with the French and routed them, but soon after writing over to the
King's council that as the enemy had cast much larger cannon than had
been yet seen, with which they imagined they should soon demolish
Boulogne, it deserved consideration whether the lower town should
stand, as not being defensible; the council ordered him to return to
England in order to represent his sentiments more fully upon those
points, and the Earl of Hertford was immediately sent over in his
room. This exasperating the Earl of Surry, occasioned him to let fall
some expressions which favoured of revenge and dislike to the King,
and a hatred of his Councellors, and was probably one cause of his
ruin, which soon after ensued. The Duke of Norfolk, who discovered the
growing power of the Seymours, and the influence they were likely
to bear in the next reign, was for making an alliance with them; he
therefore pressed his son to marry the Earl of Hertford's daughter,
and the Dutchess of Richmond, his own daughter, to marry Sir Thomas
Seymour; but neither of these matches were effected, and the Seymours
and Howards then became open enemies. The Seymours failed not to
inspire the King with an aversion to the Norfolk-family, whose power
they dreaded, and represented the ambitious views of the Earl of
Surry; but to return to him as a poet.

That celebrated antiquary, John Leland, speaking of Sir Thomas Wyat
the Elder, calls the Earl, 'The conscript enrolled heir of the said
Sir Thomas, in his learning and other excellent qualities.' The author
of a treatise, entitled, 'The Art of English Poetry, alledges, that
Sir Thomas Wyat the Elder, and Henry Earl of Surry were the two
chieftains, who having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the
sweet and stately measures and stile of the Italian poetry, greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poetry, from what it had
been before, and therefore may be justly called, The Reformers of our