It is said, when a courtier asked King Henry why he was so zealous in taking off Surry; “I observed him, says he, an enterprizing youth; his spirit was too great to brook subjection, and ‘tho’ I can manage him, yet no successor of mine will ever be able to do so; for which reason I have dispatched him in my own time.”

He was first interred in the chapel of the Tower, and afterwards in the reign of King James, his remains were removed to Farmingam in Suffolk, by his second son Henry Earl of Northampton, with this epitaph.

Henrico Howardo, Thomae secundi Ducis Norfolciae filio primogenito.  Thomae tertii Patri, Comiti Surriae, & Georgiani Ordinis Equiti Aurato, immature Anno Salutis 1546 abrepto.  Et Franciscae Uxoris ejus, filiae Johannis Comitis Oxoniae.  Henricus Howardus Comes Northamptoniae filius secundo genitus, hoc supremum pietatis in parentes monumentum posuit, A.D. 1614.

Upon the accession of Queen Mary the attainder was taken off his father, which circumstance has furnished some people with an opportunity to say, that the princess was fond of, and would have married, the Earl of Surry.  I shall transcribe the act of repeal as I find it in Collins’s Peerage of England, which has something singular enough in it.

’That there was no special matter in the Act of Attainder, but only general words of treason and conspiracy:  and that out of their care for the preservation of the King and the Prince they passed it, and this Act of Repeal further sets forth, that the only thing of which he stood charged, was for bearing of arms, which he and his ancestors had born within and without the kingdom in the King’s presence, and sight of his progenitors, as they might lawfully bear and give, as by good and substantial matter of record it did appear.  It also added, that the King died after the date of the commission; likewise that he only empowered them to give his consent; but did not give it himself; and that it did not appear by any record that they gave it.  Moreover, that the King did not sign the commission with his own hand, his stamp being only set to it, and that not to the upper part, but to the nether part of it, contrary to the King’s custom.’

Besides the amorous and other poetical pieces of this noble author, he translated Virgil’s AEneid, and rendered (says Wood) the first, second, and third book almost word for word:—­All the Biographers of the poets have been lavish, and very justly, in his praise; he merits the highest encomiums as the refiner of our language, and challenges the gratitude and esteem of every man of literature, for the generous assistance he afforded it in its infancy, and his ready and liberal patronage to all men of merit in his time.

[Footnote 1:  Dugdale’s Baronage.]

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Sir Thomas Wyat.