Today in 1547 Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey was beheaded. He had been close with Henry VIII’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, and had been a high favorite in court. But he suffered from pride, and John Barlow had once called him “the most foolish proud boy that is in England.” It would come back to bite him. One of Henry VIII’s last executions, he had been found guilty of treason a week earlier, and was accused of displaying the royal arms of King Edward the Confessor, with his own, and of planning to usurp the throne after Henry died.
His father was also sentenced to death for the same crime, but escaped his punishment because Henry VIII died before it could be carried out. Howard and his friend Thomas Wyatt were the first to use the sonnet form in poetry in England, and together they are known as the fathers of the English sonnet.
That’s your Tudor Minute for today. Remember you can dive deeper into life in 16th-century England through the Renaissance English History Podcast at englandcast.com.
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MiniCast Notes: Tudor Poets
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.