The Heraldic Charge Against the Earl of Surrey, 1546-47.

HENRY VIII died in the early hours of 28 January 1547, leaving the throne to his nine-year-old son Edward. Had Henry departed a few months earlier, it appears that England would have been governed during Edward's minority by a coalition composed of religious reformers and conservatives, the latter led by Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; and Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley.(1) But Bishop Gardiner lost the King's favour in early December for reasons not fully understood, and he was to be excluded from the protectorate council by the King's will. At the same time, the destruction of the Duke of Norfolk and his son was set in motion by unknown agencies. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, poet and soldier, was secretly arrested on 2 December 1546 and held at the house of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley. On 12 December Surrey was paraded across London to the Tower, where he was joined by his father the Duke, both charged with high treason. Norfolk confessed his guilt on i2 January, while Surrey was tried and convicted the next day. Surrey was beheaded on Tower Hill on 19 January as a bill of attainder of treason against him and his father was being rushed through Parliament, to be signed with King Henry's signature stamp on the last day of his life.

A curious feature of the destruction of the two Howards is that the treason charge to which the Duke confessed and the written charge of which Surrey was convicted were heraldic. Both men were adjudged traitors for appropriating royal insignia, though in Surrey's case the coat of arms in question, that of St Edward the Confessor, was presented in court as an emblem of his designs on the throne itself, or at any rate of his intention to overthrow the King's right to arrange the protectorate.

The purpose of this article is to examine the heraldic charge that cost Surrey his life, as well as the charges against his father. The larger issue of Surrey's guilt or innocence will not be considered in detail, but the heraldic accusations are a tale of their own, one which has not been told, for the evidence has never been fully examined. Surrey's admiring biographers as well as his detractors have respectively asserted his innocence or guilt without systematic analysis of the full texts of the relevant documents.(1) The result has been highly unfavourable to Surrey, as recent historians of Henry VIII's reign catalogued the accusations and reached a guilty verdict -- with one notable holdout, G. R. Elton, who saw only `slender proof' behind the charges.(2)

Surrey was not arrested on 2 December for heraldic violations, but rather, on the accusation of Sir Richard Southwell, for threatening the life of someone who intended to reveal Surrey's disloyal words. Shortly after reaching the Tower, Surrey wrote to the Privy Council regretting that his father's loyalty should be brought in question because of his own dispute with Southwell, and asking to make a statement.(3) Norfolk also wrote to the Council after his initial interrogation, saying that he had been asked whether he had employed private cyphers, and whether he or Bishop Gardiner had sought to promote a reconciliation with Rome; he was left utterly bewildered as to the true cause of his detention.(4) The inchoate state of the case against the Howards is also apparent in the 15 December deposition of the Duke's business agent Richard Fulmerston, who had been questioned by the Council the day before. Fulmerston was merely asked if he knew anything touching on the loyalty of Norfolk or Surrey to the King, Prince, Council, or commonwealth, and whether Fulmerston had encouraged Surrey `in eny unlawfull doing'.(5)

And then, on 15 December, the Privy Council wrote to England's ambassadors abroad that Surrey and Norfolk intended to overthrow the King and Prince, and that Surrey had confessed the whole plot. On 16 December Lord Chancellor Wriothesley informed the Imperial ambassador that Norfolk and Surrey's `intention was to usurp authority by means of the murder of all the members of the Council, and the control of the prince by them alone. The Earl of Surrey, however, had not been under arrest in his [Wriothesley's] house for this plot, but in consequence of a letter of his, full of threats, written to a gentleman. Two other gentlemen of faith and honour subsequently came forward and charged them with this conspiracy'.(1)

But the eight accounts of Surreys trial mention neither a formal confession nor two witnesses to any sort of explicit treason, these two items being spread abroad,(2) but not in England. As for the matter of threats, if it was raised at the trial, nobody bothered to record the fact. Likewise no more is heard about Norfolk using private codes or plotting on behalf of Rome. The final charges of treason were entirely heraldic, but no mention of that subject is found in the documents concerning Surrey and Norfolk through mid December. Meanwhile the search for witnesses and evidence was widening, spreading from London to Norfolk.

A party of men rode from the Court on the afternoon of 12 December to seize the Duke's household at Kenninghall, Norfolk, about eighty miles from London, arriving before dawn on 14 December. A day or so later they sent back to London the Duke's daughter, Mary, dowager Duchess of Richmond, along with the Duke's mistress, Elizabeth Holland.(3) Probably the two women arrived around 18-20 December, and both made statements, apparently in answer to a set of questions, as they follow the same format.(4) At this point a new set of charges appears: that Surrey attempted to persuade his sister to use her charms to captivate the King, that he proposed his father as future Lord Protector, that he vilified the Privy Council, and that he and his father had incorporated royal heraldry into their coats of arms. Others who knew Surrey were summoned and, although their depositions are undated, they apparently coincide with or follow those of Fulmerston and the two women, as their statements address the new allegations, not the old. Moreover, the report on the seizure of Kenninghall stresses that the speedy dispatch and riding of the arresting party allowed the horsemen to take the place by surprise, `soo that the furst newes of the Duke of Norffolk and his Soon cam thether by us'. The emphasis on secrecy would have had little point if the authorities had been interrogating Surrey's friends, many of whom were also his sister's friends, from 2 December onward. Nor, in that case, could the Imperial and French ambassadors have been kept in the dark.