Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems

Born to Henry and Anne Wyatt at Allington Castle, near Maidstone, Kent, in 1503, Thomas Wyatt made his first appearance at the royal court in 1516 as Sewer Extraordinary to Henry VIII.  In 1516 he also entered St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. Around 1520, he took his M. A., and at the age of seventeen, he married Lord Cobham’s daughter Elizabeth Brooke. She bore him a son,  Thomas Wyatt, the Younger, in 1521.  He was at favorite at court and carried out several foreign missions for King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas Wyatt was an ambassador to France and Italy. He accompanied Sir Thomas Cheney on a diplomatic mission to France in 1526 and Sir John Russell to Venice and the papal court in Rome in 1527. He was made High Marshal of Calais (1528-1530) and Commissioner of the Peace of Essex in 1532. Wyatt’s travels abroad exposed him to different forms of poetry, which he adapted for the English language — most notably, the sonnet.

Around 1525, Wyatt separated from his wife, charging her with adultery; it is also the year from which his interest in Ann Boleyn probably dates. (Rebholz, R. A., Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems. New York, Penguin, 1994). Also in 1532, Wyatt accompanied King Henry and Anne Boleyn, who was by then the King’s mistress, on their visit to Calais. Anne Boleyn married the King in January 1533, and Wyatt served in her coronation in June.