flesh in Lent, and breaking windows in the city with a cross-bow. As he indignantly denied that his conduct was the result of a drunken frolic, we must suppose that his motive was what he gravely avows in his Satire against the Citizens of London : London hast thou accused me Of breach of laws, the root of strife? That terror could it not repress : Therefore (by words since preachers know By unknown means it liked me That secret sin hath secret spite; In most quiet, are next ill rest. Whose scourge for sin the Scriptures shew. By sudden flame at hand we know ; The dreadful plague might make thee see Of God's wrath, that doth thee enwrap. The Privy Council naturally felt themselves unable to sanction these allegorical methods of arousing the slumbering consciences of the citizens of London, and committed Surrey to the Fleet together with his two companions, Pickering and Thomas Wyatt the younger. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that Surrey's paraphrase of the 73rd Psalm was composed while in prison for this offence. In the Proem to the 87th Psalm he says: When reckless youth in an unquiet breast, Set on by wrath, revenge, and cruelty After long war patience had repress'd; My Denny, then mine error, deep imprest, Had not David, the perfect warrior, taught That of my fault thus pardon should be sought. This seems rather to refer to the merely personal quarrel which caused his first imprisonment, and in the Paraphrase of that Psalm itself he says:— Oh Lord, thou hast me cast headlong to please my foe. But in the Preface to the 73rd Psalm, which is addressed to his friend Blage, he says: The sudden storms that heave me to and fro Had well-nigh pierced Faith, my guiding sail, For I that on the noble voyage go To succour truth, and falsehood to assail, And never could attain some pleasant gale. In this Paraphrase he expresses no penitence, but looks forward to his own justification and the punishment of his enemies. It could not Surrey's captivity began in April 1543. have lasted more than a few months, nor could his offence have been considered very serious, for in the October of this year he was sent to join the English forces who under Sir John Wallop had orders to assist the Emperor against the French in the siege of Landrecy. Having been highly praised by Wallop for his military conduct, he returned to England in November, and occupied himself, perhaps, with building his great house on St. Leonard's Hill, near Norwich, said to have been the first specimen of the classical style of architecture erected in England. This house was occupied by Kett, at his rebellion in 1549, and so much injured that it was allowed to fall into ruins, and was never rebuilt. In the following year the war with France was renewed, and Surrey distinguished himself on many occasions, especially by his defence of Boulogne. Of his conduct, however, in these military matters it is unnecessary to speak particularly. It is sufficient to recall the passage in the Sonnet on the death of Clere which mentions the severe wound he received at the siege of Montreuil; and one incident in the siege of Boulogne may be cited as illustrating the spirit of chivalry which still animated modern warfare, and which was so congenial to the temper of Surrey. Some of the French knights having challenged any of the English to break a spear with them for their ladies' sake, Surrey directed Shelley, one of the bravest of his followers, to accept the defiance. Shelley encountered the challenger, killed him, and returned, himself unharmed, to his own friends.2 In April 1545 Surrey was recalled from his command. His removal seems to have been due to the intrigues of the Earl of Hertford, brother of the late Queen, Jane Seymour, who had long been working to secure the chief place of influence in the councils of the King, now falling, through accumulated diseases, into a state of infirmity. Both Surrey and his father were on bad terms with Hertford, whom they disliked and despised as the chief representative of the new nobility; and after his return to England the former openly avowed his intention of taking his revenge on his supplanter, when a new reign should furnish him with the opportunity. This and other speeches being reported to the King with malicious additions, Surrey was arrested and committed to prison in Windsor Castle, where he wrote his beautiful elegy on the Duke of Richmond. By August in this year, however, he was released, and was once more in attendance on the King; but at the close of the year his enemies' arts again 1 See p. 100. 2 The story is told in a quasi-classical style by Challoner, one of the Latin versifiers of the day : Quisque suas gestit vires per facta referre Fortia, quæ rediens narret, amica probet ; Quisque alacri exoptans animo meditatur in hostem Irruere; et proprior voce lacessit item. Hæc oculis cernens torvis Surreius heros, Quem penes Anglorum tunc stetit imperium, Non tulit instantes nostris illudere Gallos; Notaque Schellæi pectora sic acuit; "Aspicis? et patere intactos sub manibus hostes Insolita demum laude referre pedem? Vah, age!" Sed multis ferventem accendere dictis Quorsum opus, aut alacri subdere calcar equo? Qua data porta ruit. Cited by Nott, Memoirs of the Earl of Surrey, vol i. pp. lxxix.-lxxx. prevailed, and he was sent to the Tower, charged with the offence for which he was almost immediately tried, condemned, and brought to the scaffold. It seems clear that Surrey was completely innocent. He was accused solely of quartering on his shield the arms of Edward the Confessor; but his right to do so was undoubted, as it had been granted by Richard II. to all the descendants of Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, Surrey's ancestor through the female line. Other evidence entirely unconnected with this indictment was admitted against Surrey at his trial. It was said that he kept Italian servants whom "some suspected to be spies"; that he was unfavourable to the Reformed religion; and that he had set up an altar in a church at Boulogne. The animus of the proceedings appears in the evidence of the Duchess of Richmond, Surrey's own sister, who deposed that he had spoken evil of the Earl of Hertford, whom he regarded as the cause of his previous imprisonment, and scornfully of the new nobility. Against charges so frivolous a man of Surrey's ability could have had no difficulty in defending himself. We have no record of his speech as in Wyatt's case; but it would appear that his ardent temper must have displayed itself without restraint, as he offered, in the most approved spirit of chivalry, to do battle with one of the witnesses in his shirt. His innocence and genius were of no avail with a court doubtless chosen by his enemies, and resolved beforehand on his destruction. He was found guilty on the 13th of January. The King is said by the chroniclers to have been "lying in the extremities of death"; he was certainly so unwieldy that documents requiring his signature were completed with a stamp and not with his own hand,' so that the warrant ordering the execution can hardly be regarded as a personal act on the part of the sovereign. Surrey was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 19th or 21st of January 1547. Surrey's character has the double aspect of the Knight 1 The Duke of Norfolk lays stress on this fact in his petition for the reversal of the attainder. See Nott's Memoirs of the Earl of Surrey, vol. i. Appendix no. 1. p. cxxxi. and the Courtier, which is peculiar to the sixteenth century: he is one of the greatest representatives of that line of chivalry which includes Bayard, and closes, perhaps, with Sir Philip Sidney. As a member of an old baronial house, he shared all the sympathies and instincts of the mediaval nobility, and took little pains to conceal his contempt for the men of the newer families who owed their advancement to the favour of the Court. On the other hand, from the favour of the King, from his close association with the King's son, and from his consequent employment in State affairs, his chivalrous temper was largely leavened with the growing feeling of patriotism which was beginning to form the chief support of the central institution of Monarchy. In spite of the accusations brought against him at his trial, he seems, like Wyatt, to have been a favourer of the Reformation, and the character of his devotional poems leads us to suppose that he would have adapted himself to the stream of national opinion, which was disposed to reconcile some, at least, of the opinions of Luther with the traditions of the Established Church. Had the opportunity been allowed him, his enthusiastic spirit, chastened by experience, would have given him a high place among the great band of statesmen who upheld the throne of Elizabeth. As far as regards the subject matter of his poetry, Surrey must be regarded as the follower of Wyatt. Almost all his poems deal with the subject of Love, and the age of the lady who is celebrated in them makes it certain that they cannot have been written earlier than 1540. The legend of Surrey's devotion to the Fair Geraldine is one of those traditions which take deep root in literature, and which survive vaguely in the mind of a nation, long after criticism has destroyed the grounds on which they Anthony Wood in his Athena Oxonienses,1 Horace Walpole in his Royal and Noble Authors, and Thomas Warton in his History of English Poetry, have all contributed to confirm the popular belief that Surrey nourished a 1 Vol. i. pp. 153, 154. 2 Vol. i. p. 263 (Park's edition). 3 Vol. iii. p. 23 (edition 1840). |