Sir Thomas Wyatt Biography

Dromo's Den

WYATT, or WYAT, Sir Thomas (c.1503–42). An English poet and diplomatist, born on his father's estate of Allington, near Maidstone in Kent. His father, Sir Henry Wyatt, of a family originally of Yorkshire, stood high in favor with both Henry VII and Henry VIII. The younger Wyatt studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, from 1515 to 1520. In that year he married Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, but already he had been the lover of Anne Boleyn (q.v.), and for long after his marriage was still regarded as such. His boyish intimacy was ended only by her death. Through his father's influence and his own personality a career at court was open to him. In this sphere, as one of the most accomplished men of his day, of noble presence and fine manners, of honor and integrity, and skillful in the management of affairs, he was thoroughly qualified to succeed. Wyatt visited Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, and Rome. In 1529 and 1530 he was high marshal at Calais. The favors of Anne Boleyn having now been sought by the King, Wyatt, it is said, confessed his relations and tried to dissuade the King on the ground that her character was not beyond reproach. In 1536 the scandal aroused by Anne Boleyn's adulteries threatened to overwhelm Wyatt. In May he was committed to the Tower, but after Anne's death he went free, was endowed with more honors, was made sheriff of Kent, and was sent on an embassy to Spain (1537–39). He was sent to Flanders in 1539. On the fall of his patron at court, Thomas Cromwell, Wyatt was sent to the Tower, accused of treason, but after explanation and confession, he regained the King's confidence and enjoyed it to a greater degree even than before the accusation. Granted lands at Lambeth by Henry VIII, named high steward of the King's manor of Maidstone, elected to Parliament for Kent, all in 1542, death overtook him in the same year.

Wyatt shares with Surrey the honor of introducing the sonnet into English verse; as he was the elder by some years, and a student of Petrarch, while Surrey was a mere child, the evidence seems to give him the preference. Wyatt also tried his hand at the terza rima. He wrote (besides sonnets) rondeaux and miscellaneous verse forms, and satires and a version of the penitential psalms. Love is the theme of most of his lyrics and Anne Boleyn is the mistress of his song. In his sacred poems Wyatt shows the influence of Dante and of Alamanni. More vigorous in thought and more robust in sentiment than Surrey, he was a ruder artist than his associate. His poems, together with those of Surrey, who was his poetical pupil, were published in London, 1557, in Songes and Sonnettes (Tottel's Miscellany).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 759.