Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)
        Henry Howard was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, in 1517, as the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of the Duke of Buckingham). Surrey was descended from kings on both sides of his family; he was brought up at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, at Windsor. He was given his title by courtesy in 1524 on the passing away of his grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Surrey Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, when his father became 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
        In 1532, after marrying Lady Frances de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, he accompanied his first cousin Anne Boleyn, the king, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for over a year as a member of the entourage of Francis I. In 1536 his first son, Thomas, was born, Anne Boleyn was executed, and Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond, died at age seventeen. Surrey's childhood friend, who was also his brother-in-law, was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. Also in 1536, Surrey served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion which protested against the King's dissolution of the monasteries.
        Surrey, like his father and grandfather, was an able soldier, and the Howards had long been loyal to the crown. But the Howards' fortunes at court depended on Henry's queens. They were in trouble when Jane Seymour became queen in 1536, and the Seymours, a rival faction at court, began their scheming in earnest. The Seymours accused the Howards for secretly sympathizing with the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Surrey was briefly imprisoned on that suspicion.
        In the Early 1540s, Surrey was back in favor. He was made Knight of the Garter in 1541. Surrey served in the war with Scotland in 1542, and in 1543 he fought in Flanders with the English army on the side of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was seeking to acquire the Netherlands. The following year he was wounded at the siege of Montreuil; in 1545-1546 he became Commander of the garrison of Boulogne.
When Henry VIII's health was failing in 1546, Surrey made the mistake of announcing his opinion of the obviousness of his father's becoming Protector to Prince Edward. The Seymour's finally had their day, when Surrey ill-advisedly displayed royal quarterings on his shield. Arrested with his father on trumped-up charges of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower, condemned and executed on January 19, 1547 on Tower Hill.
        Surrey continued the practice of the sonnet in English as instituted by Wyatt and established a form for it that was used by Shakespeare and that has become known as the English sonnet form: three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Even more significant, he was the first English poet to publish in blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—a verse form so popular in the succeeding four centuries that it seems almost indigenous to the language. The work in which he used this "strange meter," as the publisher called it, was a translation of part of Virgil's Aeneid. Book 4 was published in 1554 and book 2 in 1557.
Surrey's poetry circulated in manuscript form in court circles. He published his Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt, but most of his poetry first appeared in 1557, ten years after his death, in printer Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard late Earl of Surrey and other. Until modern times it was called simply Songs and Sonnets; but now it is generally known as Tottel's Miscellany. Sir Philip Sidney appreciated Surrey's lyrics for "many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind".1


Child 1: Howard, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk 4th, b. 10 MAR 1537
Child 2: Howard, Henry of Northampton, Earl of Northampton
Child 3: Howard, Catherine
Child 4: Howard, Jane
Child 5: Howard, Margaret

The Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

 
Complete - UMichigan


Song and Sonnets
"The sun hath twice brought forth his tender green"
"The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings"
"When youth had led me half the race"
"Such wayward ways hath Love"
"When Summer took in hand the winter to assail"
"Love, that liveth and reigneth in my thought"
"In Cyprus springs, whereas Dame Venus dwelt"
"From Tuscane came my Lady's worthy race"
"Brittle beauty, that Nature made so frail"
"Alas! so all things now do hold their peace!"
"When Windsor walls sustain'd my wearied arm"
"Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green"
"I never saw my Lady lay apart"
"The golden gift that Nature did thee give"
"So cruel prison how could betide, alas"
"When raging love with extreme pain"
"O happy dames that may embrace"
"In winter's just return, when Boreas gan his reign"
"Good ladies !  ye that have your pleasure in exile"
"Give place, ye lovers, here before"
"If he that erst the form so lively drew"
"Although I had a check, To give the mate is hard"
"Martial, the things that do attain"
Of the Death of Sir Thomas Wyatt - "Divers thy death do diversely bemoan"
Of the Same - "Wyatt resteth here"
"Norfolk sprung thee, Lambeth holds thee dead"
"Th' Assyrian king, in peace, with foul desire"
"Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were"
"The fancy which that I have served long"
"London, hast thou accused me"

Translations from the Aeneid
Surrey’s translations from Vergil and blank verse - Cambridge History, &c.
The Second Book of Virgil - excerpts

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/henrybib.htm