Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517 – 19 January 1547), was an English nobleman, politician and poet. He was one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry and was the last known person to have been executed at the insistence of King Henry VIII. As a fellow translator and imitator of classical Latin authors, his name is closely linked in literature with that of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, about whom he wrote an elegy, the only poem published in his life. Owing largely to the powerful position of his father Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Henry took a prominent part in court life, and served as a soldier both in France and in Scotland. He was a man of reckless temper, which involved him in many quarrels, and finally brought upon him the wrath of the ageing Henry VIII. He was arrested, tried for treason and beheaded on Tower Hill.

Henry was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, being the eldest of five children of Thomas Howard, then Earl of Surrey, and his second wife Lady Elizabeth Stafford. His paternal grandparents were Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and Lady Elizabeth Tilney, and his maternal grandparents were Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and Lady Eleanor Percy. Her younger siblings were Katherine, born 1518, Mary, born 1519, Thomas, born 1520, and Muriel, born in 1521. On his father's side, he was a first cousin of Mary, George and Anne Boleyn, as well as Catherine Howard. Both Anne and Catherine would become wives of King Henry VIII. At the time of his birth, his father's political career was on the rise, fuelled in large part by the powerful position of Henry's paternal grandfather, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. The Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham (Henry's grandparents), along with Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, were the three most powerful peers in the Kingdom. Following Stafford's fall from grace and execution in May 1521, Norfolk and Suffolk remained the sole dukes of England.

Howard received a careful education from the best tutors of the time; as a young boy he was making translations from Latin, Italian and Spanish into English. Howard has been described as a "reckless, arrogant man", being very different from the rest of the family: "Most early sixteenth century Howards were dull dogs: hard, hard-nosed and dourly efficient. Howard was quite different. There was something in him of his paternal uncle, the Admiral Edward Howard, killed in action against the French in April 1513. There was more, however, of the darker inheritance of his maternal grandfather, the Duke of Buckingham. Howard inherited all Stafford's grand pride in blood and aristocracy, and all his determination that noblemen should once more come into their own. Perhaps it was from his mother's side too that he got his most dangerous trait: a rashness and a violence that bordered on madness. He also had a great intelligence that was both penetrating and fast and the result was one of the most remarkable men of the age".