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Sir Thomas Wyatt (150311 October 1542) was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and lyric poet credited with introducing the
sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
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 con ...
near Maidstone in Kent, though the family was originally from Yorkshire. His family adopted the Lancastrian side in the Wars of Roses. His mother was Anne Skinner, and his father Henry, who had earlier been imprisoned and tortured by
Richard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...
, had been a Privy Councillor of Henry VII and remained a trusted adviser when
Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
ascended the throne in 1509. Thomas followed his father to court after his education at
St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...
. Entering the King's service, he was entrusted with many important diplomatic missions. In public life, his principal patron was Thomas Cromwell, 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 in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in E ...
'' (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, Surrey. He had a brother Henry, assumed to have died an infant, and a sister
Margaret Margaret is a female first name, derived via French () and Latin () from grc, μαργαρίτης () meaning "pearl". The Greek is borrowed from Persian. Margaret has been an English name since the 11th century, and remained popular througho ...
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 Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
, but he entered Henry's service in 1515 as "Sewer Extraordinary", and the same year he began studying at
St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...
. 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, 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 John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford (c. 1485 – 14 March 1555) was an English royal minister in the Tudor dynasty, Tudor era. He served variously as Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom, Lord High Admiral and Lord Privy Seal. Among the land ...
, to Rome to help petition Pope Clement VII to annul
Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
's marriage to
Catherine of Aragon Catherine of Aragon (also spelt as Katherine, ; 16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously ...
, freeing him to marry Anne Boleyn. Russell being incapacitated, Wyatt was also sent to negotiate with the Republic of Venice. According to some, Wyatt was captured by the armies of Emperor Charles V 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 Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's prefecture is its third-largest city of Arras. Th ...
. In the years following he continued in Henry's service; he was, however, imprisoned in the Tower of London 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; 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 (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 (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; 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 In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
" 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, terza rima, ottava rima 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) followed by a 14-syllable iambic line (
fourteener In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least . The 96 fourteeners in the United States are all west of the Mississippi River. Colorado has the most (53) of any single ...
), and he is considered a master of the iambic tetrameter. Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, but he also admired the work of
Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
, and his vocabulary reflects that of Chaucer; for example, he uses Chaucer's word ''newfangleness'', meaning fickleness, in ''
They Flee from Me "They flee from me" is a poem written by Thomas Wyatt. It is written in rhyme royal and was included in Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition of the ''Oxford Book of English Verse''. The poem has been described as possibly autobiographical, and referr ...
''. 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 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 Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
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 O, or o, is the fifteenth Letter (alphabet), letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in ...
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 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, 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 Catherine of Aragon (also spelt as Katherine, ; 16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until their annulment on 23 May 1533. She was previously ...
. 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. 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 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.


Descendants and relatives

Long after Wyatt's death, his only legitimate son Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger led a thwarted rebellion against Henry's daughter Mary I, for which he was executed. The rebellion's aim was to set on the throne the Protestant-minded Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Wyatt was an ancestor of Wallis Simpson, wife of the Duke of Windsor, formerly King
Edward VIII Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972), later known as the Duke of Windsor, was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and Emperor of India from 20 January 19 ...
.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