cambridge, of which university he was afterwards elected high steward. In 1532 he was in France with his young friend, who was contracted to the Lady Mary Howard, Surrey's sister; but the marriage was prevented by the premature death of the duke in July, 1536. In the previous year Surrey himself was married to Lady Frances Vere, daughter of the earl of Oxford, to whom he had been affianced in his sixteenth year. He professed, however, a romantic affection for a certain Lady Geraldine, daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare, who is the subject of several of his best sonnets. But the lady could have been only a child when Surrey declared his devotion to her, and the story of his adventures when on a visit to Florence, the assumed birthplace of Lady Geraldine, was an invention of Tom Nash, which was mistaken for a reality by Anthony Wood, and after him by Walpole and Warton. In May, 1536, Surrey sat as earl-marshal, along with his father, on the trial of his kinswoman, Anne Boleyn. Shortly after he obtained the honour of knighthood from the king, and took a prominent part in all the pageants and tournaments of the court. When war was declared against Scotland in 1542, Surrey, who had just received the order of the garter, accompanied his father in his destructive raid on the Scottish. borders. Strange to say he was twice committed to the Fleet prison about this period; on one occasion on account of a private quarrel with a certain John-a-Leigh of Middlesex; on another for an act of youthful folly in breaking the windows of the citizens at night with stones from his crossbow, and for eating flesh in Lent, contrary to the king's proclamation. In 1543, when war broke out with France, he served under Sir John Wallop at the siege of Landrecy. Next summer he was appointed marshal of the army, of which his father commanded the vanguard, and distinguished himself by his courage and ability at the siege of Montreuil, where he was dangerously wounded. In the summer of 1545 Surrey was again despatched to France at the head of an army of five thousand men, and was shortly after appointed governor of Boulogne, which had been recently taken from the French by King Henry in person, and both in his plans for the defence of that important port, and in his operations in the field, he displayed military talents of a high order. But his failure in an attempt to intercept a convoy of provisions for the French near St. Etienne, is said to have been laid hold off by his enemies to incense the king against him. Be this as it may, he was shortly after recalled to England, and was succeeded in his command by his rival, the earl of Hertford. Some expressions of resentment at the treatment he had received aroused the jealousy of Henry, and the Hertford faction resolved to avail themselves of this favourable opportunity to destroy the earl and his father, whom they regarded as the main obstacle to their attainment of supreme power, on the impending death of the king, and the accession of his infant son. By working on the fears and suspicions of Henry they procured the arrest of Norfolk and Surrey on a charge of high treason. The duchess of Norfolk—a passionate and vindictive woman, who had long been separated from her husband—and her daughter the duchess of Richmond, were induced to give evidence against their relatives. The trial which ensued was a mockery of all law and justice. The only charge ultimately brought against the earl was that he had quartered the royal arms on his escutcheon, "in order to deprive, destroy, annul, and scandalize the title of the king to the crown of England." Norfolk basely sought to save his own life by inculpating his son; but Surrey, who, in the words of Lord Herbert, "was a man of deep understanding, sharp wit, and high courage," made a most spirited and unanswerable defence. He proved that his ancestor, Thomas Mowbray, had received a grant of the arms in question from Richard II.; he produced a formal decision of the heralds in favour of his right to wear them; and declared that he had borne them for years unchallenged even in the king's presence. Notwithstanding these incontrovertible arguments the jury found him guilty, and "the flower of the English nobility" was, on the 19th of January, 1547, in the thirtieth year of his age, beheaded on Tower Hill; "the king being then in extremity and breathing his last in blood." The poetical works of Surrey had been extensively circulated in manuscript during his lifetime, but they were not printed until ten years after his death, when they appeared in a collection of poetical pieces entitled "Tottel's Miscellanies." Surrey's poems for the most part consist of amatory verses, sonnets, and elegies. He also paraphrased the first five chapters of Ecclesiastes and a few of the Psalms, and translated the second and fourth books of the Æneid—the first specimen in the English language of blank heroic verse. The poetry of Surrey was formed on the model of the Italian school, but it is free from the metaphysical cast of thought which characterizes his masters, and is distinguished by the melody of its versification, the correctness of its style, and its delicacy and tenderness. The taste of this accomplished and gallant noble was even superior to his poetical genius, and he contributed greatly to give refinement, polish, and dignity to his native language. "Surrey's observation of nature," says Dr. Nolt, "was minute; hence it is that he excels in the description of rural objects, and is always tender and pathetic. He seldom either offends with conceits or wearies with repetition, and when he imitates other poets he is original as well as pleasing."
Howard, Henry, second son of the poetical earl of Surrey, was born about 1539. He was educated at Cambridge, where, according to Bishop Godwin, he was esteemed "the learnedest
