Henry Howard

Henry Howard

Henry Howard better known as Earl of Surrey was born in 1517 in Hertfordshire, London. In 1532, he married Lady Frances, a 14 years old daughter of Earl of Oxford. But their marriage was unsuccessful. They could not live together for long. They separated from each other in 1535. Before his marriage there was a talk about his live for Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and an alliance between these two was still discussed.
 In 1540, the old King married Surrey's sister, Catherine Howard which brought Surrey closer to the King. He served in the army in several campaigns of the King and in 1545 he became field Marshall; but soon was dismissed and he returned to England.

But here he felt a victim of a severe conspiracy. The Howards were accused of conspiring against the King. Though his father was saved , He was tried and beheaded in 1547. Surrey acknowledged Thomas Wyatt as a master and followed him in adopting the verse form. He and his friend Sir Wyatt were the first English Poet to write in the Sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, and Surrey was the first English Poet to publish the Blank Verse in his translation of the second and fourth book of Virgil's Aeneid which was published in 1557. Together Wyatt and Surrey, due to their excellent translation of Petrarch's Sonnets, are known as Father of English Sonnet. While Wyatt introduced the Sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyming meter and the division into Quatrains that now characterises the Sonnets variously named English, Elizabethan or Shakespearian Sonnets.

Surrey had contributed several poems to the Tottle's Miscellany. He has left behind at least 20 sonnets ( only 16 are now available), some lyrical poem of love and chivalry such as Windsor Wall, Proud Windsor, Good Ladies etc. Elegies like Tribute To Wyatt, Satires like A satire on London.