Thomas, eldest son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and Elizabeth Tilney, was married in 1495 to the Princess Anne, daughter of King Edward IV of England. He fought valiantly in the early wars of King Henry VIII's reign, including the Battle of Flodden, shortly before which he had married, as his second wife, a daughter of the last Duke of Buckingham. He succeeded, in 1522, to his father's office of Lord Treasurer and, two years afterwards, to his Dukedom. He was the implacable enemy of Cardinal Wolsey and the chief agent in using his own niece, Anne Boleyn, to upset that minister. Yet, in 1536, he presided over Anne's trial and became the pliant agent of King Henry's will. He successfully put down the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537 and avenged it with bloody executions; but, in the latter years of Henry's reign, he was closely allied with Stephen Gardiner and the reactionary Catholic party. Another niece, Katherine Howard, was an even more unsuccessful venture as Queen than the first. From the time of Henry's marriage with Katharine Parr, in 1543, the influence of the Howards was on the wane and the indiscretion of Norfolk's son, the Earl of Surrey - who had unquestionably talked treason, even if he were not prepared to act it - led to the arrest of both father and son and the death of the latter. Early in 1547, the Duke was attainted and condemned. King Henry had signed his death-warrant and his head was to have fallen on 28th January but, during the night before, the King died. Norfolk remained peaceably in the Tower during the reign of Edward VI and was among the prisoners released by Mary at her accession. He had the satisfaction of presiding at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland; was sent to check the insurrection of Wyatt on the Kentish road, in February 1554, but failed to do so; and retired to die on his East Anglian estates. In private life, Norfolk was brutal and of ill repute. In public, a merely pliant tool of his great but brutal master.