Thomas Wyatt

Portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). Pen and chalk by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), circa 1535-1537. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 24 September 1542) was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English.

Life

Overview

Wyatt, son of Sir Henry Wyatt, a servant of Henry VII, was educated at Cambridge. He came to Court and was frequently employed by Henry VIII on diplomatic missions. He is said to have been an admirer of Anne Boleyn before her marriage, and on her disgrace was thrown into the Tower for a short time. In 1537 he was knighted, and two years later was against his will sent on a mission to the Emperor Charles V. On the death in 1540 of Thomas Cromwell, to whose party he belonged, W. was accused of misdemeanours during his embassy and again imprisoned in the Tower, where he wrote a defense which resulted in his release. In 1542 he was sent to meet the Spanish Ambassador at Falmouth, and conduct him to London, but on the way caught a chill, of which he died.

Wyatt shares with the Earl of Surrey the honor of being the 1st real successor of Chaucer, and also of introducing the sonnet into England. In addition to his sonnets, which are in a more correct form than those of Surrey, Wyatt wrote many beautiful lyrics; in fact he may be regarded as the reviver of the lyrical spirit in English poetry which, making its appearance in the 13th century, had fallen into abeyance. In the anthology known as Tottel's Miscellany, 1st published in 1557, 96 pieces by W. appear along with 40 by Surrey, and others by different hands. Wyatt has less smoothness and sweetness than Surrey, but his form of the sonnet was much more difficult as well as more correct than that invented by the latter, and afterwards adopted by Shakespeare, and his lyrical gift is more marked.

None of Wyatt's poems were published during his lifetime; the first book to feature his verse was printed 15 years after his death.

Youth and education

Wyatt, the only son of Sir Henry Wyatt and Anne, daughter of John Skinner of Reigate, Surrey, was born about 1503, at his father's residence, Allington Castle, Kent.

At 12 years of age the son was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge. He earned a B.A. there in 1518, and an M.A. in 1520. There is a vague tradition that he also studied at Oxford.

He married early — in 1520, when not more than 17 — Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brooke, lord Cobham, and had by her an only surviving son, also Sir Thomas Wyatt. However, as a boy he had made the acquaintance of Anne Boleyn, and long after the date of his marriage Wyatt was regarded as her lover.

Courtier and diplomat

He soon sought official employment, and became esquire of the body to the king. In 1524 he was appointed clerk of the king's jewels, but the statement that he succeeded his father as treasurer to the king's chamber is an invention of J.P. Collier, who forged entries in official papers in support of it (Trevelyan Papers, Camd. Soc.; Simonds, Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Poems). At Christmas 1525 he distinguished himself at a court tournament. The next year he accompanied Sir Thomas Cheney on a diplomatic mission to France.

In January 1526-7 he accompanied Sir John Russell, the ambassador, to the papal court. The story is told that Russell in his journey down the Thames encountered Wyatt, and, 'after salutations, was demanded of him whither he went, and had answer, “To Italy, sent by the king.” “And I,” said Wyatt, “will, if you please, ask leave, get money, and go with you.” “No man more welcome,” answered the ambassador. So, this accordingly done, they passed in post together’ (Wyatt MSS.)

While abroad at this time, Wyatt visited Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, and Rome. Russell broke his leg at Rome, and Wyatt undertook to negotiate on his behalf with the Venetian republic. On his return journey towards Rome he was taken captive by the imperial forces under the constable Bourbon, and a ransom of 3,000 ducats was demanded. Wyatt, however, escaped to Bologna.

On settling again in England Wyatt rejoined the court, but in 1529 and 1530 he chiefly spent his time at Calais, where he accepted the post of high-marshal. His relations with Anne Boleyn continued close until her favors were sought by Henry VIII. Then it is said that he frankly confessed to Henry the character of his intimacy with her (cf. Harpsfield, Pretended Divorce), and warned him against marrying a woman of blemished character. In 1533 he was sworn of the privy council, and at Anne's coronation on Whit Sunday of that year he acted as chief ‘ewerer’ in place of his father, and poured scented water over the queen's hands.

The story of the Spanish chronicler that Henry afterwards banished Wyatt from court for 2 years is uncorroborated. In the spring of 1535 he was engaged in a heated controversy with Elizabeth Rede, abbess of West Malling, who declined to obey the orders of the government to admit Wyatt to confiscated property of the abbey.

He was in attendance on the king early in 1536, but soon afterwards the discovery of Anne's post-nuptial infidelities created at court an atmosphere of suspicion, which threatened to overwhelm Wyatt. On 5 May 1536 he was committed to the Tower, but it was only intended to employ him as a witness against the queen. Cromwell wrote to Wyatt's father on 11 May that his life was to be spared. No legal proceedings were taken against him, and he was released on 14 June. His sister Mary attended Queen Anne on the scaffold.

Wyatt made allusion to the fatal month of May in one of his sonnets; but he had not forfeited the king's favor, and Cromwell thenceforth treated him with marked confidence. In October 1536 he was given a command against the rebels in Lincolnshire.

In 1537 he became sheriff of Kent. In April of the same year he was appointed ambassador to the emperor, in succession to Richard Pate, and he remained abroad, mostly in Spain, till April 1539. The negotiations in which he was engaged were aimed at securing friendly relations between the emperor and Henry VIII. The diplomacy proved intricate, and although Wyatt displayed in its conduct sagacity and foresight, he achieved no substantial success.

He found time in 1537 to send interesting letters of moral advice to his son (printed by Nott). In May 1538 Edmund Bonner and Simon Heynes were ordered under a special commission to Nice, where the emperor was staying, to join Wyatt in dissuading him from taking part in a general council convened by the pope at Vicenza. Wyatt entertained Bonner and his companion at Villa Franca, where the English embassy had secured apartments remote from the heat and crowd of Nice; but Wyatt resented the presence of coadjutors and treated them with apparent contempt.

Bonner retaliated by writing to Cromwell (from Blois, 2 September 1538) that Wyatt was engaged in traitorous correspondence with Reginald Pole, lived loosely, and used disrespectful language to the king (cf. Inner Temple Petyt MS. No. 47, f. 9; printed in Gent. Mag. 1850, i. 563–70). Cromwell, a staunch friend of Wyatt, ignored the accusation, and on 27 November 1538 wrote to him in terms of confidence. Wyatt was recalled to England in April 1539. In the following December he was dispatched to Flanders to interview the emperor, who was on the point of paying a visit to the king of France in Paris, where Wyatt followed him.

In January 1540 Wyatt was especially requested to procure from the French court the arrest of a Welshman named Brancetor, an ally of Cardinal Pole, who had taken service in the household of the emperor, and was with him in Paris. Wyatt failed to secure the arrest of the man, who appealed to the emperor and to the French government for protection. Wyatt pressed the matter in an audience of the emperor, but he proved unconciliatory. Henry VIII, on hearing from Wyatt of his difficulties, instructed him to remain firm. Wyatt followed the emperor to Brussels and boldly renewed his entreaties without result. Wyatt's inability to improve the relations between Henry VIII and the emperor were in part responsible for Cromwell's fall. In 1540 he returned from the Low Countries.

After Cromwell's execution Bonner and Heynes renewed their old attack upon Wyatt. Their charges were now treated seriously, and Wyatt was sent to the Tower at the same time as another innocent ally of Cromwell, Sir John Wallop. Wyatt was privately informed of the accusation, and sent an elaborate paper of explanations, denying with much spirit that any treasonable intent could be deduced from any reports of his conversation (cf. Harl. MS. 78, arts. 6, 7; 1st printed by Horace Walpole in Miscellaneous Antiquities, 1772, ii. 21-54, from a transcript made by the poet Gray).

But according to a letter sent by the council to Sir William Howard on 26 March 1541, Wyatt had –

confessed uppon his examination, all the thinges objected unto him, in a like lamentable and pitifull sorte as Wallop did, whiche surely were grevous, delyvering his submission in writing, declaring thole history of his offences, but with a like protestation, that the same proceeded from him in his rage and folishe vaynglorios fantazie without spott of malice; yelding himself only to his majesties marcy, without the whiche he sawe he might and must needes be justely condempned. And the contemplation of which submission, and at the greate and contynual sute of the Quenes Majestie, His Highnes, being of his owne most godly nature enclyned to pitie and mercy, hathe given him his pardon in as large and ample sorte as his grace gave thother to Sir John Wallop, whiche pardons be delyvered, and they sent for to come hither to Highnes at Dover.

From then the king's favor was secure. Wyatt had added the estate of Boxley to his large Kentish property, and now received grants of land at Lambeth and elsewhere, exchanging some of his land in Kent for other estates in Dorset and Somerset. He was made high steward of the manor of Maidstone, and early in 1542 he was returned to parliament as knight of the shire for Kent.

In the summer of 1542 he was sent to Falmouth to conduct the imperial ambassador to London. The heat of the weather and the fatigue of the journey brought on a violent fever, which compelled him to halt at Sherborne in Dorset. There Wyatt died, and on 11 Octpber 1542 he was buried in the great church of Sherborne. The inquisitio post mortem, dated 8 Jan. 1542-3, enumerates vast estates in Kent (34 Hen. VIII, Kent, m. 90).

His widow married Sir Edward Warner.

Writing

Wyatt belonged to the cultivated circle of Henry VIII's court. He closely studied foreign literature, and acquired a high reputation as a writer of English verse. He ordinarily shares with Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, the honor of having introduced the sonnet from Italy into this country. He is better entitled to be treated as the pioneer. Wyatt was Surrey's senior by 15 years. When Wyatt studied Petrarch's sonnets in Italy, Surrey was barely 9. Surrey may be fairly regarded as Wyatt's disciple. Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English tongue, to civilise it, to raise its powers to those of its neighbous.

Wyatt wrote both sacred and secular verse, but none of his compositions were published in his lifetime. His sacred poems, in which he shows the influence of Dante and Alamanni, appeared in 1549 as Certayne Psalmes chosen out of the Psalter of Dauid commonly called the vij penytentiall Psalmes, drawen into Englyshe meter by Sir Thomas Wyat, knyght, whereunto is added a prologe of the auctore before every Psalma very pleasant and profettable to the godly reader. Imprinted at London by Thomas Raynald and John Harryngton, mdxlix, 4to. A sonnet in praise of the book by Surrey is prefixed, and is reprinted in Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (ed. Arber, 28). The work is dedicated by the printer Harryngton to William Parr, marquis of Northampton.

Many of Wyatt's secular poems were 1st printed in 1557, with those of Surrey and some anonymous contemporaries, by Richard Tottel, in the volume called Songes and Sonettes, which is commonly quoted as Tottel's Miscellany. 96 poems are there assigned to Wyatt out of a total of 310. In Nott's edition of the works of Surrey and Wyatt (1815–16) important additions to the collection of Tottel were made from manuscript sources.

The most historically interesting of Wyatt's surviving poems are 31 regular sonnets; of these 10 are direct translations of Petrarch, and many others betray his influence. The meter is simplified from the Italian model, and the 2 concluding lines usually form a rhymed couplet.

The rest of Wyatt's poems consist ofLyrics in all varieties of measure, Rondeaux, Epigrams, and Satires heroic couplets. His muse was largely imitative, and French and Spanish verse was laid under contribution as well as Italian. His epigrams often imitate the strambotti of Serafino dell' Aquila. His satires are inspired by a study of Horace or Persius.

Wyatt's poetic efforts often lack grace, his versification is at times curiously uncouth, his sonnets are strained and artificial in style as well as in sentiment; but he knew the value of metrical rules and musical rhythm, as the ‘Address to his Lute’ amply attests. Despite his persistent imitation of foreign models, too, he displays at all points an individual energy of thought, which his disciple Surrey never attained. As a whole his work evinces a robuster taste and intellect than Surrey's.

Miscellaneous

Tottel's Miscellany was constantly reprinted. Wyatt's poems were separately reprinted from Tottel's Miscellany twice in 1717; in Bell's Annotated Edition of English Poets in 1854; by Rev. George Gilfillan, Edinburgh, in 1858; and by James Yeowell in the ‘Aldine Poets,’ 1863.

The poetical works of Wyatt and Surrey have often been edited together, notably in 1815-16, by George Frederick Nott, who printed many new poems by Wyatt for the first time from the Harington MSS. and the Duke of Devonshire's manuscript collections (2 vols. 4to), and again in 1831 by Sir Harris Nicolas.

The Egerton Manuscript, originally an album containing Wyatt's personal selection of his poems and translations, preserves 123 texts, partly in the poet's hand. Tottel's Miscellany (1557), the Elizabethan anthology which created Wyatt's posthumous reputation, ascribes 96 poems to him, (33 not extant 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 Wyatt purely on the basis of subjective editorial judgment. They derive mostly from two Tudor manuscript anthologies, the Devonshire MS. and Blage manuscripts. R.A. Rebbholz in his preface to Sir Thomas Wyatt: The complete poems, comments, "the problem of determining which poems Wyatt wrote is as yet unsolved'.

However, as Richard Harrier's The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poetry (1975) shows, the problem of determining which poems aren't Wyatt's is much simpler. Harrier examines the documentary evidence of the manuscripts (handwritings, organization, etc.) and establishes that there is insufficient textual warrant for assigning any of these poems to Wyatt. The only basis for ascribing these poems to Wyatt resides in editorial evaluation of their style and poetic merits. Compared with the indubitable standard presented in Wyatt's 156 unquestionably ascribable poems, fewer than 30 of these 129 poems survive scrutiny. Most can be dismissed at once.

The best edition of Wyatt thus far is Joost Daalder's (1975). It presents 199 poems, including 25 misattributions (mostly segregated as "Unascribed") and is missing a dozen poems likely to be Wyatt's. A new edition of this major poet, the inventor of lyric poetry in Modern English, is urgently needed.

Critical Introduction

by John Churton Collins

Wyatt and Surrey are usually classed together — par nobile fratrum — the Dioscuri of the Dawn. They inaugurated that important period in our literature known as the Era of Italian Influence, or that of the Company of Courtly Makers — the period which immediately preceded and ushered in the age of Spenser and Shakespeare. With some of the characteristics of expiring mediævalism still lingering about them, the prevailing spirit of their poetry is the spirit of the Renaissance,— not its colour, not its exuberance, not its intoxication; but its classicism, its harmony, and its appreciation of form. With the writings of Virgil, Martial and Seneca, in ancient, and with the writings of Petrarch and his school in modern times, they were evidently familiar, and they have as evidently made them their models. The influence of that school is indeed manifest in almost everything these poets have left us, sometimes directly in translations, in professed imitation, in turns of expression, still oftener indirectly in tone, form and style: but they owed more to the Italy of the 14th than to the Italy of the 1st century.

To Wyatt and Surrey our debt is a great one. They introduced and naturalized the Sonnet, both the Sonnet of the true Petrarchian type and the Sonnet which was afterwards carried to such perfection in the hands of Shakespeare and Daniel. In Surrey we find the 1st germ of the Bucolic Eclogue. In Wyatt we have our 1st classical satirist. Of our lyrical poetry they were the founders. Their tone, their style, their rhythm, their measures, were at once adopted by a school of disciples, and have ever since maintained their popularity among poets.

In their lyrics indeed is to be found the seed of everything that is most charming in the form of Jonson and Herrick, of Waller and Suckling, of Cowley and Prior. They were the creators of that majestic measure the heroic quatrain. They enriched diction with fullness and involution. They were the 1st of our poets who had learned the great secret of transfusing the spirit of a language into that of another, who had the good taste to select the best models and the good sense to adhere to them.

They gave the deathblow to that rudeness, that grotesqueness, that prolixity, that diffuseness, that pedantry, which had deformed with fatal persistency the poetry of mediævalism, and while they purified our language from the Gallicisms of Chaucer and his followers, they fixed the permanent standard of our versification. To them we are indebted for the great reform which substituted a metrical for a rhythmical structure.

Their services to our literature may at once be realized by comparing their work with that of their immediate predecessors, and by observing its influence on the writers in the 4 Miscellanies which appeared between 1557 and the publication of England’s Helicon in 1600. Indeed these interesting men stand in much the same relation to the poetical literature of England as Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega stand to the poetical literature of Castile.

It is unfortunately not possible to decide how far these 2 poets acted and re-acted on each other. We are however inclined to think that Wyatt was the master-spirit, and that Surrey has been enabled to throw him so completely and so unfairly into the shade, mainly because he had his friend’s patterns to work upon. Wyatt was his senior by at least 14 years, and Wyatt’s poems, if we except at least the Satires and the Penitential Psalms, were in all probability early works.

His genius is essentially imitative. His Sonnets are either direct translations or servile imitations of Petrarch’s. Of his lyrics some are borrowed from the Spanish, some from the French, some from the Italian; all, with the exception of half a dozen perhaps, are more or less modelled on writings in those languages. What we call his Epigrams are for the most part versions from the Strambotti of Serafino d’ Aquila. 1 satire is an abridged imitation of the Tenth Satire of Alamanni, the other 2 were respectively suggested by Horace and Persius. Even in his version of the Penitential Psalms he was careful to follow in the footsteps of Dante and Alamanni.

The dignity and gravity which characterise the structure of some of his lyric periods appear to have been caught from the poets of Castile. His general tone is sombre, sententious and serious, and he is too often reflecting when he ought to be feeling. The greater part of his poetry is wasted in describing with weary minuteness transports of slighted and requited affection, but his true place is among observant men of the world, scholars and moralists.

His versification is often harsh and uncouth, except in some of his lyrics, which are occasionally very musical, and in his Satires, which are uniformly terse and smooth. He is inferior to Surrey in diction, in taste, in originality, and in poetical feeling; but it may be doubted whether the more delicate genius of the younger poet would have been able to achieve so complete a triumph over the mechanism of expression had he not been preceded by his robuster brother.

Critical reputation

Critical opinions of his work have varied widely. Warton, the 18th century critic, considered Wyatt 'confessedly an inferior' to his contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and that Wyatt's 'genius was of the moral and didatic species and be deemed the first polished English satirist'.

The 20th century saw an awakening in his popularity and a surge in critical attention. C.S. Lewis called him ‘the father of the Drab Age’ (i.e. the unornate), from what Lewis calls the 'golden' age of the 16th century, while others see his love poetry, with its complex use of literary conceits, as anticipating that of the metaphysical poets in the next century. More recently, critic Patricia Thomson calls Wyatt "the Father of English Poetry"

Recognition

Wyatt was knighted on 18 March 1536-7.

Wyatt's unexpected death was widely mourned. John Leland, the antiquary, published in 1542 a Latin elegy of much merit, Nænia in mortem Thomæ Viati equitis incomparabilis, which was dedicated to the Earl of Surrey (with woodcut of Wyatt). There followed an interesting anonymous effort: The Excellent Epitaffe of Syr Thomas Wyat, with two other compendious dytties, wherin are touchyd, and set furth the state of mannes lyfe. (Imprynted at London by John Herforde for Roberte Toye [1542], 4to, 4 leaves); the portrait of Wyatt, in a circle, is reproduced from Leland's Nænia; a partial reissue was entitled A compendious dittie, wherein the state of mans lyfe is briefely touched, London, by Thomas Berthelet, 3 Jan. 1547–8. But the most interesting poetic tributes to Wyatt were paid by Surrey in 2 poems — 1 a sonnet and the other an elegy in 48 lines — which were published by Tottel in Songes and Sonettes (1557).

4 of his poems ("Forget not yet,""The Appeal," "A Revocation," "Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus...", and "To His Lute") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.

Sir Thomas Wyatt's (bust) portrait (with flowing black beard and bald head) on panel is in the picture gallery at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The Earl of Romney (at his London residence) owns a portrait (small bust) on panel by Lucas Cornelisz. 2 other similar portraits were exhibited at South Kensington in 1866. 2 drawings by Holbein are in the Royal Library at Windsor; 1 was engraved for Leland's tract in 1542, and is said to have been drawn on wood by Holbein. A painting after one of Holbein's sketches is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. According to Vertue, a full-length portrait was at Ditchley, the present seat of Viscount Dillon; it has long been missing. The Bodleian portrait has often been engraved (cf. Dr. Nott's edition of Wyatt's ‘Works,’ frontispiece).

In popular culture

• Wyatt was portrayed by actor Jamie Thomas King in the Showtime TV series The Tudors.

Publications

• The Poetical Works. London: William Pickering, 1831.
• Poetical Works (edited by Robert Bell). London: J.W. Parker, 1854.
• The Poetical Works (edited by George Gilfillan). Edinburgh: J. Nichol, 1858.
• The Poetical Works. London: Bell & Daldy (Aldine Edition), 1866.
• The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1869.
• The Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt: From the MSS and early editions (edited by Agnes Kate Foxwell). (2 volumes), London: Hodder & Stoughton for the University of London Press (Library edition), 1913; (1 volume), London: Hodder & Stoughton for the University of London Press, 1914. Volume I, Volume II
• The Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt: A selection and a study (edited by E.M.W. Tillyard). London: Chatto & Windus, 1949.
• Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Circle: Unpublished poems (edited by Kenneth Muir). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1961.
• Collected Poems (edited by Joost Daalder). London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0-19-281155-4
• The Complete Poems (edited by R.A. Rebholz). New Haven, CT, & London: Yale University Press, 1978.
• The Essential Wyatt (edited by W.S. Merwin). New York: Ecco Press, 1989.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Sir Thomas Wyatt "They flee from me" Poem animation

• List of British poets

References

•  Lee, Sidney (1900) "Wyatt, Thomas (1503?-1542)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 63 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 183-187  . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 20, 2018.</ref>
• Shulman, Nicola (2011). Graven With Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy. Short Books. ISBN 978-1906021115. 

External links

Poems

• Wyatt in English Poetry: Chaucer to Gray: "A Supplication," "The Lover's Appeal"
• Thomas Wyatt profile & 2 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 - 5 poems ("Forget not yet," "The Appeal," "A Revocation," "Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus...", and "To His Lute")
• Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503-1542) (23 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Thomas Wyatt 1503-1542 at the Poetry Foundation
• Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) at Sonnet Central (20 sonnets)
• Wyatt in The English Poets: An anthology: Extract from Songs and Sonnets, Extract from The Second Satire
• Examples of Thomas Wyatt's many poetic forms at Thomas Wyatt blog
• Sir Thomas Wyatt at PoemHunter (43 poems)
• Sir Thomas Wyatt at Poetry Nook (294 poems)

Audio / video

• Thomas Wyatt poems at YouTube

Books

• Sir Thomas Wyatt at Amazon.com

About

• Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sir Thomas Wyat at NNDB
• Wyat, Sir Thomas in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) at Luminarium
• "Listening to Wyatt by W.S. Merwin (excerpt)
• Critical Introduction by John Churton Collins
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Wyatt, Thomas (1503?-1542)