HOWARD, Henry, Earl of Surrey, a highly-accomplished nobleman, the son and grandson of two Dukes of Norfolk, Avas born about the year 1520, and educated in Windsor Castle, with Henry Fitzroy, earl of Richmond, natural son of King Henry VIII. Wood states from tradition that he Avas for a time a student at Cardinal College, Oxford. In 1532, HoAvard, with his companion Richmond, was at Paris, Avhere he remained a number of months. The latter died in 1536, after Avhich Howard travelled into Germany, where he visited the emperor’s court, and thence proceeded to Florence, Avhere he fell in love Avith the fair Geraldine, Avhom his sonnets have immortalized, and, like a true innamorato, published a challenge to all comers, Avhether Christians, Jews, Saracens, Turks, or cannibals, in defence of the beauty of his mistress, and proved victorious in the tournament instituted by the grand duke on the occasion. The duke, it seems, Avas so delighted Avith his gallant exploits, that he Avould gladly have retained him at his court; but he rejected the invitation, being determined to maintain the superlative beauty of his Geraldine in all the principal cities in Italy. This romantic resolution was however frustrated by the command of his sovereign, Henry VIII. recalling him to England.

In 1540 he signalized himself in a tournament at Westminster, against Sir John Dudley, Sir Thomas Seymour, and others. In 1542 he marched under the command of his father against the Scotch; and in the same year he was confined in Windsor Castle for eating flesh in Lent, contrary to the king’s proclamation. In the expedition to Boulogne in France, he was in 1544 appointed field-marshal of the English army; and after the taking of that town in 1546, made king’s lieutenant and captain-general of the forces in France. He Avas at this time knight of the Garter. In the same year, having attempted to intercept a convoy, he was defeated by the French, and soon afterwards superseded in his command by the Earl of Hertford.

After his return to England, Surrey, conscious of his former services, and peevish under his disgrace, could not help reflecting on the king and council. This proved the first step toAvards his destruction. He had married Frances, the daughter of John earl of Oxford; and after her death [7:11:712]he is said to have made love to the Princess Mary. For this the Seymours, rivals of the Norfolk family, and now in favour with the king, accused him of aspiring to the crown, adding, that he had already presumed to quarter part of the royal arms with his own; but, whatever might be the pretence, the real cause of his ruin was the jealousy and power of his enemies. In short, the destruction of the Howards being determined on, Surrey, and his father the Duke of Norfolk, were committed to the Tower, on the 12th of December 1546; and on the 13th of January following, Surrey was tried at Guildhall by a common jury, and beheaded on Tower-Hill on the 19th day of the same month, nine days before the death of the king, who thus, to fill up the measure of his crimes, finished his life with the murder of his best subject. The accusations brought against this young nobleman on his trial were so exceedingly ridiculous, that one is astonished how it was possible, even in that despotic reign, to find a judge and jury so unprincipled as to carry on the farce of a trial and conviction.

As to the character of this unfortunate nobleman, all our poets have celebrated his praise. Mr Walpole commences his anecdotes of Surrey by observing: “We now emerge from the twilight of learning to an almost classic author, that ornament of a boisterous yet not unpolished court, the Earl of Surrey, celebrated by Drayton, Dryden, Fenton, Pope, illustrated by his own muse, and lamented for his unhappy death; a man, as Sir Walter Raleigh says, no less valiant than learned, and of excellent hopes.” Leland calls him the conscript enrolled heir of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, in his learning and other excellent qualities; and the author of The Art of English Poetry says, that the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt may justly be called the reformers of our poetry and style. His poems were published in 1557, 12mo; and in 1565, 1574, 1585, 1587, 8vo. Several of the sonnets ascribed to him are by Sir Thomas Wyatt and others. He also translated two books of the Aeneid, which he executed with fidelity without prosaic servility, and which form the earliest specimen of blank verse in the English language. The diction is often poetical, and the versification varied by suitable pauses. It is probable that he intended to translate the whole; and this is so much more correct and elegant than his other translations, that it appears to have been the production of his happier days.

Howard, Charles, an able statesman and experienced seaman, was the son of Lord William Howard, baron of Effingham, and born in 1536. He served under his father, who was lord high admiral of England, till the accession of Queen Elizabeth. In January 1573 he succeeded his father in his title and estate; after which he became successively chamberlain of the household and knight of the Garter, and in 1585 was made lord high admiral, at the critical juncture when the Spaniards were sending an Armada, as they supposed, to the assured conquest of this kingdom. When he received intelligence of the approach of the Spanish fleet, and saw of how great consequence it was to get out the few ships which were ready at Plymouth, he not only gave orders in every thing himself, but even wrought with his own hands, and the first night left the port with six ships. The next morning, though he had only thirty sail, and these the smallest of the fleet, he attacked the Spanish fleet; but first despatched his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Hobby, to the queen, to desire her majesty to make a proper disposition of the land forces for the security of the coast, and to hasten as many ships as possible to his assistance. His valour was conspicuously displayed in repeated attacks of a superior enemy. The coolness of his temper was not less remarkable; and it was owing to his energy and prudence that the victory remained with the English. The queen expressed her sense of his merit in the most honourable terms, and granted him a pension for life. In 1596 he commanded in chief the naval, as Essex did the land, forces sent against Spain, when, in the attack on Cadiz, his prudence and moderation were amongst the principal causes of the success which the English met with in that great and glorious enterprise; and, upon his return the following year, he was advanced to the dignity of Earl of Nottingham. The next eminent service in which his lordship was engaged was in 1599, when the Spaniards seemed to meditate a new invasion. Her majesty, who always placed her safety in being too quick for her enemies, drew together, in a fortnight, a fleet and an army, which rendered hopeless the success of her foreign and domestic enemies; and she gave the earl the supreme command of both, with the title of lord-lieutenant-general of all England, an office unknown in succeeding times. When age and infirmity had unfitted him for action, he resigned his office, and spent the remainder of his life in ease and retirement till the period of his decease, which happened in 1624, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

Howard, John, a man of singular and transcendent humanity, was the son of a reputable tradesman in St Paul’s Churchyard, and was born at Hackney in the year 1726. At a proper age he was put as apprentice to Mr Nathaniel Newnham, a wholesale grocer in Watling Street. But not long after this, his father died, leaving only this son and a daughter, to both of whom he bequeathed handsome fortunes; and by his will he directed that his son should not be considered as of age till he had reached five-and-twenty. His constitution was weak, and his health appeared to have been injured by the necessary duties of his apprenticeship; and therefore, at its expiration, he took an apartment in a lodging-house in Church Street, Stoke Newington, Middlesex; but not meeting with the tenderest treatment, he removed to another lodging-house in the same street, which was kept by a widow lady, Mrs Sarah Lardeau, a worthy sensible woman, but an invalid. Here he was nursed with so much care and attention, that out of gratitude for her kindness, he resolved to marry his landlady. In vain did the latter expostulate with him upon the extravagance of such a proceeding, considering the disparity of their ages; but nothing could alter his resolution, and they were privately married about the year 1752. This lady was possessed of a small fortune, which he presented to her sister. During his residence at Newington, the minister of the dissenting meeting-house in that place resigned his office, when a successor was appointed; and Mr Howard, who was bred a dissenter, and all his life stedfastly adhered to that profession, proposed to purchase the lease of a house near the meeting-house, and to appropriate it as a parsonage-house for the use of the minister for the time being, for which purpose he contributed L.50. His wife died on the 10th of November 1755, aged fifty-four; and he was a sincere and affectionate mourner for her death. About this time, it is believed, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In the year 1756 he had the misfortune to experience some of the evils which it afterwards became the business of his life to alleviate. Having embarked that year in a Lisbon packet, the Hanover, in order to make the tour of Portugal, the vessel was taken by a French privateer; and the hard-shipshesuffered during his subsequent confinement in France are naturally supposed to have awakened his sympathies in favour of prisoners, and to have suggested to him the humane enterprise of endeavouring to render prisons less pernicious to health and morality. “Before we reached Brest,” says he ( On Prisons, 4to, 1784, p. 11), “I suffered the extremity of thirst, not having for above forty hours one drop of water, nor hardly a morsel of food. In the castle at Brest I lay six nights upon straw; and observing how cruelly my countrymen were used there and at Morlaix, whither I was carried next, during the two months I was at Carhaix upon parole, I corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Morlaix, [7:11:713]and Dinnan; at the last of those towns were several of our ship’s crew, and my servant. I had sufficient evidence of their being treated with such barbarity, that many hundreds had perished, and that thirty-six were buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day. When I came to England, still on parole. I made known to the commissioners of sick and wounded seamen the sundry particulars, which gained their attention and thanks. Remonstrance was made to die French court; our sailors had redress; and those that were in the three prisons mentioned above were brought home in the first cartel ships. Perhaps,” adds Mr Howard, “what I suffered on this occasion increased my sympathy with the unhappv people whose case is the subject of this book.”

He afterwards, it is said, made the tour of Italy; and at his return settled at Brokenhurst, a retired and pleasant villa in the New Forest, near Lymington, in Hampshire, having, on the 25th of April 1758, married a daughter of Edward Leeds of Croxton, Cambridgeshire, king’s serjeant. This lady died in 1765, in giving birth to her only child, a son, who unfortunately became lunatic. After her death Mr Howard left Lymington, and purchased an estate at Cardington, near Bedford.

But the sphere in which he had hitherto moved was too narrow for his enlarged mind. Being named in 1773 to the office of sheriff of Bedfordshire, from that time his sphere of usefulness was extended. His office, as he himself observes, brought the distress of prisoners more immediately under his notice. A sense of duty induced him personally to visit the county jail, where he observed such abuses and scenes of calamity as he had before no conception of; and he soon exerted himself in order to reform them. With a view to obtain precedents for certain regulations which he proposed, he went to inspect the prisons in some neighbouring counties. But finding in them equal room for complaint and commiseration, he determined to visit the principal prisons in England. The farther he proceeded, however, the more shocking were the scenes presented to his view; and this induced him to resolve upon exerting himself to the utmost, in order to effect a general reform in these horrid places of confinement, considering it as of the highest importance, not only to the wretched objects themselves, but to the community at large. Upon this subject he was examined by the House of Commons in March 1774, when he had the honour of receiving their thanks. This encouraged him to proceed in his design. He revisited all the prisons in the kingdom, together with the principal houses of correction. He also in 1775 enlarged his circuit by going into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where he found the same want of reformation.

One grand object which he had in view was, to put a stop to that shocking distemper called the jail fever, which raged so dreadfully in many of the prisons as to render them to the last degree offensive and dangerous; a distemper by which more had been taken off than by the hands of the executioner, and which, in several instances, had been communicated from the prisons into the courts of justice, and proved fatal to the magistrates and judges, and to multitudes of persons who attended the trials, as well as to the families of discharged felons and debtors. Another end he proposed was, to procure the immediate release of prisoners, who, upon trial, were acquitted, but who often continued to be unjustly detained from not being able to pay the accustomed fees; and also to abolish many other absurd and cruel usages which had long prevailed. But the great object of all was, to introduce a thorough reform of morals into our prisons, where he had found the most flagrant vices prevailing to such a degree, that they were become seminaries of wickedness and villany, and the most formidable nuisances to the community, in consequence of the promiscuous intercourse of prisoners of both sexes, and of all ages and descriptions, by which the young and Jess experienced were initiated, by old and hardened sinners, into all the arts of villany and the mysteries of iniquity; so that, instead of being reformed by their confinement, which should be the chief end of punishment, those who were discharged became more dangerous to society than before.

These laudable endeavours he had the satisfaction to see, in some instances, crowned with success; particularly in regard to the healthiness of prisons, some of which were rebuilt under his inspection. Through his interposition, also, better provision was made for the instruction of prisoners, by the introduction of bibles and other pious books into their cells, and a more constant attendance of clergymen. But in order to introduce a more general and humane regulation, and to conduce to the reformation of criminals, he determined to visit other countries, and examine the plans there adopted, in the hope of collecting some information which might be useful in his own country. For this purpose he travelled into France, Flanders, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, and afterwards through the Prussian and Austrian dominions. He also visited the capitals of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Poland, and some cities in Portugal and Spain. In all these expensive and hazardous journeys, he denied himself the usual gratifications of travellers, and declined the honours which were offered him by persons of the first distinction, applying himself solely to one grand object. To him indeed the inspection of a jail, or an hospital, was more grateful than all the entertainments of a palace. With what astonishment and gratitude he was received by their miserable inhabitants may easily be imagined, since, whilst he made observations on their situation, he meditated their relief; and many distressed prisoners abroad, as well as at home, partook of his bounty, and some were liberated by it; for he considered those of every nation, and people, and tongue, as brethren. On his return, he published, in 1777, the State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons, 4to. In the year 1778 he undertook a third journey through the Prussian and Austrian dominions, and the free cities of Germany; and likewise extended his tour through Italy, and revisited some of the countries which he had before examined. The observations he made in this tour were published in an appendix, 1780, containing also some remarks respecting the management of prisoners of war, and the hulks on the Thames. But wishing to acquire some further knowledge on the subject, he, in 1781, revisited Holland and some cities in Germany. He also visited the capitals of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Poland, and in 1783 some cities in Portugal and Spain; and returned through France, Flanders, and Holland. The substance of all these travels was afterwards thrown into one narrative, which was published in the year 1784. He likewise published a curious account of the Bastille, in 8vo.

His travels and exertions, however, were not yet at an end. He conceived a further design, which was to visit the principal lazarettos in France and Italy, in order to procure information concerning the best methods of preventing the spread of the plague, with a view to apply them to other infectious disorders. But not obtaining all the satisfaction which he wished for in those countries, he proceeded to Smyrna and Constantinople, where that most dreadful of human distempers actually prevailed; “pleasing himself,” as he said, λ with the idea of not only learning, but of being able to communicate somewhat to the inhabitants of those distant regions.” In the execution of this design, though he was so much exposed to danger, and actually caught the plague, “that merciful [7:11:714]Providence,” as he himself piously remarks, “which had hitherto preserved him, was pleased to extend its protection to him in this journey also, and to bring him home once more in safety.”. On his way home he revisited the chief prisons and hospitals in the countries through which he passed; and afterwards went again to Scotland, and thence to Ireland, where he proposed a new and very important object, namely, to inspect the Protestant charterschools, in some of which he had before observed shameful abuses, which he reported to a committee of the Irish House of Commons. In this more extensive tour, he took a particular account of what he had observed amiss in the conduct of this noble charity, with a view to a reformation, and not without considerable success. In the course of these journeys, particular cities and communities were not unmindful of paying him proper respect. At Dublin, he was created a doctor of laws by Trinity College; and the city of Glasgow and the town of Liverpool did honour to themselves by enrolling him amongst their members. Upon his return home, having again inspected the prisons in England, and the hulks on the Thames, in order to see what alterations for the better had been made, and which he found to be very considerable, though still imperfect, he published the result of his last laborious investigations, in an Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe, with various Papers relative to the Plague, together with further Observations on some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals, and additional Remarks on the present State of those in Great Britain and Ireland, with a great number of curious plates. The work likewise contained observations on penitentiary houses, which had been encouraged by act of parliament, for the correction and reformation of criminals, and of which he and Dr Fothergill had been nominated by the king superintendents. Besides these, he published the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s new code of criminal law, with an English translation; of which, as indeed of all his publications, he gave away a great number of copies amongst his acquaintance. His laying open the horrors of despotism in a neighbouring country, however, had nearly exposed him to suffer them; and had it not been for the timely notice of our ambassador, he would probably have ended his days in the Bastille.

Not satisfied, however, with what he had already done, he concludes his Account of Lazarettos with announcing his intention again to quit his country, for the purpose of revisiting Russia, Turkey, and some other countries, and extending his tour in the East. “I am not insensible,” says he, “of the dangers that must attend such a journey. Trusting, however, in the protection of that 'kind Providence which has hitherto preserved me, I calmly and cheerfully commit myself to the disposal of unerring wisdom. Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not my conduct be uncan-didìy imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, deliberate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty, and to a sincere desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellow-creatures than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life.” Accordingly, to the great concern of his friends, he set out in summer 1789 on this hazardous enterprise; the principal object of which was to administer a medicine in high repute at home in malignant fevers (Dr James’s powder), under a strong persuasion that it would prove equally efficacious in the plague. But in this second tour in the East, it pleased God to cut off his life; for, having spent some time at Cherson, a new settlement of the empress of Russia, at the mouth of the Dnieper or Borysthenes, towards the northern extremity of the Black Sea, near Oczakow, he, in visiting the Russian hospital of that place, or, as some say, a young lady, caught a malignant fever, which carried him off on the 20th of January, after an illness of about twelve days; and having been kept five days, according to his express directions, he was buried, by his own desire, in the garden of a villa in the neighbourhood, belonging to a French gentleman, from whom he had received great civilities. While absent on his first tour in Turkey, his character for active benevolence had so much attracted the public attention, that a subscription was set on foot to erect a statue to his honour, and in a short time above L.1500 was subscribed for that purpose. But some of those who knew Mr Howard best never concurred in the scheme, being well assured that he would neither countenance nor accede to it; and in consequence of two letters to the subscribers, from Mr Howard himself, the design was laid aside. It was, however, resumed after his death; and surely, of all the statues or monuments raised by public gratitude to illustrious characters either in ancient or modern times, none was ever erected in honour of worth so genuine and admirable as that of Howard, who devoted his time, his strength, his fortune, and finally sacrificed his life, in the pursuits of humanity; and who, to adopt the expressive words of Mr Burke,^[1. Speech at Guildhall in Bristol, 1780. ] “visited all Europe [and the East], not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to collect medals, or to collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depth of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and of pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten; to attend to the neglected; to visit the forsaken; and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original, and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It is a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity; and already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country.”