Edward Howard (admiral)

Sir Edward Howard, KG (1476/1477 – 25 April 1513) was an English naval officer. He was the first of the Howards to win fame as an admiral, participating in his first naval battle while in his teens. He was in command during the Battle of Saint-Mathieu, which may have been the first sea battle fought by ships with cannons deployed through ports. He was killed shortly afterwards, leading an assault on galleys in the French fleet near Brest.

The son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Surrey (later 2nd Duke of Norfolk) and his first wife, Elizabeth Tilney, and an older brother of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Howard's date of birth can be determined only approximately, and nothing is known of his early upbringing or education. He began his military career in August 1492 at the age of fifteen under Sir Edward Poynings at the siege of Sluys. In 1497 his father, then Earl of Surrey, was given a command in Scotland and took his sons Thomas and Edward with him. Surrey knighted both Thomas and Edward on 30 September 1497 at Ayton Castle after the signing of a treaty concluding an invasion by James IV of Scotland. In 1503 Howard was among those who escorted Margaret Tudor to Scotland for her marriage to King James IV.

King Henry VII died on 21 April 1509. Howard played a prominent role in the tournament held to celebrate the coronation of the new King, Henry VIII, and was appointed the King's standard-bearer on 20 May 1509.

Between June and August 1511 Howard was paid over £600 to fit out ships for the conveying of 'merchant aventurers', and both Holinshed and the Ballad of Andrew Barton record that in the course of these seafaring operations he and his brother Thomas captured the ships of the Scottish adventurer Andrew Barton. Barton was sailing in his warship Lion and the small Jennet of Purwyn, (which was a captured Danish ship) with a royal Letter of Marque, which was a license to plunder Portuguese ships as a privateer. Both ships were captured and taken to Blackwall. Andrew Barton was killed during their capture.

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