Wyatt, Thomas

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English courtier and poet. His poetry, like that of the Earl of Surrey, often experimented with verse forms associated with Italian poet Petrarch and so may be credited with introducing the sonnet into English literature. His poetry was originally written to be passed from hand to hand among the courters – and so probably tells us more about courtly fashions than Wyatt's personal outlook. Only a very few of his poems were printed in his lifetime; like Surrey (who wrote an epitaph (memorial) upon Wyatt), his works were first collected together in Totell's Miscellany (1557).

Wyatt came from a Yorkshire family and was educated at Cambridge. He was employed on diplomatic missions by Henry VIII, but in 1536 was imprisoned for a time in the Tower of London, suspected of having been the lover of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Knighted in 1537 and sent on an embassy to Spain, Wyatt was again arrested in 1541 on charges of treason.

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