Henry VIII's Last Victim, Henry Howard

Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Henry VIII's Last Victim (according to Jessie Childs) was beheaded on January 19, 1547. His father, Thomas Howard, the Third Duke of Norfolk, was also in the Tower awaiting execution. Henry VIII's death on January 28 saved him from the ax.

Henry Howard was a poet and contemporary of Thomas Wyatt who survived the Tower during the Anne Boleyn purge and died on October 11, 1542. Of his late friend, Howard wrote:

Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he of envy could obtain.

A head, where wisdom mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain
As on a stith, where some work of fame
Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain’s gain.

A visage, stern and mild; where both did grow,
Vice to condemn, in virtues to rejoice;
Amid great storms whom grace assured so,
To live upright and smile at fortune’s choice.

A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme;
That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit;
A mark the which (unperfited, for time)
Some may approach, but never none shall hit.

A tongue that served in foreign realms his king;
Whose courteous talk to virtue did enflame
Each noble heart; a worthy guide to bring
Our English youth, by travail unto fame.

An eye whose judgment no affect could blind,
Friends to allure, and foes to reconcile;
Whose piercing look did represent a mind
With virtue fraught, reposed, void of guile.

A heart where dread yet never so impressed
To hide the thought that might the truth avaunce;
In neither fortune lift, nor so repressed,
To swell in wealth, nor yield unto mischance.

A valiant corps, where force and beauty met,
Happy, alas! too happy, but for foes,
Lived, and ran the race that nature set;
Of manhood’s shape, where she the mold did lose.

But to the heavens that simple soul is fled,
Which left with such, as covet Christ to know
Witness of faith that never shall be dead:
Sent for our health, but not received so.

Thus, for our guilt, this jewel have we lost;
The earth his bones, the heavens possess his ghost.
Amen.

Henry Howard's son and grandson would also be imprisoned and would die in the Tower during the reign of ElizabethI: Thomas Howard by decollation; Philip Howard of dysentery.

BBC Magazine Reviews Thomas Wyatt Bio

The current BBC History magazine contains this review of Susan Brigden's new biography of Thomas Wyatt the elder, written by another Tudor scholar, George Bernard:

George Bernard considers an emotive attempt to understand the trials and tribulations faced by a poet in the court of Henry VIII

Gentleman, courtier, diplomat and, most remarkably, poet, Thomas Wyatt died of a fever at the age of 39 but had also come perilously close to losing his life on two earlier occasions. He was briefly held in the Tower in May 1536 on suspicion of having been among Anne Boleyn’s lovers, and again in January 1541 on suspicion of being less than fully loyal to Henry VIII when on embassy to Charles V, Holy Roman emperor.

Wyatt’s verses are hauntingly allusive, often making reference to deep but unrequited love, fears of betrayal by supposed friends, and the challenges of serving, and advising, Henry, a monarch who demanded total allegiance.

Susan Brigden’s biography is an attempt to bring together what we know about Thomas Wyatt from letters, and especially diplomatic correspondence, and what his poems can be taken to reveal. As with her earlier books she proceeds by evocation, building up, quotation by quotation, a vivid impression of how Wyatt felt, whether unhappy in love or frustrated at the impossible demands of his master, who expected his diplomats to persuade European rulers of the justice of his divorce and of his royal supremacy over the church.

Brigden’s is a distinctive voice that holds the attention throughout. It is easy to imagine her reading her book out loud by candlelight in the atmospheric setting of Hampton Court Palace. Her labours in the archives have been prodigious, and her endnotes show her to be well-read in the current literature. Acknowledgments to the “powerful vision” of one scholar and the “persuasive” interpretation of another are readily made. But Brigden’s evocative approach makes it harder for her to deal in her main text with different interpretations. She gives, for example, an account of Anne Boleyn’s fall, and the endnotes fairly cite the books and articles by historians who have engaged in what Steven Gunn has called “trench warfare” over the matter. However, she does not attempt to give reasons why she takes the view she does and rejects others.

Read the rest here.

I enjoyed and benefitted much from reading Susan Brigden's New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485 to 1603, part of the Penguin History of Britain series, because of her interest in the Reformation and religion:

No period in British history today retains more resonance and mystery than the sixteenth century. The leading figures of the time have become almost mythical, and the terrors and grandeurs of Tudor Britain have resonance with even the least historically minded readers.

Above all Brigden sees the key to the Tudor world as religion - the new world of Protestantism and its battle with the the old world of uniform Catholicism. This great religious rent in the fabric of English society underlies the savage violence and turbulence of the period - from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the overwhelming threat of the Spanish Armada.

New Worlds, Lost Worlds is a startlingly atmospheric tour de force.

Fathers and Sons

The poet Thomas Wyatt died on October 11, 1542. As my various posts on the Howard and Wriothesly families have demonstrated, it was dangerous to be a courtier in the Tudor Court. Fortunes could change rapidly, and these families certainly needed the consolations of Boethius!

Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey were the great early poets of the English Renaissance, introducing the sonnet form to English poesy. In addition to their interest in poetry, they both dabbled in gaining influence at Court and sometimes endured imprisonment because of factions and conflicts between parties and families.

Wyatt witnessed the executions of Anne Boleyn and the men accused of adultery with her in 1536 while he was in the Tower of London accused of the same crime. He was, however, released later that year. Wyatt served as a diplomat and endured quite a marital struggle since his wife Elizabeth Brooke was not faithful. When Catherine Howard was executed in February 1542, there were rumors that Henry VIII was interested in Wyatt's wife! Wyatt continued to fall in and out of favor until his death in Dorset. He is buried in Sherborne Abbey.

Perhaps his most famous sonnet is the one assumed to be about his attraction to Anne Boleyn, thwarted by Henry VIII:

WHOSO list to hunt? I know where is an hind!

But as for me, alas! I may no more,

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore ;

I am of them that furthest come behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer ; but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow ; I leave off therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt

As well as I, may spend his time in vain!

And graven with diamonds in letters plain,

There is written her fair neck round about ;

'Noli me tangere ; for Cæsar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

Also well-known is the poem he wrote after May 19, 1536, having witnessed the executions of Anne Boleyn and her accomplices in adultery.

His son Thomas Wyatt the Younger, supported the Duke of Northumberland's attempt to place Lady Jane Dudley on the throne and then led the eponymous rebellion against Queen Mary I in 1554 to prevent the queen's marriage to Philip of Spain. Like his father, he had also been in prison on various occasions for crimes at Court and in London.