nd".[1157] Twice he had been
committed to prison by the Council for roaming the streets of the city
at night and breaking the citizens' windows,[1158] offences venial in
the exuberance of youth, but highly unbecoming in a man who was nearly
thirty, who aspired to high place in the councils of the realm, and
who despised most of his colleagues as upstarts. His enmity was
specially directed against the Prince's uncles, the Seymours. Hertford
had twice been called in to retrieve Surrey's military blunders.
Surrey made improper advances to Hertford's wife, but repudiated with
scorn his father's suggestion for a marriage alliance between the two
families.[1159] His sister testified that he had advised her to become
the King's mistress, with a view to advancing the Howard interests.
Who, he asked, should be Protector, in case the King died, but his
father? He quartered the royal arms with his own, in spite of the (p. 423)
heralds' prohibition. This at once roused Henry's suspicions; he
knew that, years before, Norfolk had been suggested as a possible
claimant to the throne, and that a marriage had been proposed between
Surrey and the Princess Mary.

[Footnote 1157: _L. and P._, XIV., ii., 141.]

[Footnote 1158: _Acts of the Privy Council_, i.,
104; Bapst, _Deux Gentilshommes poetes a la cour
d'Henri VIII._, p. 269.]

[Footnote 1159: See the present writer in _D.N.B.,
s.v._ "Seymour, Edward"; _cf._ Herbert, pp.
625-33. G.F. Nott in his life of Surrey prefixed
to his edition of the poet's works takes too
favourable a view of his conduct.]

The original charge against Surrey was prompted by personal and local
jealousy, not on the part of the Seymours, but on that of a member of
Surrey's own party. It came from Sir Richard Southwell, a Catholic and
a man of weight and leading in Norfolk, like the Howards themselves;
he even appears to have been brought up with Surrey, and for many
years had been intimate with the Howard family. When Surrey was called
before the Council to answer Southwell's charges, he wished to fight
his accuser, but both were committed to custody. The case was
investigated by the King himself, with the help of another Catholic,
Lord Chancellor Wriothesley. The Duke of Norfolk confessed to
technical treason in concealing his son's offences