Earl of Surrey

“ But all these circumstances, in proportion as they exalted the duke, provoked the jealousy of Henry; and he foresaw danger, during his son’s minority, both to the public tranquillity, and to the new ecclesiastical system, from the attempts of so potent a subject. But nothing tended more to expose Norfolk to the king’s displeasure, than the prejudices which Henry had entertained against the earl of Surrey, son of that nobleman.
Surrey was a young man of the most promising hopes, and had distinguished himself by every accomplishment which became a scholar, a courtier, and a soldier. ”

“ Two years later Surrey was in command of the English forces at Boulogne, there suffered defeat, and was, though not as an ostensible result of his failure, superseded by his rival and enemy, the Earl of Hertford, brother of the Admiral and head of the Seymour clan.
Such was the record of the man who was to fall a prey to the malice and jealousy of the opposite party in the State. His noble birth, his long descent, and his brilliant gifts, were so many causes tending to make him hated and feared ”

“ In reward for this victory Surrey was some months later created Duke of Norfolk, and his son was made Earl of Surrey in his own right.
The success of the English arms in France and in Scotland produced important results both abroad and at home. The disgrace which had attended Dorset's expedition to Spain was now more than wiped out, and it was clear that, even as a military Power, England had to be reckoned with. ”

“ At the end of November, 1546, when the King's illness was notoriously dangerous, and he was in greatest embarrassment as to the settlement of the kingdom, it became known that the young lord had made an alteration in his shield; that where he was entitled to bear the arms of England in the second quarter, as a collateral descendant of the Plantagenets, he had assumed the quarterings which belonged especially and only to the heir-apparent to the throne. [40] The Earl of Surrey's arms was not a subject entirely new. ”

“ Henry was not dismayed with an insurrection so precipitate and ill supported. He immediately levied a force, which he put under the command of the earl of Surrey, whom he had freed from confinement and received into favor. His intention was to send down these troops, in order to check the progress of the rebels; while he himself should follow with a greater body, which would absolutely insure success. But Surrey thought himself strong enough to encounter alone a raw and unarmed multitude ”

“ Lord Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, then went on to the Castle of Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the whole Scottish army defeated with great laughter. The victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian of Scotland; the principal offices in that kingdom were given to Englishmen; the more powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come and live in England; the Scottish crown and sceptre were brought away ”

“ On the departure of the emperor, Henry commanded the Earl of Surrey to scour the Channel before him; and Charles, out of compliment to Henry, named Surrey, who was Lord Admiral of England, also admiral of his own fleet of one hundred and eighty sail. Surrey, having seen Charles safely landed in Spain, returned along the coast of France, ravaging it on all accessible points. He landed at Cherbourg, in Normandy, burnt the town of Morlaix, in Brittany, and many other maritime villages, houses of the people, and castles of the aristocracy. ”

“ The Earl of Surrey was beheaded in 1547. The fair Geraldine was living forty years afterwards: she survived for a short time her second [Pg 197] husband, Lord Lincoln; and with him lies buried under a sumptuous tomb at Windsor: she left no descendants. Her youngest brother, Edward Fitzgerald, was the lineal ancestor of the present Duke of Leinster.
The only original portrait of the fair Geraldine, now extant, is in the gallery of the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn; and I am told that it is sufficiently beautiful to justify Surrey's admiration. ”

“ During his reign it was the residence of John Earl of Surrey, and of his son, John Plantagenet Earl of Warren and Surrey. Plenty of histories could be made out of these and other names, had the writer time or the reader patience. In truth, the reader's patience is more to be considered than the writer's time, for the writer, at least, has the joy of hunting up names and notes and allusions, and of piecing together what, after all, his reader may not find of interest enough to carry him through. Edward III. made the manor part of the Duchy of Cornwall. ”

“ William and his successors were styled earls of Surrey or Earls Warenne indifferently, and the family became extinct when William, the 3rd earl, died in 1148. The second family to hold the earldom of Surrey was descended from Isabel de Warenne (d. 1199) , daughter and heiress of Earl William, and her second husband Hamelin Plantagenet (d. 1202) , an illegitimate half brother of King Henry II. Hamelin took the name of Warenne and was recognized as earl of Surrey or Earl Warenne, and his descendants held the earldom until Earl John died without legitimate issue in 1347. ”

“ PHILIP HOWARD, son and heir to the last mentioned Duke, was Earl of Surrey, Lord Howard, Mowbray, Segrave, and Bruse of Gower, and Earl-Marshal of England; also, in right of his mother, he assumed the title and honour of Earl of the earldom of Arundel, with the appurtenances thereof, it having anciently been adjudged in parliament, to be a local dignity, so that the possessors thereof should enjoy that title of honour ”

“ Indeed, there has hardly ever been any mistake, and it is difficult to think that by persons possessed of ears and eyes any could be made, about the surprising revolution manifest in the verse of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and of his younger disciple, Henry Howard, known by his courtesy title as the Earl of Surrey. ”

“ This beautiful poem, which is perhaps the first attempt at pastoral writing in our language, is preserved among the Songs and Sonnettes of the Earl of Surrey, &c., 4to. in that part of the collection which consists of pieces by uncertain auctours. These poems were first published in 1557, ten years after that accomplished nobleman fell a victim to the tyranny of Henry VIII.; but it is presumed most of them were composed before the death of Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1541. See Surrey's Poems, 4to. fol. ”

“ In Earl Warren’s foundation charter to Lewes Priory in 1078, it is provided that the monks should find him lodgings as he went and returned from Yorkshire, so that when he crossed from Normandy he took Lewes on his way. The connexion between his two lordships he cemented by giving to Lewes the church of Conisborough. Earl William was created Earl of Surrey about 1088, and died in 1089, and among his possessions stand enumerated the Lordship and Soke of Conisborough, with twenty-eight vills and hamlets. ”

“ In this document he is styled not only Duke of York and Norfolk and Earl Warren, but also Earl of Surrey and Nottingham, earl marshal, and marshal of England, and lord of Segrave, of Mowbray, and of Gower. On 9 Aug. 1480 his appointment as lieutenant of Ireland was continued by another patent for twelve years more after the expiration of his two years' term. Being, however, still a child, he remained under his mother's care till after the death of Edward IV, in April 1483. ”

“ The Duke of Norfolk was aware of Surrey's intentions. How far he had committed himself to active participation in them may remain uncertain. For the Earl, as his sister's evidence places him beyond the reach of interest and almost of compassion, so no injustice is done to him if we conclude that he was ready to employ any means, however unworthy, to gain an influence over the King; that when Lady Richmond refused to be his instrument, he intended, on Henry's death, to claim the supreme power for Norfolk or himself as the right of their birth ”

“ At the close of 1546, with, as it seems, the basest motives, he came forward as the accuser of Surrey [see under Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, (1517?–1547) ] . A poem by Surrey, the paraphrase of Psalm lv., is supposed to contain a reference to this ingratitude. ”

“ Because you have nothing more to lose and the scaffold is sure of you, you do not stick at heaping up the measure of your sins a little more, and you revile your legitimate, God-appointed king! But you should bear in mind, earl, that before the scaffold there is yet the rack, and that it is very possible indeed that a painful question might there be put to the noble Earl Surrey, to which his agonies might prevent him from returning an answer. ”

“ It was not the fault of Henry’s advisers that his aged father did not follow him to the grave. To have cleared Surrey out of their path was much; but it was not enough. The Duke’s heir gone, there were many eager to share amongst themselves the Norfolk spoils; Henry was ready to send his old servant to join his son; and only the King’s death, on the very night before the day appointed for the Duke’s execution, saved him from sharing Surrey’s fate. On January 28, 1547, nine days after the Earl had been slain, Henry was dead.
The end can have taken few people by surprise. ”

“ On his return to London, Surrey plunged into all the gaieties of life at court. He left his young wife unheeded in the country, because the queen did not like her favourites to be married. His reckless manner of life gave great concern to his maternal grandfather, the Earl of Arundel, and he ran into debt by his extravagance and by the entertainment which he gave to the queen at Kenninghall in 1578 (Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, ii. 130, 198) . ”

“ She desired 'that at all times she might be serv'ed of the best, for she said that peers of the realm should eat thereof, and besides that a prince.' 'Deponent asked what prince that should be? She answered, the Earl of Surrey. Unto whom deponent said that he was no prince, but a nobleman of honour, and of more honour like to be. Then she said yes; and if aught other than good should become of the King, he is like to be King. ”

“ The king, proud of his own broad shoulders, set the fashion to accent this breadth, and it will be seen that the earl’s figure, leaving out the head and hose, all but fills a perfect square. Such men have the air of playing-card knaves. Surrey’s cap is flat, with a rich brooch and a small side-feather. His short doublet of the new style is open in front to show a white shirt covered with black embroidery whose ruffles cover his wrists. His over-garment or jerkin has vast sleeves, rounded, puffed and slashed. Under the doublet are seen wide trunk-breeches. ”

“ In 1763 he edited the earl of Surrey's poems with, an essay on early blank verse, translated the Song of Solomon, and published a key to the New Testament. His Northern Antiquities (1770) is a translation from the French of Paul Henri Mallet His reprint of The Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland in 1512 is of the greatest value for the illustrations of domestic life in England at that period. ”

“ His contract with the Lady Joanna appears to have been regarded by him with no more sense of honour than his oaths to maintain the charters had been; and we find him, even before his ambassadors had commenced proceedings at the court of Rome, writing to the Earl of Surrey, soliciting his kind offices in furthering a marriage with one of the daughters of his brother-in-law, Raymond, Earl of Provence. ”

“ Misfortune did not shake his principle of loyalty to the powers that be, and he refused to seek release by favouring rebellion. When, in June 1487, the Earl of Lincoln invaded England, and the lieutenant of the Tower offered to open the doors to Surrey, he refused the chance of escape. Henry VII soon saw that Surrey could be converted into an official, and would serve as a conspicuous example to other nobles. ”

“ The Duke of Norfolk, who led the van of the royal army, singled out the Earl of Oxford, and engaged him in a personal encounter, for in those days the leaders deemed it a point of honour to fight hand to hand; his vizor was hewn off by a single blow, an arrow from a distance pierced his brain through his broken helmet, and he fell lifeless to the ground. The brave Surrey, hurrying up to avenge the death of his father, was overpowered by Sir John Savage, who led the left wing of Richmond's army, when he requested that his life might be taken to save him from dying by an ignoble hand. ”

“ On 27 Dec. 1814 he married Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower, the eldest daughter of George Granville, first duke of Sutherland, K.G. His father having succeeded to the title and estates of the dukedom of Norfolk on the death, on 16 Dec. 1815, of his cousin Charles, the eleventh duke, he, as heir, became known as the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. The Act of Catholic Emancipation having been passed in April 1829, the earl was the first Roman catholic since the Reformation to take the oaths and his seat in the House of Commons. ”

“ Written in the castell of Shirefhoton, the xxiiijth day of Aprill. Your lovyng cousin, Thomas Surrey.
134.1 [From Paston MSS., B.M.] Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the writer of this letter, fought for Richard III. at the battle of Bosworth, and was taken prisoner. ”

“ Arundel and Surrey (and afterwards Earl of Norfolk) , whose brilliant career and high attainments are matters of history. His lordship, who is so well known as the founder of the collection of marbles, &c., married the Lady Alathea Talbot, daughter and one of the co-heiresses of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, by whom he had issue, Henry Frederick, Lord Mowbray and Maltravers (who succeeded him) , Sir William Howard, ancestor of the Earls of Stafford, and James, Thomas, Gilbert, and Charles, who all died unmarried. ”