not a peer of the realm like his father, Surrey was
quickly tried in common court with no objective evi-
dence and no cross-examination. He was found guilty
and beheaded just before his 30th birthday on January
19, 1547, nine days before the king himself died. Sur-
rey was the last man executed by Henry VIII.
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, was much more
than a political fi gure. He was also an excellent poet
who left behind 60 poems, all unpublished at his
death except for his tribute to SIR THOMAS WYATT,
which appeared in 1542. He wrote 15 SONNETs, some
of which are a direct translation of PETRARCH and
others that are imitations, although all of his sonnets
are composed in the ENGLISH SONNET form. Surrey
also composed elegies, songs, verse letters, a SATIRE
(“LONDON, HAST THOU ACCUSED ME”), and translations.
His translation of books 2 and 4 of VIRGIL’s Aeneid
also arguably introduced BLANK VERSE poetry into the
English canon. This may be his greatest poetic
achievement. He cast off the archaic forms and aure-
ate language of his predecessors to write in a fresh
poetic diction.
See also “ALAS SO ALL THINGS NOW DO HOLD THEIR
PEACE.. .”; “LOVE THAT DOTH REIGN AND LIVE WITHIN MY
THOUGHT”; “SO CRUEL PRISON”; “TH’ ASSYRIANS’ KING IN
PEACE WITH FOUL DESIRE”; “SOOTE SEASON, THE”; “WHEN
WINDSOR WALLS.”
FURTHER READING
Casady, Edwin. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 1938. Reprint,
Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus, 1975.
Jones, Emrys, ed. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey Poems.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1964.
Sessions, William A. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Boston:
Twayne, 1986.
Mark DiCiccoSYNECDOCHE Synecdoche is a fi gure of speech
in which a part of something is used in place of the
whole. It is a commonly employed poetic device in the
SONNET, especially the love sonnets, where a portion of
the beloved’s anatomy stands in for her entirety. Syn-
ecdoche is related closely to METONYMY.
R. Jane LaskowskiSYNECDOCHE 429