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SIR THOMAS WYATT,

CALLED the elder, to distinguish him from his son, who suffered in the reign of Q. Mary, was born at Allington Castle, in Kent, in 1503, and was educated at Cambridge. He married early in life, and was still earlier distinguished at the court of Henry VIII. with whom his interest and favour were so great as to be proverbial. His person was majestic and beautiful, his visage (according to Surrey's interesting description), was "stern and mild:" he sung and played the lute with remarkable sweetness, spoke foreign languages with grace and fluency, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of wit. At the death of Wolsey he could not be more than 19; yet he is said to have contributed to that minister's downfall by a humorous story, and to have promoted the reformation by a seasonable jest. the coronation of Anne Boleyn he officiated for his father as ewerer, and possibly witnessed the ceremony not with the most festive emotions, as there is reason to suspect that he was secretly attached to the royal bride. When the tragic end of that princess was approaching, one of the calumnies circulated against her was, that Sir Thomas Wyatt had confessed having had an illicit intimacy with her. The scandal was certainly false; but that it arose from a tender partiality really believed to exist be

At

tween them, seems to be no overstrained conjecture. His poetical mistress's name is Anna: and in one of his sonnets he complains of being obliged to desist from the pursuit of a beloved object, on account of its being the king's, The perusal of his poetry was one of the unfortunate queen's last consolations in prison. A tradition of Wyatt's attachment to her was long preserved in his family. She retained his sister to the last about her person; and, as she was about to lay her head on the block, gave her weeping attendant a small prayer-book, as a token of remembrance, with a smile of which the sweetness was not effaced by the horrors of approaching death. Wyatt's favour at court, however, continued undiminished; and notwithstanding a quarrel with the Duke of Suffolk, which occasioned his being committed to the Tower, he was, immediately on his liberation, appointed to a command under the Duke of Norfolk, in the army that was to act against the rebels. He was also knighted, and, in the fol lowing year, made high sheriff of Kent.

When the Emperor Charles the Fifth, after the death of Anne Boleyn, apparently forgetting the disgrace of his aunt in the sacrifice of her successor, shewed a more conciliatory disposition towards England, Wyatt was, in 1537, selected to go as ambassador to the Spanish court. His situation there was rendered exceedingly difficult, by the mutual insincerity of the negotiating powers, and by his religion, which exposed him to prejudice, and even at one

time to danger from the Inquisition. He had to invest Henry's bullying remonstrances with the graces of moderate diplomacy, and to keep terms with a bigotted court while he questioned the Pope's supremacy. In spite of those obstacles, the dignity and discernment of Wyatt gave him such weight in negotiation, that he succeeded in expelling from Spain his master's most dreaded enemy, Cardinal Pole, who was so ill received at Madrid that the haughty legate quitted it with indignation. The records of his different embassies exhibit not only personal activity in following the Emperor Charles to his most important interviews with Francis, but sagacity in foreseeing consequences, and in giving advice to his own sovereign. Neither the dark policy, nor the immoveable countenance of Charles, eluded his penetration. When the Emperor, on the death of Lady Jane Seymour, offered the King of England the Duchess of Milan in marriage, Henry's avidity caught at the offer of her Duchy, and Heynes and Bonner were sent out to Spain as special commissioners on the business; but it fell off, as Wyatt had predicted, from the Spanish monarch's insincerity.

Bonner, who had done no good to the English mission, and who had felt himself lowered at the Spanish court by the superior ascendancy of Wyatt, on his return home sought to indemnify himself for the mortification, by calumniating his late colleague. In order to answer those calumnies, Wyatt was

obliged to obtain his recal from Spain; and Bonner's charges, on being investigated, fell to the ground. But the Emperor's journey through France having raised another crisis of expectation, Wyatt was sent out once more to watch the motions of Charles, and to fathom his designs. At Blois he had an interview with Francis, and another with the Emperor, whose friendship for the king of France he pronounced, from all that he observed, to be insincere. "He is constrained (said the English ambassador) to come to a shew of friendship, meaning to make him a mockery when he has done." When events are made familiar to us by history, we are perhaps disposed to undervalue the wisdom that foretold them; but thus much is clear, that if Charles's rival had been as wise as Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Emperor would not have made a mockery of Francis. Wyatt's advice to his own sovereign at this period, was to support the Duke of Cleves, and to ingratiate himself with the German protestant princes. His zeal was praised; but the advice, though sanctioned by Cromwell, was not followed by Henry. Warned probably, at last, of the approaching downfal of Cromwell, he obtained his final recal from Spain. On his return, Bonner had sufficient interest to get him committed to the Tower, where he was harshly treated and unfairly tried, but was nevertheless most honourably acquitted; and Henry, satisfied of his innocence, made him considerable donations of

land. Leland informs us, that about this time he had the command of a ship of war. The sea service was not then, as it is now, a distinct profession.

Much of his time, however, after his return to England, must be supposed, from his writings, to have been spent at his paternal seat of Allington, in study and rural amusements. From that pleasant retreat he was summoned, in the autumn of 1542, by order of the king, to meet the Spanish ambassador, who had landed at Falmouth, and to conduct him from thence to London. In his zeal to perform this duty he accidentally overheated himself with riding, and was seized, at Sherborne, with a malignant fever, which carried him off, after a few days illness, in his thirty-ninth year.

ODE.

THE LOVER COMPLAINETH THE UNKINDNESS OF HIS LOVE.

My lute, adieu! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute be still, for I have done.

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