Howard

Henry, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). He was the grandson of the Earl of Surrey who won the victory at Flodden Field. He enjoyed the favor of Henry VIII for some years but after a time, being suspected of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower, tried, condemned, and beheaded. Surrey was a friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the two made a study of Italian poetry and borrowed therefrom the sonnet, which they adapted to English verse. Surrey was the first writer of English to make use of blank verse, translating two books of Virgil's Aeneid into this form of poetry. In 1557 the poems of Wyatt and Surrey were published in Tottel's Miscellany.