Isaiah C.

Daniels
Professor Edward Raetz
LIT 221
Nov. 10th 2014

Adopt-an-Author Project: Sir Thomas Wyatt

First and foremost there is essential information that needs to be listed when you are
doing an essay type project on an authors, or generally just a persons, life. These things are
their date of birth, place of birth, date of death, place of burial, and impending family
information, and these things for Thomas Wyatt are that he was born in 1503 at Allington Castle
in Kent, he died between the ages of 38 and 39 at Clifton Maybank House in Dorset and that he
was buried in Dorsets Sherborne Abbey which happened to be only 5 or so miles from the
Clifton Maybank House. Unfortunately there is no specific date of his birth as a result of him not
being of any importance when he was a child. His parents were his mother, Anne Skinner, and
more importantly, his father, Sir Henry Wyatt. As it turns out, his father was an avid supporter of
Henry Tudor, who is actually the man who ended up becoming Henry VII king of England
during the time Thomas Wyatt was born. As a final note, Thomas Wyatt never married and only
had one child in his life and that child being Thomas Wyatt the Younger who was rebellious
towards Mary I which eventually lead to his execution, but interestingly enough his sister,
Margaret Wyatt, was the mother to Henry Lee of Ditchley who turned out to be one of Queen
Elizabeths Champions.
Now with the basic information about his life and family taken care of, it is onto the most
important part of this entire thing which is his writings, his beliefs, and the events which rounded
him into the man who made the great literary things that he is known and remembered for today.

The most notable thing that Sir Thomas Wyatt is attributed with actually happened to stem from
him copying the poet named Petrarch who lived during the 14th century. The reason that Sir
Thomas Wyatt is given acclaim for this is because he is considered the first person to portray
sonnets correctly in an English way and he did this by copying Petrarchs works and
converting them into English prose by changing the structure that was used in them. He not only
was known for imitating the works of Petrarch but he also spent some time imitating the works
of classical writers Seneca and Horace while also dabbling in many different types of writing
from works of satire to epigrams. Aside from how he wrote the poems the actual content of his
poems is nearly as varied as the type of work that he was creating as he wrote about the trials of
love to devotion to a cruel mistress or even to satirical statements about hypocritical pandering of
those wishing to advance in Henry VIIs court.
There actually were 3 major events that influenced his work, one of which was just stated
at the end of the last paragraph, and those would be his service in Henry VIIs court, his rumored
affair with Anne Boleyn spouse of Henry VIII, and the subsequent imprisonment as a result of
his alleged affair. A reason to believe that his affair with Anne Boleyn was not just some
fabrication is because of poems like Whoso List to Hunt from line 3 through 8 which reads The
vain travail hath wearied me so sore,/ I am of them that farthest cometh behind./ Yet may I by no
means my wearied mind/ Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore/ Fainting I follow. I leave
off therefore,/ Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. This excerpt implies that Thomas Wyatt
care greatly about Anne but is kept at a distance from her as she is constantly harassed by her
husband, Henry VIII. That is why he compares her to a deer because he believes that she is
helpless like a deer when it comes to her relationship. Additionally, after Sir Thomas was
imprisoned on account of him allegedly committing adultery with Anne Boleyn he actually had

to bear witness to Annes execution and the execution of 5 other men who had apparently had
affairs with Anne, also. Sir Thomas Wyatt writes in the poem In Mourning wise since daily I
increase that he thinks that they are not guilty and that their deaths are horribly losses.

(Notes on the State of This Draft: It is currently 726 words long and I intend to add about 150
more words to it before it is finally done. In addition my Innovation Portion is coming along
well and I think that it will be done in time for when I upload the final version. Please
understand that the ideas put into the paragraphs are ideas, and that they will almost certainly
be rephrased before the final draft.)