Description

First full biography of the Elizabethan Henry Howard, one of the most influential noblemen of his time, tracing his chequered career and placing him in the context of Renaissance humanism.

`A profound and sophisticated understanding of Howard's intellectual universe and literary production'. JONATHAN WOOLFSON

Born the second son of the poet Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard was a Cambridge scholar, courtier and crypto-Catholic intriguer of suspicious repute; after falling in and out of favour with Elizabeth I, he eventually became the most important adviser to James I. Rather than view him through the prism of Jacobean court and political life, as the sparse previous critical attention has tended to do, this detailed reassessment places him in the context of scholarship on Renaissance humanism and its varied interactions with the different styles of argument and persuasion that Howard used, often to no avail, to improve his position during troubled times. The book will be of huge importance to all those interested in the intellectual, religious or political history of early modern England.