Short answers, pulled from the story.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk entered the world on the 10th of March 1473. His grandfather John Howard died at Bosworth in 1485 fighting for Richard III against Henry Tudor which resulted in the forfeiture of their titles and most properties.
Thomas Howard joined his brother Edmund along with barons Dacre and Monteagle to lead the English army against Scottish forces near Branxton. Despite numerical inferiority they decisively crushed the enemy while King James IV himself fell in the battle giving the Howards enormous prestige both socially and at court.
By 1529 matters of state were increasingly handled by Norfolk alongside his brother-in-law Thomas Boleyn and the Duke of Suffolk who pressed King Henry VIII to remove Cardinal Wolsey. In October the King sent Howard and the Duke of Suffolk to obtain the great seal from the Cardinal before Wolsey died in Leicester on the 30th of November 1530.
When the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out in Lincolnshire during October 1536 Norfolk shared command with George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury to open negotiations with insurgent leader Robert Aske at Scawsby Leys near Doncaster. The Howards were outnumbered having only five thousand to seven thousand men against more than forty thousand rebels yet Norfolk negotiated promises to avoid being massacred by insurgent forces.
On the 12th of December 1546 both Norfolk and his son Henry Earl of Surrey were arrested and sent to the Tower of London for treasonous acts regarding royal arms usage. Norfolk survived because Henry VIII died early morning on the 28th of January 1547 after giving assent to Norfolk's death through royal commissioners while rumors suggested execution would follow immediately.