the party of change.
Over the mass of the nation their influence was small; and in the strife
for power with the older nobles which they were anticipating they were
forced to look to the small but resolute body of men who, whether from
religious enthusiasm or from greed of wealth or power, were bent on
bringing the English Church nearer to conformity with the reformed
Churches of the Continent. As Henry drew to his grave the two factions
faced each other with gathering dread and gathering hate. Hot words
betrayed their hopes. "If God should call the king to his mercy," said
Norfolk's son, Lord Surrey, "who were so meet to govern the Prince as my
lord my father?" "Rather than it should come to pass," retorted a
partizan of Hertford's, "that the Prince should be under the governance
of your father or you, I would abide the adventure to thrust a dagger in
you!"

[Sidenote: Lord Surrey.]

In the history of English poetry the name of Lord Surrey takes an
illustrious place. An Elizabethan writer tells us how at this time
"sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the
elder and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains; who having
travelled to Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and
style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of
Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely
manner of vulgar poesy from what it had been before, and for that cause
may justly be said to be the first reformers of our English metre and
style." The dull moralizings of the rimers who followed Chaucer, the
rough but vivacious doggrel of Skelton, made way in the hands of Wyatt
and Surrey for delicate imitations of the songs, sonnets, and rondels of
Italy and France. With the Italian conceits came an Italian refinement
whether of words or of thought; and the force and versatility of
Surrey's youth showed itself in whimsical satires, in classical
translations, in love-sonnets, and in paraphrases of the Psalms. In his
version of two books of the AEneid he was the first to introduce into
England the Italian blank verse which was to play so great a part in our
literature. But with the poetic taste of the Renascence Surrey inherited
its wild and reckless energy. Once he was sent to the Fleet for
challenging a gentleman to fight. Release enabled him to join his father
in an expedition against Scotland, but he was no sooner back than the
Londoners complained