Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (born around 1516 or 1517, executed 1547), was an English courtier and poet who, building on Sir Thomas Wyatt's earlier translations of Petrarch, devised the distinct English sonnet structure of three quatrains followed by a closing couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, rather than the Italian octave-and-sestet division. Later poets, above all William Shakespeare, used this structure so extensively and to such lasting effect that it is now generally known as the Shakespearean sonnet rather than by Surrey's own name. Surrey also translated books two and four of Virgil's Aeneid into unrhymed iambic pentameter, the first sustained use of blank verse in the English language. He was executed for treason at Tower Hill in January 1547, days before Henry VIII's own death, after enemies at court accused him of improperly quartering the royal coat of arms as a challenge to the young Prince Edward's succession; his poems, like Wyatt's, reached print only posthumously in Tottel's Miscellany (1557).