Lord Edmund Howard 1st Earl of Bridgewater, and Elizabeth Howard, who married Henry Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Sussex. Howard spent his early years at court, and in 1509 he was listed as one of the noblemen who organized the jousts for the joint coronation of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Although his eldest brother, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, became a dominant figure at court, and another brother, Edward Howard, was a close companion of the King, Edmund appears not to have shared the King's favour and seems to have been considered ineffectual. Biographers have described Howard as
Hans Holbein the Younger money from him. He painted Denny's portrait in 1541 and two years later designed a clock-salt for him. Denny was part of a circle that gained influence in 1542 after the failure of Henry's marriage to Catherine Howard. The king's marriage in July 1543 to the reformist Catherine Parr, whose brother Holbein had painted in 1541, established Denny's party in power. Holbein may have visited his wife and children in late 1540, when his leave-of-absence from Basel expired. None of his work dates from this period, and the Basel authorities paid him six months salary in advance. The state of