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Sir Thomas Wyatt (150311 October 1542) was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and
lyric poet Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
credited with introducing the sonnet to English literature. He was born at
Allington Castle Allington Castle is a stone castle in Allington, Kent, just north of Maidstone, in England. The first castle on the site was an unauthorised fortification, built during " The Anarchy" (1135–1153) and torn down later in the century when royal c ...
near
Maidstone Maidstone is the largest town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town, linking it wi ...
in Kent, though the family was originally from
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
. His family adopted the Lancastrian side in the Wars of Roses. His mother was Anne Skinner, and his father
Henry Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) * Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...
, who had earlier been imprisoned and tortured by Richard III, had been a Privy Councillor of Henry VII and remained a trusted adviser when Henry VIII ascended the throne in 1509. Thomas followed his father to court after his education at St John's College, Cambridge. Entering the King's service, he was entrusted with many important diplomatic missions. In public life, his principal patron was
Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false char ...
, after whose death he was recalled from abroad and imprisoned (1541). Though subsequently acquitted and released, shortly thereafter he died. His poems were circulated at court and may have been published anonymously in the anthology ''
The Court of Venus ''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
'' (earliest edition c. 1537) during his lifetime, but were not published under his name until after his death; the first major book to feature and attribute his verse was ''
Tottel's Miscellany ''Songes and Sonettes'', usually called ''Tottel's Miscellany'', was the first printed anthology of English poetry. First published by Richard Tottel in 1557 in London, it ran to many editions in the sixteenth century. Richard Tottel Richard To ...
'' (1557), printed 15 years after his death.


Early life

Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington, Kent, in 1503, the son of Sir Henry Wyatt by Anne Skinner, the daughter of John Skinner of
Reigate Reigate ( ) is a town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for huma ...
, Surrey. He had a brother Henry, assumed to have died an infant, and a sister Margaret who married Sir Anthony Lee (died 1549) and was the mother of Queen Elizabeth's champion
Sir Henry Lee Sir Henry Lee KG (March 1533 – 12 February 1611), of Ditchley, was Queen's Champion and Master of the Armouries under Queen Elizabeth I of England. Family Henry Lee, born in Kent in March 1533, was the grandson of Sir Robert Lee (d.1539 ...
.


Education and diplomatic career

Wyatt was over six feet tall, reportedly both handsome and physically strong. He was an ambassador in the service of Henry VIII, but he entered Henry's service in 1515 as "Sewer Extraordinary", and the same year he began studying at St John's College, Cambridge. His father had been associated with
Sir Thomas Boleyn Thomas Bolina, Earl of Wiltshire, 1st Earl of Ormond, 1st Viscount Rochford KG KB (c. 1477 – 12 March 1539), of Hever Castle in Kent, was an English diplomat and politician who was the father of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry ...
as constable of
Norwich Castle Norwich Castle is a medieval royal fortification in the city of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk. William the Conqueror (1066–1087) ordered its construction in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of England. The castle was used as a ...
, and Wyatt was thus acquainted with Anne Boleyn. Following a diplomatic mission to Spain, in 1526, he accompanied Sir John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, to Rome to help petition
Pope Clement VII Pope Clement VII ( la, Clemens VII; it, Clemente VII; born Giulio de' Medici; 26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 November 1523 to his death on 25 September 1534. Deemed "the ...
to annul Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, freeing him to marry
Anne Boleyn Anne Boleyn (; 1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key ...
. Russell being incapacitated, Wyatt was also sent to negotiate with the
Republic of Venice The Republic of Venice ( vec, Repùblega de Venèsia) or Venetian Republic ( vec, Repùblega Vèneta, links=no), traditionally known as La Serenissima ( en, Most Serene Republic of Venice, italics=yes; vec, Serenìsima Repùblega de Venèsia, ...
. According to some, Wyatt was captured by the armies of Emperor
Charles V Charles V may refer to: * Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) * Charles V of Naples (1661–1700), better known as Charles II of Spain * Charles V of France (1338–1380), called the Wise * Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–1690) * Infa ...
when they captured Rome and imprisoned the Pope in 1527, but he managed to escape and make it back to England. Between 1528 and 1530 Wyatt acted as high marshal at Calais. In the years following he continued in Henry's service; he was, however, imprisoned in the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sep ...
for a month in 1536, perhaps because Henry hoped he would incriminate the queen. He was knighted in 1535 and appointed
High Sheriff of Kent The high sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown (prior to 1974 the office previously known as sheriff)."Sheriffs appointed for a county or Greater London shall be known as high sheriffs, and any reference in any enactment or instrum ...
for 1536. At this time he was sent to Spain as ambassador to Charles V, who was offended by the declaration of Princess Mary's
illegitimacy Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...
; he was her cousin and they had once been briefly betrothed. Although Wyatt was unsuccessful in his endeavours, and was accused of disloyalty by some of his colleagues, he was protected by his relationship with Cromwell, at least during the latter's lifetime. Wyatt was elected
knight of the shire Knight of the shire ( la, milites comitatus) was the formal title for a member of parliament (MP) representing a county constituency in the British House of Commons, from its origins in the medieval Parliament of England until the Redistributio ...
(MP) for Kent in December 1541.


Marriage and issue

In 1520 Wyatt married
Elizabeth Brooke Elizabeth Brooke may refer to: * Elizabeth Brooke (1503–1560), alleged mistress of Henry VIII and estranged wife of the poet Thomas Wyatt * Elizabeth Brooke (writer) Elizabeth Brooke (January 1601 – 22 July 1683), also known as Lady Brooke ...
(1503–1560). A year later, they had a son
Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...
(1521–1554) who led Wyatt's rebellion many years after his father's death. In 1524, Henry VIII assigned Wyatt to be an ambassador at home and abroad, and he separated from his wife soon after on grounds of adultery.


Wyatt's poetry and influence

Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English language, to civilise it, to raise its powers to equal those of other European languages. A significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by Italian poet
Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...
; he also wrote sonnets of his own. He took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes are significantly different. Petrarch's sonnets consist of an " octave" rhyming ''abba abba'', followed by a "sestet" with various rhyme schemes. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is ''cddc ee''. Wyatt experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau,
epigrams An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two millen ...
,
terza rima ''Terza rima'' (, also , ; ) is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets (three line stanzas) with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rh ...
,
ottava rima Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio. The ott ...
songs, and satires, as well as with monorime, triplets with refrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine. He introduced the ''poulter's measure'' form, rhyming couplets composed of a 12-syllable iambic line (
Alexandrine Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French ''Roman ...
) followed by a 14-syllable iambic line ( fourteener), and he is considered a master of the
iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. Ther ...
. Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, but he also admired the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, and his vocabulary reflects that of Chaucer; for example, he uses Chaucer's word ''newfangleness'', meaning fickleness, in '' They Flee from Me''. Many of his poems deal with the trials of romantic love and the devotion of the suitor to an unavailable or cruel mistress. Other poems are scathing, satirical indictments of the hypocrisies and pandering required of courtiers who are ambitious to advance at the Tudor court. Wyatt's poems are short but fairly numerous. His 96 love poems appeared posthumously (1557) in a compendium called ''
Tottel's Miscellany ''Songes and Sonettes'', usually called ''Tottel's Miscellany'', was the first printed anthology of English poetry. First published by Richard Tottel in 1557 in London, it ran to many editions in the sixteenth century. Richard Tottel Richard To ...
''. The most noteworthy are thirty-one sonnets, the first in English. Ten of them were translations from Petrarch, while all were written in the Petrarchan form, apart from the couplet ending which Wyatt introduced. Serious and reflective in tone, the sonnets show some stiffness of construction and a metrical uncertainty indicative of the difficulty Wyatt found in the new form. Yet their conciseness represents a great advance on the prolixity and uncouthness of much earlier poetry. Wyatt was also responsible for the important introduction of the personal note into English poetry, for although he followed his models closely, he wrote of his own experiences. His epigrams, songs, and rondeaux are lighter than the sonnets, and they reveal the care and the elegance typical of the new romanticism. His satires are composed in the Italian terza rima, again showing the direction of the innovating tendencies.


Attribution

The Egerton Manuscript is an album containing Wyatt's personal selection of his poems and translations which preserves 123 texts, partly in his handwriting. Tottel's Miscellany (1557) is the Elizabethan anthology which created Wyatt's posthumous reputation; it ascribes 96 poems to him, 33 not in the Egerton Manuscript. These 156 poems can be ascribed to Wyatt with certainty on the basis of objective evidence. Another 129 poems have been ascribed to him purely on the basis of subjective editorial judgment. They are mostly derived from the Devonshire Manuscript Collection and the Blage manuscript. Rebholz comments in his preface to ''Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Complete Poems'', "The problem of determining which poems Wyatt wrote is as yet unsolved". However, this statement is predicated on his preface's perfunctory rejection of the most significant contribution to its resolution, Richard Harrier's The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poetry, which presents an analysis of the documentary evidence establishing a solid case for rejecting 101 of the 129 texts ascribed to Wyatt on no objective basis whatsoever.


Assessment

Critical opinions have varied widely regarding Wyatt's work. Eighteenth-century critic Thomas Warton considered Wyatt "confessedly an inferior" to his contemporary Henry Howard, and felt that Wyatt's "genius was of the moral and didactic species" but deemed him "the first polished English satirist". The 20th century saw an awakening in his popularity and a surge in critical attention. His poems were found praiseworthy by numerous poets, including Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, John Berryman, Yvor Winters, Basil Bunting, Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen.
C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...
called him "the father of the Drab Age" (i.e. the unornate), from what he calls the "golden" age of the 16th century. Patricia Thomson describes Wyatt as "the Father of English Poetry".


Rumoured affair with Anne Boleyn

Many have conjectured that Wyatt fell in love with
Anne Boleyn Anne Boleyn (; 1501 or 1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key ...
in the early- to mid-1520s. Their acquaintance is certain, but it is not certain whether the two shared a romantic relationship. George Gilfillan implies that Wyatt and Boleyn were romantically involved. In his verse, Wyatt calls his mistress Anna and might allude to events in her life: ''
And now I follow the coals that be quent, From Dover to Calais against my mind
'' Gilfillan argues that these lines could refer to Anne's trip to France in 1532 prior to her marriage to Henry VIII and could imply that Wyatt was present, although his name is not included among those who accompanied the royal party to France. Wyatt's sonnet "Whoso List To Hunt" may also allude to Anne's relationship with the King: ''
Graven in diamonds with letters plain, There is written her fair neck round about, "Noli me tangere o not touch me Caesar's, I am".
'' In still plainer terms, Wyatt's late sonnet "If waker care" describes his first "love" for "Brunette that set our country in a roar"—presumably Boleyn.


Imprisonment on charges of adultery

In May 1536, Wyatt was imprisoned in the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sep ...
for allegedly committing adultery with Anne Boleyn. He was released later that year thanks to his friendship or his father's friendship with
Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false char ...
, and he returned to his duties. During his stay in the Tower, he may have witnessed Anne Boleyn's execution (19 May 1536) from his cell window, as well as the executions of the five men with whom she was accused of adultery; he wrote a poem which might have been inspired by that experience. Around 1537, Elizabeth Darrell was Thomas's mistress, a former maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon. She bore Wyatt three sons. By 1540, he was again in the king's favour, as he was granted the site and many of the manorial estates of the dissolved
Boxley Abbey Boxley Abbey in Boxley, Kent, England was a Cistercian monastery founded c.1146 by William of Ypres, leader of King Stephen's Flemish mercenaries, and colonised by monks from Clairvaux Abbey in France. Some of its ruins survive, some four miles ...
. However, he was charged once more with treason in 1541; the charges were again lifted, but only thanks to the intervention of Queen
Catherine Howard Catherine Howard ( – 13 February 1542), also spelled Katheryn Howard, was Queen of England from 1540 until 1542 as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, a cousin to Anne Boleyn (the se ...
and on the condition of reconciling with his wife. He was granted a full pardon and restored once again to his duties as ambassador. After the execution of Catherine Howard, there were rumours that Wyatt's wife Elizabeth was a possibility to become Henry VIII's next wife, despite the fact that she was still married to Wyatt. He became ill not long after and died on 11 October 1542 around age 39. He is buried in
Sherborne Abbey Sherborne Abbey, otherwise the Abbey Church of St. Mary the Virgin, is a Church of England church in Sherborne in the English county of Dorset. It has been a Saxon cathedral (705–1075), a Benedictine abbey church (998–1539), and since 1539, ...
.


Descendants and relatives

Long after Wyatt's death, his only legitimate son Sir
Thomas Wyatt the Younger Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger (152111 April 1554) was an English politician and rebel leader during the reign of Queen Mary I; his rising is traditionally called " Wyatt's rebellion". He was the son of the English poet and ambassador Sir Thom ...
led a thwarted rebellion against Henry's daughter
Mary I Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She ...
, for which he was executed. The rebellion's aim was to set on the throne the Protestant-minded
Elizabeth Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to: People * Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name) * Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist Ships * HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships * ''Elisabeth'' (sch ...
, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Wyatt was an ancestor of
Wallis Simpson Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson; June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a ...
, wife of the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII.Vickers, Hugo (2011). Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic, Untold, Story of the Duchess of Windsor. London: Hutchinson. p. 377. . Thomas Wyatt's great-grandson was Virginia Colony governor
Sir Francis Wyatt Sir Francis Wyatt (1588–1644) was an English nobleman, knight, politician, and government official. He was the first English royal governor of Virginia. He sailed for America on 1 August 1621 on board the ''George''. He became governor shortl ...
.


Notes


References

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External links

* * *
Life and works


*
WYATT, Sir Thomas I (by 1504–42), of Allington Castle, Kent.
History of Parliament Online * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wyatt, Thomas 1503 births 1542 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge 16th-century English poets English MPs 1542–1544 High Sheriffs of Kent Sonneteers Burials at Sherborne Abbey Prisoners in the Tower of London 16th-century English diplomats Latin–English translators English male poets