least, to his rank. He belonged to the family which in Pope's lines
was to become synonymous with noble blood. ¹ The fortunes of
the family were founded early in the fifteenth century by the mar-
riage of Robert Howard with the Lady Margaret Mowbray, in
whose veins was blood royal. By her father, she was descended
from Edward the First and Margaret of France; by her mother,
from Edward the First and Elinor of Castile. On the extinction
of the Mowbrays, John, the son of Robert, was created Duke of
Norfolk by Richard III in 1483. He married twice. By the first
wife he had Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, and four daugh-
ters who all married; by the second, one daughter Catherine, who
married John Bourchier, Lord Berners, the translator. This
Thomas, the second Duke of Norfolk, the grandfather of Surrey,
married twice and had eleven children. As these intermarried with
the great noble families, Surrey was thus closely related to many in
the English court. Of these the important ones are (besides his
father): Edward, the English admiral whose gallant death in 1513 is
celebrated by Barclay in the Fourth Eclogue; Edmund, the father of
Catherine, the fifth wife of Henry VIII; and Elizabeth, the mother
of Anne Boleyn the second wife of Henry VIII. Surrey's father,
Thomas, the third Duke of Norfolk, married first the Lady Anne,
the daughter of Edward IV and sister of Elizabeth the Queen of
Henry VII. On her decease he married Lady Elizabeth Stafford,
the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, who bore him three
children; Henry the poet, Thomas, and Mary. Thus on his moth-
er's side he was descended from Edward III; his grandmother was
a daughter of the Percys; his uncle had married the daughter of
Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury; one aunt, Ralph Neville,
earl of Westmorland, and the other, George Neville, Lord Aber-
gavenny. In fact he was so close to the throne that it was ru-
mored that he was to marry the princess Mary, daughter of Henry
VIII and Katherine of Aragon, who later became queen. He was
the close friend of Henry, Duke of Richmond, the King's illegiti-
mate son, who married his sister Mary. By his descent and by his
family connections he was the greatest noble of his generation,
and his ancestry compared very favorably even with that of the
prince of Wales, whose descent on the father's side was scarcely

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