Sir Thomas Wyatt

The English poet and diplomat Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is chiefly remembered for his 200 songs, many of them intended for lute accompaniment. He also introduced the sonnet and terza rima into English poetry.

Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington Castle near Maidstone, Kent. He was the elder son of Henry Wyatt, afterward knighted, and his wife Anne. In 1515 Thomas entered St. John's College, Cambridge, receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1518 and his master of arts degree in 1522. His early marriage to Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Thomas, Lord Cobham, in 1520, proved unhappy. After she had borne him two children, Thomas (ca. 1521-1554) and Bess, Wyatt separated from his wife, apparently because she was unfaithful to him, and they were not reconciled until 1541.

After his early introduction at court, Wyatt quickly secured advancement. Popular and handsome, he was much admired for his skill in music, languages, and arms. As early as 1516 Wyatt became server extraordinary to the king, and in 1524 he became keeper of the king's jewels. Wyatt's father had been associated with Sir Thomas Boleyn, and Wyatt seems to have been early acquainted with Anne Boleyn. He was generally regarded as her lover. He was the fulfillment of the Renaissance ideal—soldier, statesman, courtier, lover, scholar, and poet.

In 1525 Wyatt participated in the Christmas tournament at Greenwich before King Henry VIII, and his diplomatic career began in 1526-1527. In these years he was sent on diplomatic missions to France and to the papacy. These missions were important from the literary standpoint because on them he became acquainted with the work of French and Italian poets. From 1528 to 1530 Wyatt served as high marshal at Calais, and from 1530 to 1536 Henry VIII regularly employed him on diplomatic missions. In 1533 Wyatt deputized for his father as chief fewer at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. At the time of Anne's trial and execution for adultery in 1536, Wyatt was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. Released from prison after a month, Wyatt returned to full royal favor. Knighted in 1537, Wyatt was sent on embassy to Emperor Charles V in Spain that same year. In May 1539 Wyatt returned to London, and afterward he was sent on missions to France and Flanders. Henry VIII later employed him as overseer of the defense of Calais and as vice admiral of a projected fleet.

In 1542 Wyatt was elected a member of Parliament from Kent, and in October he was sent to meet Charles V's ambassadors upon their arrival at Falmouth. Contracting a fever, Wyatt died at Sherborne, Dorset, on Oct. 11, 1542. Of the numerous commemorative elegies, the one by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, remains the most famous: "Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest."

His Works

Wyatt's work divides into two groups: the sonnets, rondeaus, songs, and lyric poems treating love; and the satires and the penitential psalms. Ninety-six songs were first published in 1557 in Songes and Sonettes (Tottel's Miscellany). They have been supplemented by other songs in manuscripts. Wyatt pioneered the sonnet in English verse, writing 31 sonnets, of which 10 were translations from Petrarch. The sonnets do not exhibit Wyatt's poetic gifts at their best because the Petrarchan conventions strained his frank and robust nature. Wyatt's best work is probably contained in his 200 songs, although their main theme—his ill-treatment at the hands of his mistress—becomes monotonous. Wyatt's best songs and poems include "What No, Perdie," "Tagus, Farewell," "Lux, My Fair Falcon," "Forget Not Yet," "Blame Not My Lute," "My Lute, Awake," "In Eternum," "They Flee from Me," and "Once in Your Grace."

Wyatt also wrote three satires, adopting terza rima from Italian poetry. They are "On the Mean and Sure Estate," "Of the Courtier's Life," and "How to Use the Court and Himself." His seven penitential psalms, also written in terza rima, are freely paraphrased and contain much original material. Each one is preceded by a prologue. They were established in 1549 as Certayne Psalmes … drawen into English meter by Sir Thomas Wyat Knyght by Thomas Raynald and John Harrington.

Further Reading

The standard edition of Wyatt's poetry is Collected poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, edited by Kenneth Muir (1949; rev. ed. 1969). It replaced the two-volume set edited by A. K. Foxwell in 1913 and reprinted in 1964. The standard biography is Muir's The Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1963). Critical studies include A. K. Foxwell, A Study of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poems (1911; repr. 1964); Edmund K. Chambers, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies (1933); Catherine M. Ing, Elizabethan Lyrics: A Study in the Development of English Metres and Their Relation to Poetic Effect (1951); Raymond Southall, The Courtly Maker: An Essay in the Poetry of Wyatt and His Contemporaries (1964); and Patricia Thomson, Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Background (1965). □

Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503–42), held various diplomatic posts in the service of Henry VIII in France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. His first visit to Italy in 1527 probably stimulated him to translate and imitate the poems of Petrach. In the same year he made a version of a Plutarch essay, based on Budé's French translation, The Quyete of Mynde, which he dedicated to the queen (Catherine of Aragon) whom the king was in the process of divorcing. He was certainly closely acquainted with Henry VIII's next bride, Anne Boleyn, before her marriage and, according to three 16th-cent. accounts, confessed to the king that she had been his mistress and was not fit to be a royal consort. Possibly this frankness explains why Wyatt was not executed, along with Anne's other lovers, in 1536, suffering only a period of imprisonment in the Tower. He subsequently became a sheriff of Kent, and in 1537–9 was ambassador to Charles V's court in Spain. He celebrated his departure from Spain in the epigram ‘Tagus, fare well’. In 1540 the tide of Wyatt's fortunes turned, with the execution of his friend and patron Thomas Cromwell, which is probably referred to in the sonnet (based on Petrarch) ‘The piller pearisht is whereto I Lent’. Wyatt himself was arrested, on charges of treason, in July 1541; though released two months later he never fully regained favour.

Wyatt's poetry is beset by problems in three main areas; authorship, biographical relevance, and artistic aims. Though the canon of Wyatt's poems is generally taken to include all the poems in the Egerton manuscript, even this cannot be proved with certainty. The authenticated poems and translations include sonnets, rondeaux, epigrams, satires, lute songs, and a version (based on Aretino) of the seven Penitential Psalms. Tottel in his Songes and Sonettes (1557) adapted many of Wyatt's poems to conventional iambic stress, including ‘They fle from me that sometyme did me seke’. Critical estimates of Wyatt's poetry in the 20th cent. have varied widely C. S. Lewis called him ‘the father of the Drab Age’, but others have viewed him as a complex and original writer whose love poems anticipate those of Donne.

Sir Thomas Wyatt 1503–42, English poet and statesman, father of Sir Thomas Wyatt. He served in various capacities under Henry VIII and was knighted in 1536. It is generally agreed he had been the lover of Anne Boleyn before her marriage to the king. Greatly influenced by the works of the Italian love poets, Wyatt produced the first group of sonnets in English, modeled chiefly after Petrarch. Besides sonnets, he wrote lyrics, rondeaus, satires, and a paraphrase of the penitential psalms. None of his poems appeared in his lifetime. Ninety-six, however, were published in Tottel's Miscellany (1557), an important early anthology.

Bibliography: See his collected poems edited by K. Muir (1949).

Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503–42) He was popular at Henry VIII's court although, as an alleged former lover of Anne Boleyn and friend of Thomas Cromwell, he was briefly imprisoned in 1536 and 1541. He led Wyatt's Rebellion (1554) an attempt to prevent the marriage of Mary I to the Catholic Philip II of Spain.