Sir Thomas Wyatt

Abstract

Thomas Wyatt was born in Kent. He was educated privately, but may have attended the University of Cambridge. He was given his first appointment at the court of Henry VIII at the age of thirteen and was later appointed to various diplomatic posts which took him to France, Italy, Spain and Flanders; he was knighted in 1535. His early marriage collapsed, apparently because of the adultery of his wife, and there is considerable evidence that he became the lover of Anne Boleyn. He apparently confessed this relationship to the king, but although he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, he escaped the mass execution of her supposed lovers, whom he commemorated in the elegy ‘In mourning wise’. He died of a fever in October 1542 while engaged on a diplomatic errand for the king.