Thomas Vaux

Thomas Vaux (1509-1556). Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger (?1497-1543), circa 1535-1540 (detail). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden (25 April 1509 - October 1556) was an English poet.

Life

Overview

Vaux, the eldest son of Nicholas Vaux, 1st baron Vaux, was born in 1510. In 1527 he accompanied Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to France; he attended Henry VIII to Calais and Boulogne in 1532; in 1531 he took his seat in the House of Lords, and was made Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. He was captain of the Isle of Jersey until 1536. He married Elizabeth Cheney, and died in October 1556. Sketches of Vaux and his wife by Holbein are at Windsor, and a finished portrait of Lady Vaux is at Hampton Court. 2 of his poems were included in the Songes and Sonettes of Surrey (Tottel's Miscellany, 1557): "The assault of Cupid upon the fort where the lover's hart lay wounded, and how he was taken," and the "Dittye . . . representinge the Image of Deathe," which the gravedigger in Shakespeare's Hamlet misquotes. 13 pieces in the Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576) are signed by him. These are reprinted in A.B. Grosart's Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library (vol. iv., 1872).

Youth and education

Vaux was the eldest son of Nicholas Vaux, 1st baron Vaux, by his 2nd wife, Anne (Green).

He seems to have been educated at Cambridge.

On the death of his father in 1523 he succeeded to the barony. Although he had not completed his 13th year, he attended Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to France in 1527, and in 1532 accompanied the king to Calais and Boulogne. He was summoned to the House of Lords on 9 January 1530-1.

Adult life

Vaux married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Thomas Cheney, knt., of Irthlingborough. She was 5 years his junior. By her he had 2 sons — William and Nicholas — and 2 daughters: Anne, wife of Reginald Bray of Stene; and Maud, who died unmarried.

Vaux belonged to the cultured circle of the courts of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and emulated the poetic efforts of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and the Earl of Surrey.

His only public office seems to have been that of captain of the Isle of Jersey, which he surrendered in 1536. He was present at the disputation at Cambridge before Edward VI on 24 and 25 June 1549. He attended the House of Lords until 6 December 1555.

Dying in October 1556, he was buried apparently at Harrowden in Northamptonshire.

Writing

Such of his work as survives and has been identified consists of short lyrics. Most of it breathes an affected tone of melancholy which is unredeemed by genuine poetic feeling; but some of Vaux's poems show metrical facility and a gentle vein of commonplace reflection which caught the popular ear.

The 2 poems by which Vaux is best known were originally printed as the work of "an uncertain author" in 1557 in the Songes and Sonettes of Surrey, commonly referred to as Tottel's Miscellany. Both poems acquired a fresh vogue on being included in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. That entitled "The assault of Cupide upon the fort where the louers hart lay wounded, and how he was taken," was quoted by Puttenham, who assigned it to Vaux in the Arte of English Poesie (247), as an excellent specimen in English of "pragmatographia or counterfait action." It was widely imitated by Elizabethan poets.

The 2nd of Vaux's poems that Tottel printed was called "The aged louer renounceth loue." George Gascoigne, in a prefatory epistle to his Posies (1575), refers to the poem as the work of Vaux, and says it "was thought by some to be made upon his deathbed," a notion which Gascoigne ridicules. An early manuscript version in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 1703, No. 25) is superscribed, "A dyttye or sonet made by the Lord Vaus, in the time of the noble Quene Marye, representing the image of Death."

Other anonymous pieces ("by uncertain authors") in Tottel's Miscellany may well be by Vaux. A sonnet assigned by Tottel to Surrey ("The frailtie and hurtfulness of beautie," which begins "Brittle beautie, that nature made so fraile") is tentatively assigned to Vaux by Surrey's editor, Dr. Nott.

13 other pieces signed "L[ord] Vaux" appear in the popular poetic anthology entitled The Paradyse of daynty deuises, to which Richard Edwardes was the chief contributor. A 14th poem ("Being asked of the occasion of his white head") which bears Vaux's name in a later edition of the Paradyse is signed by William Hunnis in the earliest. A 15th piece in the Paradyse, signed "E.S." (No. 33 in 1576 edition), "Of sufferance cometh ease," is assigned to Vaux by Collier.

The Paradyse was issued in 1576, and subsequently passed through many editions; it was reprinted in Brydges' British Bibliographer (vol. iv.) and in J.P. Collier's Poetical Miscellanies. 4 of the best of Vaux's authentic contributions to the Paradyse’ entitled respectively "Being disdained he complaineth," "Of the mean estate," "Of a contented mind," and "Of the instability of youth," are printed in Hannah's Poems of Raleigh and other courtly Poets (1885, 128-134).

Critical reputation

Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesie (1589), noticed Vaux's poetic achievements, in close conjunction with those of Surrey and Wyatt, and carelessly gave Vaux the christian name of his father, Nicholas, thus causing some confusion between the 2 among biographers and historians of literature. Puttenham wrote (76):

The Lord Vaux his commendation lyeth chiefly in the facillitie of his meetre, and the aptnesse of his descriptions such as he taketh upon him to make, namely in sundry of his songs, wherein he sheweth the counterfait action very lively and pleasantly.

Elsewhere (247) Puttenham described Vaux as "a noble gentleman" who "much delighted in vulgar making" (i.e. vernacular poetry), but "a man otherwise of no great learning."

Recognition

Vaux was created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in May 1533.

All Vaux's undoubted contributions to the Paradyse and to Tottel's Miscellany — 15 pieces in all — are included in Dr. Grosart's ‘Fuller Worthies' Library Miscellanies,’ 1872, vol. iv.

Drawings by Hans Holbein the elder for portraits of both Vaux and his wife are at Windsor, and were engraved by Bartolozzi. Another drawing of Lady Vaux by Holbein is in the Imperial Palace at Prague. Holbein's finished portrait of Vaux's wife, which was executed about 1537, when the lady was apparently 32 years old, is at Hampton Court (Law, Catalogue of Pictures at Hampton Court, 196)..

In popular culture

Vaux's ballad "The Aged Lover Renounces Love," (also known by its opening line, "I loathe that I did love") was highly popular; it appeared as a broadside ballad, was set to music, and was quoted by Shakespeare (who with intentional inaccuracy used 3 stanzas in the 1st grave-digger's song, "Sigh No More Ladies," in Hamlet, V.i.69 ff.) and Goethe (who used 2 stanzas in II Faust, V.vi).

Publications

Poetry

• "The Poems of Thomas, Lord Vaux; Edward, Earl of Oxford; Robert, Earl of Essex; and Walter, Earl of Essex: For the first time collected," in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies' Library: Volume IV (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). Blackburn, Lancashire, UK: privately printed (Fuller Worthies' Library), 1872.
• The Poems of Lord Vaux (edited by Larry P. Vonalt). Denver, CO: Alan Swallow, 1960.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• Canons of Elizabethan poetry
• List of British poets

References

•  Lee, Sydney (1899) "Vaux, Thomas" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 58 London: Smith, Elder, . Wikisource, Web, Sep. 3, 2016.</ref>

External links

Poems

• Thomas, Lord Vaux 1509-1556 at the Poetry Foundation ("The Aged Lover Renounceth Love")
• Vaux, Thomas, Lord (1509-1556) at Representative Poetry Online
• Index entry for Thomas, Lord Vaux at Poets' Corner
• Thomas Lord Vaux at PoemHunter (3 poems)
• Thomas Vaux at Poetry Nook (3 poems)

Books

• The Poems of Lord Vaux on Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas lord Vaux in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Vaux, Thomas
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden