He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages.

After falling from favour in 1546, Norfolk was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.

Through his great-grandmother Margaret Mowbray, Howard was a descendant of Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, the sixth son of King Edward I of England.

[6] On 4 May 1513, he was appointed Lord High Admiral, a position previously held by his brother, Edward Howard, who had died on 25 April, to combat the French navy.

Surrey and his sons Thomas and Edmund had hoped to lead the English expedition against France, but were left behind when the King departed for Calais at the end of June.

[7] Shortly thereafter King James IV of Scotland launched an invasion into England (despite being married to Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII) in fulfilment of his alliance with France, and Thomas along with his brother Edmund, joined their father and the barons Dacre and Monteagle in leading the army, which despite their numerical inferiority, managed to decisively crush the Scottish forces at the Battle of Flodden, near Branxton, Northumberland, on 9 September.

In July 1522, the forces commanded by Surrey burned Morlaix, and over the next few months razed everything around Boulogne, until the winter caused the fleet to withdraw to England.

By 1529, matters of state were being increasingly handled by Norfolk, his brother-in-law Thomas Boleyn, and the Duke of Suffolk, who pressed King Henry VIII to remove Cardinal Wolsey.

In early 1530, Anne Boleyn was promoting a marriage between her first cousin and eldest son of Norfolk, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and the King's daughter, Princess Mary.

The Duke's enemies had told the King that the Howards could put down a rebellion of peasants if they wanted to, suggesting that Norfolk, being Catholic, sympathised with the Pilgrimage.

In response to this, forces led by Norfolk headed to the north of England, where they carried out a policy of brutal repression on behalf of the King, despite the fact that the Duke himself was a Catholic.

[23] On 29 June 1539, Howard, the Duke of Suffolk and Cromwell dined with the King as guests of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer at Lambeth Palace.

The King's disillusionment with Anne's physical appearance when he met her, and his desire to have the marriage annulled after the wedding had taken place, gave Howard an opportunity to bring down Cromwell.

Various members of the Duke's family were punished, including his daughter Mary, his stepmother the widowed Duchess of Norfolk, and the latter's son William Howard, who was Thomas's half-brother.

[32][33] Norfolk tried to detach himself from the situation by retiring to his residence at Kenninghall, from where he wrote a letter of apology to the King blaming both his niece and his stepmother for the scandal.

[34] However, the French ambassador Charles de Marillac wrote on 17 January 1542, that the Duke had not only escaped punishment, but had apparently been restored to his "full former credit and authority".

Complaining of lack of provisions and munitions, Howard eventually raised the siege of Montreuil, and realising that Boulogne could not realistically be held by the English for long, he left it garrisoned and withdrew to Calais, for which he was severely rebuked by the King.

[2] During the last years of the reign of Henry VIII, the Seymour family, and the King's last wife, Catherine Parr, supporters of the Reformation were gaining greater power and influence at court, while conservative Norfolk was left politically isolated.

[2] The King gave his approval for the match, but her brother, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, objected strongly, as did the Duchess herself and the marriage did not take place.

Howard's eldest son and heir, Henry, Earl of Surrey, was repeatedly imprisoned for rash behaviour and was accused of assuming the royal arms of Edward the Confessor as part of his personal heraldry.

In the early morning of 14 December, Howard's residence in Kenninghall was raided by Richard Southwell, John Gates and Wymond Carew, looking for evidence of Surrey's treason.

Arriving at the house, the men found the Duke's daughter, Mary, his daughter-in-law Frances, who was pregnant with their fifth child, and Norfolk's mistress, Bess Holland, alone in the home.

Henry VIII, possibly influenced by the Seymours, supporters of Protestantism, believed that Norfolk and Surrey were going to usurp the Crown from his son, the future Edward VI, to reverse the Reformation and thus return the English Church to papal jurisdiction.

Norfolk was saved by the King's death, in the early morning of 28 January, and the council's decision not to inaugurate the new reign with bloodshed, but remained a prisoner in the Tower of London.

His estates fell prey to the ruling clique in the reign of Edward VI, for which he was later partly compensated by lands worth £1,626 a year from the Catholic Queen Mary I.

Howard remained in the Tower throughout the reign of Edward VI, being released and pardoned along with the Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner, after the accession of Mary in July 1553.

Shortly after dismissing Foxe, Howard reassigned the education of his grandson and heir Thomas, to Bishop Gardiner, now Lord Chancellor to Queen Mary.

[2] Shortly afterwards, however, the Duke once again reassigned the education of his heir, and that of his other grandson Henry, this time to the Catholic priest John White who was soon elected to be Bishop of Lincoln.

[2] In late 1553, Howard arranged for a marriage between Thomas and Mary FitzAlan, one of the daughters of the Earl of Arundel, with the aim of uniting the two most prominent Catholic families in England.

[40] In early 1554 the elderly Norfolk carried out his last service to the Crown by leading some of the forces which put down Wyatt's Rebellion, a group of disaffected Protestant gentlemen who opposed the Queen's projected marriage to Philip II of Spain.