tuated in Surrey the arrogance inherited from his mother. He was
"the most relish prowde boye that ys in England." ¹ When he
was accused by Sir Richard Southwell, his answer was an appeal
to the judgment of God by means of a boxing match ² He refuted
another witness by merely saying "I leave it to yourselves, Gentle-
men, to judge whether it were probable that this man should speak
thus to the Earl of Surrey, and he not strike him." Holinshed
comments "had he tempered his answers with such modesty as he
shewed token of a right perfect, and ready wit, his praise had been
the greater." ³ But such a temperament is very rarely modest,
and it does lead to blows. In 1542 he had quarreled with an
unknown John à Leigh, and he was released only on a bond that
he would not molest that gentleman. But he figures in another
scrape that has some literary importance. On the second of
February, 1543, Surrey in company with Sir Thomas Wyatt the
younger, the son of the poet, and a William Pickering anticipated
the eighteenth century Mohocks by a night raid upon London.
As the citizens failed to find amusement in the performance, in-
quiry led to a certain Mistress Arundel of St. Laurence-Lane. On
being summoned before the Privy Council she confessed that Sur-
rey and other young noblemen used her house. ⁴

Further, she saith, how at Candlemas they went out with stone bows at nine
o'clock at night, and did not come back, till post midnight, and the next day there
was a great clamour of the breaking of many glass windows both of houses and
churches, and shooting at men that night in the street; and the voice was that those
hurts were done by my lord and his company. Whereupon she gave commandment
unto all her house that they should say nothing of my lord's going out in form
specified. Item, she said, that that night or the night before they used the same
stone bows, rowing on the Thames; and Thomas Clear told her how they shot at
the queans on the Bankside. Mistress Arundel also, looking one day at Lord
Surrey's arms, said the arms were very like the king's arms, and said further, she
thought he would be king, if aught but good happened to the king and prince.

The inquiry dragged along until the first of April. ⁵

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