successor, at whose coronation he was made a Knight of the Bath, and at the battle of Spurs his valour was rewarded by the honor of Knight Banneret: he was Treasurer of the King's Chamber in 1525, and filled many other important offices. By his wife Anne, daughter of John Skinner, of Reigate in Surrey, Sir Henry left three children, Thomas the Poet, Henry who lived in a private manner in Kent, and Margaret the wife of Sir Anthony Lee.

Thomas Wyatt, the eldest son, was born at Allington in 1503, and the next circumstance relating to him which is known is that in 1515 he was entered of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B. A. degree in 1518, and in 1520, his Master's degree. Probably soon after quitting Cambridge, Wyatt passed a short time at Paris in conformity with the custom of the age, but whether, as Wood asserts, he visited Italy, is shewn by Dr. Nott to be very doubtful. About 1520 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brooke, Lord Cobham; and it appears from Hall's account of a feat of arms which was performed at Greenwich at Christmas 1525, that he was one of the fourteen challengers on that occasion.

For nearly ten years after that time no information has been found about him, and the next time he is mentioned is at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in July, 1533, when he officiated as Ewerer for his father. In that long interval he

*

may be presumed to have served in the army,' and to have employed his leisure hours in literary pursuits; but great part of his time was undoubtedly passed at court, where his personal appearance, no less than his talents and accomplishments, attracted Henry's attention, and gained his favour. If Lloyd be correct, he exercised the influence which he possessed over his sovereign's mind in promoting the interests of his friends rather than his own, and this generous zeal on behalf of others secured him the esteem of all who knew him. But though the merits of Wyatt obtained for him a brilliant reputation, they nearly proved the source of a heavy misfortune. An attachment has been supposed to have existed between him and Anne Boleyn, though there is little other authority for the idea than a poem in which he speaks of his mistress by the name of Anna, and uses some expressions which have been tortured into an allusion to the Queen. Whether an opinion prevailed of this nature when her capricious husband's affections were withdrawn from her, or to speak more correctly, when his passion for her person was satiated, or whether Wyatt's attractive qualities rendered him an eligible individual upon whom to fix the charge of a criminal

Leland speaks of his martial fame, and in the Dedication of the Penitential Psalms by Sir John Harington it is said that he was renowned" for his valiant deeds in martial feats as well as for his singular learning." See page 202.

correspondence, cannot be determined, but it is certain that he was accused of being her paramour. It would be tiresome and profitless to follow Dr. Nott in his speculations on the sentiments which he supposes Anne Boleyn and Wyatt to have entertained for each other. A similarity of taste may naturally have rendered his society agreeable to the Queen; and it is not extraordinary that in a crowd of foppish and unlettered courtiers, his presence was acceptable to her. That the verses which Dr. Nott cites as being addressed to her long before she became the object of Henry's desire, do not justify that interpretation, may be safely asserted; for there is not the slightest evidence to shew when they were written, or that he was ever enamoured of her. Nor must

it be forgotten that at the very moment when he is supposed to deplore his fate in losing her, in consequence of the King's intentions, he was himself a married man. The same reasons which refute the opinion that Surrey was seriously attached to Geraldine apply to Wyatt's imaginary affection for Anne Boleyn; and if it be conceded that he really alluded to her in the poem adverted to, the conclusion seems inevitable that she was the subject of a fictitious, or, if the expression be allowed, a poetical passion. Her rank, which was superior to that of Wyatt, if not her virtue, makes it impossible to believe that he contemplated an illicit connexion, and his own marriage

proves that he could not have sought her hand. If, as has been conjectured,* the two lines,

"And now I follow the coals that be quent
From Dover to Calais against my mind,"

mean that he formed one of her retinue when, as Marchioness of Pembroke, she accompanied Henry to Calais, in 1532, it is singular that his name should not occur among the many persons who are noticed in the account of the expenses of that voyage. Two sonnets have been particularly cited to substantiate the opinion that he was attached to Anne Boleyn. One of these is that in which he says, that though May was generally propitious to love, misfortunes had often befallen him in that month, and after adding that this had been predicted at his nativity, he thus concludes:

"In May my wealth, and eke my wits I say
Have stond so oft in such perplexity."

As Anne Boleyn was tried and executed in May, and as it was attempted to implicate Wyatt in the misconduct of which she was accused, these lines have been presumed to refer to that circumstance. The other Sonnet is that in which he says,

"Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt
As well as I, may spend his time in vain!

* Nott, p. xxiii.

+ See p. 5.

See p. 18.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere; for Cæsar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

The first of these passages may be supposed with equal, if not greater probability, to refer to some other circumstance rather than to the accusation that he had been criminally connected with the Queen, for not merely were "his wealth and wits" brought into "perplexity, but his life itself was then endangered;" and admitting that the other sonnet did allude to her, it by no means establishes the existence of tenderness or regret that she was another's: on the contrary, it speaks of her connexion with the King in a tone of levity which cannot be reconciled with the feelings of a lover.

Those who believe in an attachment, whether platonic or otherwise, between Wyatt and Anne Boleyn, trace an alteration in his poetry to the effect which her fate produced on his mind. It is easy to support a favorite theory, and the task is an ungracious one to destroy those tales which impart a romantic interest to eminent personages; but there is no proof whatever of the period when the alteration in his pieces took place, or to shew that it did not arise from those great sedatives to a poetical or amorous imagination-years and experience.

The suspicion which Wyatt incurred, with