A tongue that served in foreign realms his king, An eye whose judgment no effect could blind, Whose piercing look did represent a mind A heart where dread was never so imprest To hide the thought that might the truth advance, To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance. A valiant corpse where force and beauty met : Livèd, and ran the race that nature set; Of manhood's shape where she the mould did lose. But to the heavens that simple soul is fled, Which left with such as covet Christ to know, Witness of faith that never shall be dead; Thus for our guilt this jewel have we lost : The earth his bones, the heavens possess his ghost. c.t. Petrarch CHAPTER III У THE EARL OF SURREY: DECAY OF CHIVALRY: REFORM THE work of Surrey in the reform of English poetry was of a kind altogether different from that of Wyatt. His poems have none of the vehement individuality and character which distinguish the style of his predecessor and contemporary. He is essentially the representative of a class. A member of an ancient and noble house, he received the education usually given to the baronial aristocracy, and his verse reflects the polish and accomplishment esteemed by the society to which he belonged. His love poetry preserves the chivalrous tradition on this subject which had been originated by the Troubadours and the Cours d'Amour, and had been popularised and refined by the genius of Petrarch. His most beautiful verses are an elegy not merely on the death of a friend but on the institutions, the manners, and the sentiment of the castled nobility of Europe. Yet in Surrey's reflection of feudalism there is nothing abstract or obsolete. His chivalrous code is based on the principles of Castiglione. He follows Wyatt in the imitation of foreign models, but he succeeds where Wyatt_failed, in naturalising the ideas he borrows by the beauty of his style. Style is, in fact, Surrey's predominant poetical virtue; and, appearing as he did when art was the one thing needful for the development of the language, it is to his style that he owes his great position in the History of English Poetry. Henry Howard was the eldest son of Lord Thomas Howard, and the grandson of Thomas, Earl of Surrey, the victor of Flodden. The family of Howard had long been eminent in the State. They were descended on the female side from the Mowbrays, whose line as Dukes of Norfolk became extinct in 1475. Thomas, Earl of Surrey, had attached himself to the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Bosworth Field, valiantly fighting to the last in behalf of Richard III. After being imprisoned in the Tower he was restored to favour by Henry VII., and for his conduct at Flodden was promoted to the Dukedom of Norfolk. His son, Thomas, was married first to Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV., and after her death in 1512 or 1513 to the Lady Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. By his second wife he had five children, the eldest of them being Henry who, probably born in 1516, became Earl of Surrey in 1524, on his father's succession to the Dukedom of Norfolk. Of Surrey's childhood nothing has come down to us on certain authority. It has been supposed that he was brought up with the Duke of Richmond at Windsor, an inference drawn from his own lines: So cruel prison how could betide, alas! As proud Windsor? where I in lust and joy but it is plain from the context in which these verses occur that they refer to youth rather than childhood; and, as it is certain that Surrey's early years were spent almost entirely at Tendring Hall in Suffolk, and afterwards at Kenninghall in Norfolk, while the Duke of Richmond was being educated at Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, the word "childish" probably only signifies infancy 1 The only authority by which the date of Surrey's birth can be determined is a portrait now in Arundel Castle on which the painter has placed the age of the Earl at the time-viz. 29. The motto also inserted in the picture is Sat superest; and it is stated by Surrey's youngest son, the Earl of Northampton, that this was assumed by his father in consequence of "the breach of a distressed hope" (Nott's Memoirs of Surrey, vol. i. p. ix.). It would seem probable that this refers to Surrey's recall from Boulogne in 1546. 1st 16 in the technical sense. It may be supposed, however, that Surrey received the knightly training usually given to the children of noble families, the character of which is described in his lines written in captivity at Windsor, and that he endeavoured to perfect himself in all the accomplishments recommended by Castiglione in his Courtier,1 Fitted by this preliminary education to begin the serious business of life, it appears that he was actually contracted in marriage to the Lady Francis Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, in 1532, when he could not have been more than sixteen. In this year he is mentioned together with the Duke of Richmond among the nobility in attendance on the King, when the latter visited Francis I. of France at Boulogne, hoping to secure the French king's friendship on the eve of his own marriage with Anne Boleyn. The Duke of Richmond proceeded to Paris to study at the University, and it is said—with probability though on very slight authority-that Surrey accompanied him.2 In 1533 he attended at the Coronation of Anne Boleyn, being appointed to carry the fourth sword in its scabbard upright before the king. The Duke of Richmond returned to England at the end of this year, and was contracted in marriage to Surrey's sister, the Lady Mary Howard, after which he took up his abode in Windsor Castle, where he was joined by Surrey, who speaks of this period of their companionship in the famous lines to which I have already referred. Surrey's own marriage, formally completed in 1532, was probably not consummated till 1535; his eldest son, Thomas, was born in March 1536. This year was, in other respects, embittered by two great misfortunes. His cousin, the Queen, was beheaded on the 19th of May, and on the 22nd of July he lost his brotherin-law and dear friend, the Duke of Richmond. In October 1536 he received the honour of knighthood, and for the next three years his name is not prominently mentioned, but it may be supposed that his fame as an accomplished knight rose rapidly, for in 1540, when the King, on the Feast of the Epiphany, was married to Anne of Cleves, Surrey appears as the leader of one of the bands of combatants who contended against each other in the tournament held to celebrate the occasion. Towards the end of the same year he was sent by Henry, with Lord Russell and the Earl of Southampton, to see that the defences of Guisnes were in a proper state to repel the expected attack of the French on the English Pale. He must already have had a reputation for scholarship and learning, for in the autumn of 1541 he was appointed Steward of the University of Cambridge. Yet his sense of the great position he occupied in the eyes of the country was not always sufficient to hold in check the impulses of his fiery nature. In July 1542 he was summoned before the Privy Council for having sent a challenge to one John à Legh, and, his offence having been proved, he was committed to the Fleet Prison, from which he was not released before he had bound himself by a recognisance of 10,000 marks not to offer "any bodily displeasure" to John à Legh or any of his friends. Within a few months he accompanied his father, the Duke of Norfolk, in an expedition against Scotland, which resulted in little more than the burning of towns and villages across the Border, and among others of Kelsal, as he himself mentions in his Epitaph on Clere.1 The army having been withdrawn into winter quarters, Surrey returned to London, where the ardour of his imagination once more involved him in serious difficulties. It appears that he shared Wyatt's convictions in religion, and was a vehement champion of the Reformation. The study of Petrarch had led him to find a close resemblance between the corruptions of Rome and London, and on one occasion he manifested his disapproval of the manners of the London citizens in so open a manner that he found himself again arraigned before the Privy Council, on the charge of eating 1 Shelton for love, Surrey for lord, thou chase, (See p. 100.) j |