Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of

Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of, 1517?–1547, English poet; son of Thomas Howard, 3d duke of Norfolk. His irascibility and continuous vaunting of his descent from Edward I resulted in his imprisonment on several occasions. Eventually he was convicted of treason on a trumped-up charge and executed. He introduced blank verse to English in translating two books of Vergil's Aeneid. Along with his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt, he popularized the Petrarchan sonnet form in English. He was the only poet mentioned on the title page of the well-known miscellany (1557) of Richard Tottel.