WYAT, SIR THOMAS (1503-1542), English poet and statesman, elder son of Henry Wyat, or Wiat, afterwards knighted, and his wife Anne, daughter of John Skinner of Reigate, Surrey, was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone, Kent, in 1503. His father (1460-1537) belonged to a Yorkshire family, but bought Allington about 1493. He was an adherent of the Lancastrian party, and was imprisoned and put to the torture by Richard III. The family records (in the possession of the earl of Romney) relate that during his imprisonment he was saved from starvation by a cat that brought him pigeons. At the accession of Henry VII. he became knight of the Bath (1509), knight banneret (1513) and held various offices at court. His son, Thomas Wyat, was admitted at St. John's College, Cam bridge, when about twelve years of age, took his B.A. degree in 1518, and proceeded M.A. in 1522. An early marriage with Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, proved unhappy, for a letter from the Spanish ambassador Chapuys to Charles V. (Feb. 9, 1542) speaks of her having been repudiated by her husband. As early as 1516 Wyat was server extraordinary to the king, and in 1524 he was at court as keeper of the king's jewels. He was one of the champions in the Christmas tournament of 1525. His father had been associated with Sir Thomas Boleyn as constable of Norwich Castle, and he had thus been early ac quainted with Anne Boleyn. He appears to have been generally regarded as her lover. He was employed on missions to Francis I. (1526), to the papal court (1527), and from Rome was sent to Venice. From 1528 to 153o he was acting as high marshal at Calais.
During the following years he was constantly employed in Henry's service, and was apparently high in his favour. He was, however, sent to the Tower in 1536, perhaps because it was desired that he should incriminate the queen, His father's corre spondence with Cromwell does not suggest that his arrest had anything to do with the proceedings against Anne Boleyn, but the connection is assumed (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. vol. x. No. 919) in the letters of John Hussey to Lord Lisle, deputy of Calais. Nicholas Harpsfield makes a circumstantial
statement (Pretended Divorce . . . Camden Soc. p. 253) that Wyat had confessed his intimacy with Anne to Henry VIII. and warned him against marrying her; but this, in view of his continued favour, seems highly improbable. He was released after a month's imprisonment, and in the autumn of that year took part in the suppression of the Lincolnshire rising. In March 1537 he was knighted, and a month later was sent abroad as ambassador to Charles V. In 1538 he was joined by Edmund Bonner, then a simple priest, who wrote to Cromwell (2nd Sept. 1538) a long letter (Petyt MS. 47, Middle Temple; first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, June 185o) in which he accused Wyat of disloyalty to the king's interests, and of many personal slights to himself. So long as Cromwell ruled no notice was taken of Bonner's allegations. He was recalled in April 1539, but later in the same year he was employed on another embassy to the emperor. After Cromwell's death Wyat's enemies renewed their attacks, and he was imprisoned (Jan. 17, 1541) in the Tower on the old charges, with the additional accusation of treasonable correspondence with Cardinal Reginald Pole. He was released at the intercession of the queen, Catherine Howard, on condition that he confessed his guilt and took back his wife, from whom he had been separated for fifteen years, on pain of death if he were thenceforth untrue to her (see Chapuys to Charles V., March 1541). He received a formal pardon on March 21, and received during the year substantial marks of the king's favour.
In the summer of the next year he was sent to Falmouth to meet the ambassadors of the emperor. The heat brought on a fever to which he succumbed at Sherborne, Dorset, on Oct. 11. A Latin elegy on his death was written by his friend John Leland, "Naenia in mortem Thomae Viati equitis incomparabilis", and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, celebrated his memory in some well-known lines beginning "Wyat resteth here, that quick could never rest," and in two sonnets.