Hampton me tawght to wishe her furst for myne
and windesor alas doth chace me from her sight
bewty of kind, her vertues from a bove
happy ys he, that may obtaine her love. S. H. ¹

"Geraldine," the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, the daughter of the
Earl of Kildare, was born 1528 (?) in Ireland. In 1533 she was
brought to England and in 1537 she is listed among the attend-
ants of the Princess Elizabeth at Hunsdon. In the spring of the
same year she accompanied the little princess to Hampton Court.
At this time she could not have been more than ten years old. Sur-
rey certainly was then in attendance on the Court, because his quick
temper involved him in a quarrel, of which we have the record.
In spite of the fact that he had joined his father in suppressing the
rebellion, called "The Pilgrimage of Grace," Lord Darcy before his
execution had intimated that Surrey was favorable to the rebels. ²
When a courtier. ³ repeated this rumor, Surrey struck him, forget-
ting that, as he was within the royal precincts, he rendered himself
by so doing liable to the amputation of one hand. Although the
motive of the trouble is doubtful, the correspondence between Nor-
folk and Cromwell leaves no doubt of the fact. The pleading of his
father was successful; Surrey was punished only by being paroled to
Windsor,--a very great mitigation to the punishment as he must
have been released before November 12th, when he was present at
the funeral of Jane Seymour. On March 10th, 1538, his first son,
Thomas, was born and on February 24th, 1539, his second son,
Henry. And according to the records this is the only time after
1537 when the twelfth line of the sonnet is applicable. Under the
circumstances it is quite clear that we have here the fancy of a
lively lad of nineteen pleasuring a little girl. To read in it the his-
tory of a great passion posits an abnormal precocity on the part of
Geraldine. ⁴ Aside from the romantic tradition there are no facts
to support it.

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