CHAPTER VI.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

Up to the period of the second literary generation of the writers of the reign of Henry VIII, the literature is easy to analyze because the work has the extreme characteristics that mark all beginnings. The change in the language, due to the long continuance of civil strife, had broken the literary continuity. The works of Chaucer and his contemporaries were no longer available as precedents. Yet the social stability given by the first two Tudor kings stimulated a demand for literature. Under the circumstances those that wished to supply this demand necessarily experimented in literary forms, each choosing that form most consonant to his aims and his predilection. In this new age there was no one dominant literary tradition. Consequently there is apparent confusion. Books were written contemporaneously which yet depend upon entirely different theories and to judge which requires a knowledge of entirely different literatures. Such a statement may seem to imply that it was a critical age, an age in which there was eager discussion of literary theory. But this is untrue. Aside from the humanists there was no literary propaganda,-and with them the stress was upon morality, not upon literature. As in the time of the Judges, each man did what was right in his own eyes. Moreover, as each wrote according to his natural bent, instead of electing one literary type and spurning all the others, actually in his work he may show the result of two quite different forces. This is quite natural. They were alive, and, being alive, each was affected in varying degrees by the literary impulses of his age. Yet in each author one (and only one) impulse is major; the other impulse, (or other impulses) is definitely subordinated. For this reason it is possible, by arranging them according to the dominant impulse, to show the gradual progress and modification of the types. But by so doing a judgment is passed upon them. Great writers cannot be listed according to single traits, because they draw from

a diversified past. This age, then, will not produce great literature. With the exception of More and Skelton, the personality of the writer seems subordinated to the form in which he writes, and even Skelton cannot control his medium. The reader does not feel near to the author; the latter's voice seems faint and far away. He cannot make his form express himself. This is because the age was one of beginnings. Chaucer, at the culmination of the previous period, can say what he wishes; Spenser, at the culmination of this period, can say what he wishes; but these men in the rude beginnings of art necessarily stammer. It is the inevitable penalty of youth. The age does not reach its intellectual maturity until the writers of the second half of the reign, writers represented for us by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

The uncertainty so characteristic of all our knowledge of this period finds another illustration in the poems of Surrey. Of these, not counting the translations of Vergil, the publication of which was separate, there are fifty-nine pieces. These are preserved to us by Tottel and by seven manuscripts.1 Only two of the manuscripts are pre-Elizabethan and those two have but one poem each. All told, there are thirty-four poems in the manuscripts. Unhappily the manuscripts do not completely agree with one another for the text, nor does any one completely agree with Tottel. In them there are found poems not in Tottel, and one in Tottel that is assigned to "Uncertain Authors." It is to be remembered that as Tottel in 1557 printed the contents of a commonplace book, probably like that in the British Museum Add. 36529, the authority of his text depends upon the accuracy of an entirely unknown compiler. On the other hand, as the manuscripts that furnish the majority of the poems are late, they equally depend upon unknown compilers. By comparison with the autograph manuscript of Wyatt we know that Tottel's text is far from being accurate. Therefore the presumption is that the same is the case with his text of Surrey. The manuscripts which contain poems of Wyatt and may therefore be tested are only slightly more accurate than Tottel. The result is that in Surrey's text we have only an approximation. Each poem, consequently, requires careful discussion. But however faulty may be the text of Tottel, it will 1 Tottel's Miscellany we have in Arber's Reprint. The manuscript poems have been reprinted by Professor Padelford in Anglia, xxix, 3.

always be important because through it the Elizabethan age knew Surrey. It was reprinted nine times before the end of the century.

It may be even due to Tottel's publication that in the last half of the century Surrey was regarded as the great poet of the former age. The title-page of the Miscellany reads Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other. Although the only other author named in full in the second edition is Wyatt, apparently he is considered secondary. They are usually bracketed together, and Surrey is usually given the precedence, so often in fact that the curious error arose that Wyatt was Surrey's disciple. The most extreme illustration of Wyatt's eclipse by Surrey is given by Sidney: 1

For there being two principall parts, Matter to be expressed by words, and words to expresse the matter: In neither, wee use Art or imitation rightly Chawcer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and Creseid: of whome trulie I knowe not whether to mervaile more, either that hee in that mistie time could see so clearly or that wee in this cleare age, walke so stumblingly after him. Yet had hee great wants, fit to be forgiven in so reverent an Antiquitie. I account the Mirrour of Magistrates, meetly furnished of bewtiful partes. And in the Earle of Surreis Lirickes, manie thinges tasting of a Noble minde. The Sheepheards Kalendar, hath much poetrie in his Egloges, Besides these, I doo not remember to have seen but fewe (to speak boldly) printed, that have poeticall sinnewes in them.

Chaucer, Surrey, presumably Sackville and Spenser, those four names to Sidney are the only ones that have poetical sinews. The list is extraordinary for its omissions. As to him Chaucer is the sole representative of Middle English, Surrey is the only survivor of the literature of the first half of the century. It is a fair statement that where Wyatt is remembered, as in Ascham and Puttenham, he is subordinated to Surrey, and that very many did not remember him at all. Surrey is the principal figure of the past

age.

2

As the respect for caste was great in the time of Elizabeth, such valuation of his poetry may have been due, to some extent at

1 The Defence of Poesie. By Sir Philip Sidney, Knight. Printed at the University Press, Cambridge, 1904, p. 71.

2 Wyatt is also omitted from the list of writers given by Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586, Arber's Reprint, 33.

least, to his rank. He belonged to the family which in Pope's lines was to become synonymous with noble blood.1 The fortunes of the family were founded early in the fifteenth century by the marriage of Robert Howard with the Lady Margaret Mowbray, in whose veins was blood royal. By her father, she was descended from Edward the First and Margaret of France; by her mother, from Edward the First and Elinor of Castile. On the extinction of the Mowbrays, John, the son of Robert, was created Duke of Norfolk by Richard III in 1483. He married twice. By the first wife he had Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, and four daughters who all married; by the second, one daughter Catherine, who married John Bourchier, Lord Berners, the translator. This Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, the grandfather of Surrey, married twice and had eleven children. As these intermarried with the great noble families, Surrey was thus closely related to many in the English court. Of these the important ones are (besides his father): Edward, the English admiral whose gallant death in 1513 is celebrated by Barclay in the Fourth Eclogue; Edmund, the father of Catherine, the fifth wife of Henry VIII; and Elizabeth, the mother of Anne Boleyn the second wife of Henry VIII. Surrey's father, Thomas, the third Duke of Norfolk, married first the Lady Anne, the daughter of Edward IV and sister of Elizabeth the Queen of Henry VII. On her decease he married Lady Elizabeth Stafford, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, who bore him three children; Henry the poet, Thomas, and Mary. Thus on his mother's side he was descended from Edward III; his grandmother was a daughter of the Percys; his uncle had married the daughter of Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury; one aunt, Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and the other, George Neville, Lord Abergavenny. In fact he was so close to the throne that it was rumored that he was to marry the princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, who later became queen. He was the close friend of Henry, Duke of Richmond, the King's illegitimate son, who married his sister Mary. By his descent and by his family connections he was the greatest noble of his generation, and his ancestry compared very favorably even with that of the prince of Wales, whose descent on the father's side was scarcely 1 What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. Essay on Man, Epistle IV.

better than Surrey's own and whose mother was the comparatively obscure Jane Seymour.

An appreciation of the state of life to which Surrey was called by his birth is all important in understanding his character and the events of his life. There is no necessity of recounting the latter here.1 It is enough to state that we know a very great many facts concerning his various actions through the years, and from them can infer fairly accurately his character. Another factor, however, must be mentioned. The Howards were in somewhat straightened circumstances. Naturally, as the first Duke of Norfolk and his son had fought on the side of Richard III at Bosworth Field, the survivor, the second Duke, was promptly lodged in the Tower and his goods attainted. Although Henry VII pardoned him, freed him, and eventually restored him to his rank, he did not restore the property that went to sustain the rank. Although Henry VIII was much more lavish in their regard, yet as their expenses increased proportionally to their honors, the family was financially embarrassed. In 1515 the Duke of Norfolk, admittedly the ablest general in England and the victor of Flodden Field, was forced to retire from court to recuperate. This condition explains the financial negotiations which they dignified by the name of marriage. Love was no more a factor in the marriage of the sixteenth century than in the royal alliances of today.2 Surrey's mother, for example, who brought a dowry of 1500 pounds, had previously been engaged to Ralph Neville (who afterwards married her sister,) was much attached to him, and their wedding day had been announced.3 All this was not allowed to interfere with her nuptials with the Duke of Norfolk. Such a beginning would scarcely argue for happy connubial relations. And historical events did not tend to increase the chance. In 1523 her father, Duke of Buckingham, was condemned for high treason by a panel of peers, of which her father-in-law the Duke of Norfolk was chief judge. The fact that

1 Owing to his high rank Surrey figures largely in the State Papers, which have been published. Basing upon those entries and supplementing them by outside reference, M. Edmond Bapst has constructed a detailed life of Surrey, in Deux Gentilshommes-Poètes de la Cour de Henry VIII, Paris 1891. This is the authority for Sir Sidney Lee's article in the D. N. B. There is an excellent digest in Flügel's Lesebuch, op. cit., 382.

2 Cf. pp. 20-21.

3 Letter to Cromwell, Calendar of State Papers, October 27, 1537.