Copy 1, Volume 1

A topographical history of Surrey / By Edward Wedlake Brayley, assisted by John Britton, and E. W. Brayley, jun. The geological section by Gideon Mantell. The illustrative department under the superintendence of Thomas Allom.

  • Edward William Brayley
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A topographical history of Surrey / By Edward Wedlake Brayley, assisted by John Britton, and E. W. Brayley, jun. The geological section by Gideon Mantell. The illustrative department under the superintendence of Thomas Allom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    October, 1542, he accompanied the Duke, his father, in the expedition into Scotland; when Kelsal and many other places were burnt, and the neighbouring country ravaged to a great extent. After this time, Surrey was much employed in military affairs in the French war. In October, 1543, having joined the army under that able commander, Sir John Wallop, he was present at the siege of Landrecy, near Cambray; which was closely, though unsuccessfully, invested by the united forces of the English and of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.56 In the following year, the command of the van- guard of “ a mightie armie,” as Holinshed terms it, which King Henry had raised to invade France, was bestowed on the Duke of Norfolk; and the Earl was appointed “ Marshal of the Field,” under him. The van and rear guards having joined the Emperor’s troops, they laid siege to Montreuil; and shortly afterwards, the main army, Thomas Wyatt the younger; both of whom, not having been so ingenuous as Surrey in acknowledging the offence, were committed to the Tower. In answer to the first charge, Surrey alleged that he had a licence to eat flesh at that season, “albeit he had not so secretly used the same as appertained”;—and “touching the stone bows, he could not deny that he had very evil doings therein”; and therefore, “submitted himself to such punishment as should to them [the Council] be thought good.” For this offence the Earl was again committed to the scene of his former durance, the Fleet; and whilst there, he appears to have written his “Satire against the Citizens of London”; a poem which presents to us more of the outpourings of an irascible spirit, than of the temperate reflections of an intelligent mind. From the contrast which it exhibits to all his other writings, it is evident that it was composed in a tumult of wrathful excitement, and in an hour of gall and bitterness. His imprisonment could not have been of long duration; since, in the following October, he was engaged under Sir John Wallop, at the investment and siege of Landrecy, in French Flanders. His friends, Pickering, and Wyatt the younger, were not liberated until May in the ensuing year. The charges against Surrey and his riotous confreres had been made by the Mayor and Aldermen of London. Nott’s Memoirs, from the Privy Council books.—In Dr. Nott’s defence of the Earl for thus annoying the sleeping citizens, by breaking their windows in the dead of the night, the above satirical piece is “very gravely paraphrased,” says Sir Harris Nicolas, (in his Memoir of the Earl, attached to the Aldine edition of Surrey’s Poems,) “as if it were the argument which the Earl used to the Privy Council,—and comments are made upon it, to explain why his virtuous motive was not allowed to extenuate so flagrant a breach of the peace.” It is almost ludicrous to mention, that the Rev. Edw. Nares, in his Memoirs of Lord Burghley, (4to. 1828 : vol. i. p. 503, note,) has quoted the paraphrase as a matter of fact, and he gives it as “ an instance upon record,” of “ the little moral effect produced by the Sermons of the Romish Clergy ”! 56 When the camp had broken up in November, and the army been placed in winter quar- ters, Surrey returned to England, and is supposed by Dr. Nott to have occupied his leisure in finishing his magnificent seat, called Mount Surrey, at St. Leonard’s, near Norwich. This mansion, which is said to have been the first edifice ever erected in this country in the purely Grecian style of architecture, was pillaged and dilapidated by the Norfolk insur- gents under Kett, in 1554. Surrey, also, about the same time, received into his family the celebrated scholar and physician, Hadrian Junius, and allotted him apartments at Kenning-hall, with a yearly pension of ‘fifty angels.’ The poet Churchyard, appears to have been a page in the Earl’s service at the same period.
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