General Notes

English soldier and poet, son of Thomas Howard, 3d duke of Norfolk. He was
given his title by courtesy in 1524, when his father became duke of Norfolk.
Howard 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 and 1546 he was commander of the
garrison of Boulogne. Quick-tempered and quarrelsome, he made many enemies
and was imprisoned several times for misconduct. Arrested with his father on
trumped-up charges of treason, he was condemned and executed in 1547.

Although not primarily a man of letters, Howard greatly enriched English
literature by his introduction of new verse forms. His love poems, like
those of his contemporary Sir Thomas Wyatt, show the influence of Italian
models. The two share the distinction of having introduced the sonnet to
English literature. Howard's translation of the second and third books of
the Aeneid by Vergil was written in blank verse of five iambic feet, the
first use of this form in English. Forty of his poems were printed
posthumously in 1557 in Songs and Sonettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable
Lorde Henry Howard, Late Earle of Surrey, and Others, and in the same year
his translations from Vergil appeared as Certain Bokes of Virgiles Aeneis
Turned into English Meter.