Everything else is forgotten in the recollection of the Earl's youth,
his lofty origin, his brilliant talents, his rank as a man of letters,
and his prompt consignment to a bloody grave, the last of the legion of
patricians sent by Henry to the block or the gallows. Yet it is Surrey
upon whom Mr. Froude makes his last attack, and whom he puts down as a
dirty dog, in order that Henry VIII may not be seen devoting what were
all but his very latest hours to the task of completing the judicial
murder of one whom he hated because he was so wonderfully elevated
above all the rest of his subjects as to be believed capable of
snatching at the crown, though three of the King's children were then
alive, and there were several descendants of two of his sisters in both
Scotland and England. Because, of all men who were then living, Surrey
most deserved to reign over England, the jealous tyrant supposed there
could be no safety for his youthful son until the House of Howard had
been humiliated, and both its present head and its prospective head
ceased to exist. Not satisfied with attributing to him political
offences that do not necessarily imply baseness in the offender, Mr.
Froude indorses the most odious charges that have been brought against
Surrey, and which, if well founded, utterly destroy all his claims to
be considered, we will not say a man of honor, but a man of common
decency.
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