Lord Thomas Howard

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Lord Thomas Howard (1511 – October 31, 1537) was imprisoned because of his misalliance with Margaret Douglas, a granddaughter of King Henry VII's, and died in the Tower of London at 26 years of age.

He was a son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk by his second marriage to Agnes Tilney.

Margaret Douglas was high in the favor of her uncle the king, Henry VIII. Much to her family's displeasure, she and Lord Thomas either married in secret or made plans to. In 1536, Thomas and Margaret were banished to the Tower of London.

Although Thomas was technically sentenced to death, King Henry VIII never signed the warrant; he accordingly died of illness in the Tower a year later.

Lord Surrey, the nephew of Lord Thomas Howard, referred to this in a poem to a lady who refused to dance with him:—

If you be fair and fresh, am I not of your hue?

And for my vaunt I dare well say, my blood is not untrue;

For you yourself doth know, it is not long ago

Sith that for love one of the race did end his life in woe,

In Tower both strong and high, for his assured truth,

Whereas in tears he spent his breath, alas, the more the ruth!

This gentle beast so died, whom nothing could remove,

But willingly to seek his death for loss of his true love.

Again in 1541 Margaret Douglas was disgraced by a similar affair with Thomas Howard's half-nephew Charles Howard, son of Thomas' half-brother Lord Edmund Howard and a half-brother to Catherine Howard, Queen of England.