Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk

Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk KG PC (1443 – 21 May 1524), styled Earl of Surrey from 1483 to 1485 and again from 1489 to 1514, was an English nobleman, soldier and statesman who served four monarchs.

In 1513, he led the English to victory over the Scots at the decisive Battle of Flodden, for which he was richly rewarded by King Henry VIII, then away in France.

On 14 January 1478 he was knighted by Edward IV at the marriage of the King's second son, the young Duke of York, and Lady Anne Mowbray (died 1481).

[3] Both Howards remained close to King Richard throughout his two-year reign, and fought for him at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, where Surrey was wounded and taken prisoner, and his father killed.

Surrey was attainted in the first Parliament of the new King, Henry VII, stripped of his lands, and committed to the Tower of London, where he spent the next three years.

On 1 February 1514, at the age of 71, he was created 2nd Duke of Norfolk, his late father's title, and his son Thomas was made Earl of Surrey.

Both were granted lands and annuities, and the Howard arms were augmented in honour of Flodden with an inescutcheon bearing the lion of Scotland pierced through the mouth with an arrow.

In May 1521 he presided as Lord High Steward over the trial of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, father of Norfolk's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth.

He withdrew from court, resigned as Lord Treasurer in favour of his son in December of that year, and after attending the opening of Parliament in April 1523, retired to his ducal castle at Framlingham in Suffolk where he died on 21 May 1524.

His funeral and burial on 22 June at Thetford Priory were said to have been "spectacular and enormously expensive, costing over £1300 and including a procession of 400 hooded men bearing torches and an elaborate bier surmounted with 100 wax effigies and 700 candles", befitting the richest and most powerful peer in England.

Attribution: Tucker, Melvin J., "The Life of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey and second Duke of Norfolk (1964), 170pp' out of print but the only serious biography

A painting by Mather Brown depicting Norfolk defending his allegiance to Richard III before Henry VII, after the Battle of Bosworth Field . The Tower of London is in the background.
Howard augmentation of honour , awarded to Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk after the Battle of Flodden (1513): Or, a demi-lion rampant pierced through the mouth by an arrow within a double tressure flory-counterflory-gules , to be borne on the bend in the Howard arms
Norfolk's Coat of arms with "Flodden augmentation"
Right : Elizabeth Tilney, first wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. On her kirtle , she displays her paternal arms Azure a chevron between three griffin's heads erased or (Tilney) and on her mantle the quartered arms of Howard (1&4: Gules a bend between six cross crosslets fitchy argent (Howard); 2&3: grand quarterly first and fourth Brotherton second and third Mowbray). Below is inscribed in Latin: Elizabeta nat(a) Tilney ux(or) Thomae Howard ("Elizabeth born Tilney wife of Thomas Howard"). Left: Elizabeth Talbot de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk . Stained glass in Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford , Suffolk
Sketch of the grave of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. He was originally buried at Thetford St. Mary's Priory Church, but was removed by his son after the dissolution of that house in 1537, and may have been moved to Lambeth, but no trace of his tomb was to be found when John Aubrey visited there in the 1690s. The church itself was substantially rebuilt.