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he obliged the nobility and gentry who held the crown lands, which they had kept as their own, to resign them, or to keep them as tenants-at-will, and agree to pay him annually a certain sum for all their fiefs and

manors.

Such was Gustavus I. of Sweden-a model for boys, for patriots, and for kings. He was of rare mental qualities, but his moral qualities were equal to them. He led a life of labour; he was continually in fear of assassination; but he trusted in God, and worked on till his seventy-second year, when he died (in the year 1559), full of honour, crowned by the applause of all good men, and the universal love of the people whom he had made free and happy.

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A NOBLE ENGLISH BOY AND GENIUS.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.

FLOR

A.D. 1547.

LORENCE, under the fostering care of Lorenzo de' Medici, "the Magnificent," as he has been named, had become the scat of the highest state of civilization.

through the culture of literature and art, by his munificent patronage of men of all countries who excelled in either, so that when he died, in 1492, men added to the title of "Magnificent" also that of "the Father of Letters."

As compared with the rest of Europe, Italy, at that period, was not only the most intellectual, but the most wealthy land of all, for she was the chief commercial country of the world. Italians looked with a disdainful contempt upon the natives of those countries who were then but striving to compete with them as merchants, scholars, painters, sculptors, architects, or even as the producers of printed books and handicraft. Italy, in all these matters, was supreme; and the fashions which she set were almost slavishly imitated by the Parisians, and, in turn again, by the more northern courts, of which that of Henry VIII. was pre-eminently distinguished for its feudal splendour and show.

It was just at this period-somewhere about 1516— that a son was born to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Admiral of England, the exact date of whose birth has never been fixed. The child was christened by the name of Henry, and gave early evidence of that powerful intellect, which, as he reached manhood, made him one of the brightest ornaments of the English court. He was the most accomplished courtier, a brilliant wit, skilled in all the manly exercises of that chivalric period, when Henry

and Francis met at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, handsome in person, always richly attired, and, above all, a lyric poet of the most refined taste and exquisite

ear.

On his travels, after his education at home had been completed, he made a sojourn of some time at Florence. Here, in the midst of the most polished society in the world, he astonished all those with whom he came in contact by the splendour of his retinue, the gallantry of his bearing, his learning, and his wit, and, above all, by proclaiming that his “ladye-love" was superior to all that Italy could boast of beauty, "fair beyond the fairest," and by maintaining his boast in a solemn tourney held in her honour, in which he overthrew all his opponents.

Such was the youthful Earl of Surrey, one of the earliest and most elegant of our lyric poets.

"Who has not heard of Surrey's fame?—

His was the hero's soul of fire;

And his the bard's immortal name;

And his was love exalted high

By all the glow of chivalry."

The Earl of Surrey married, early, Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. He was the friend and intimate companion of one of the most finished gentlemen of the day, the king's natural son, the Duke of Richmond, who died in 1536, just previous to the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn. In granting armorial bearings to this queen, when he raised her to the throne, Henry VIII. had taken especial care

to show her royal descent through the Howards by introducing the arms of Thomas de Brotherton, son of Edward I., out of the Howard shield. When Richard II. adopted the Confessor as his patron, he impaled his arms with those of England and France, and granted to two or three of the nobility, who were descended from the blood royal, the Confessor's arms, to be borne per pale, or separate enclosure. Among these was the then Duke of Norfolk. The Earl of Surrey, conceiving himself entitled to it, obtained the sanction of the heralds, and assumed the distinctive badge upon his armorial shield. Yet, notwithstanding the king's previous admission of the royal descent of the Howards, just stated, a flimsy charge of treason was trumped up against the earl for this assumption of the royal arms.

In those truculent times, the axe was the readiest instrument at hand for the removal of a successful rival. The earl's very accomplishments-his prowess, his high spirit, his triumphs in the lists, his rank amongst poets-all raised him up a host of enemies, who, trusting to the king's suspicious temper and known jealousy of all that seemed to trench upon the royal prerogative, arraigned the earl of "treason in quartering the royal arms with his own."

Surrey was brought to trial on the 13th of January, 1547, when he defended himself with singular courage and ability, appealed to the authority of the heralds for the quarterings on his shield, and indignantly dis

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