Everything about Thomas Elyot totally explained
Sir Thomas Elyot (c.
1490 –
March 26,
1546), was an
English diplomat and scholar.
Thomas was the child of Sir
Richard Elyot's first marriage with Alice De la Mare, but neither the date nor place of his birth is accurately known.
Anthony Wood claimed him as an alumnus of
St Mary Hall, Oxford, while
CH Cooper in the
Athenae Cantabrigienses put in a claim for
Jesus College, Cambridge. Elyot himself says in the preface to his
Dictionary that he was educated under the paternal roof, and was from the age of twelve his own tutor.
He supplies, in the introduction to his
Castell of Helth, a list of the authors he'd read in
philosophy and
medicine, adding that a "worshipful physician" (
Thomas Linacre) read to him from
Galen and some other authors. In 1511 he accompanied his father on the western circuit as clerk to the
assize, and he held this position until 1528. In addition to his father's lands in
Wiltshire and
Oxfordshire he inherited in 1523 the Cambridge estates of his cousin, Thomas Fynderne. His title was disputed, but
Cardinal Wolsey decided in his favour, and also made him clerk of the
Privy Council. Elyot, in a letter addressed to
Thomas Cromwell, says that he never received the emoluments of this office, while the empty honour of
knighthood conferred on him when he was displaced in 1530 merely put him to further expense. In that year he sat on the commission appointed to inquire into the
Cambridgeshire estates of his former patron, Wolsey. He married Margaret Barrow, who is described (Stapleton,
Vita Thomae Mori, p. 59, ed. 1558) as a student in the "school" of
Sir Thomas More.
Likewise, Thomas Elyot was a supporter of the humanists ideas concerning the education of women, writing in support of learned women, he published the "Defence of Good Women." In this writing he supported Thomas More and other humanist authors' ideals of educated wives who would be able to provide intellectual companionship for their husbands and educated moral training for their children.
In 1531 he produced the
Boke named the Governour, dedicated to
King Henry VIII. The work advanced him in the king's favour, and later that year he received instructions to proceed to the court of
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to try to persuade him to take a more favourable view of Henry's proposed divorce from
Catherine of Aragon. With this was combined another commission, on which one of the king's agents,
Stephen Vaughan, was already engaged. He was, if possible, to apprehend
William Tyndale.
Elyot was probably suspected, like Vaughan, of lukewarmness in carrying out the king's wishes, but was nevertheless blamed by
Protestant writers. As ambassador Elyot had been involved in ruinous expense, and on his return he wrote to Cromwell, begging to be excused from serving as
sheriff of Cambridgeshire and
Huntingdonshire, on the score of his poverty. The request wasn't granted. He was one of the commissioners in the inquiry instituted by Cromwell prior to the suppression of the
monasteries but he didn't obtain any share of the spoils. There is little doubt that his known friendship for More militated against his chances of success, for in a letter addressed to Cromwell he admitted his friendship for More, but protested that he rated higher his duty to the king.
William Roper, in his
Life of More, says that Elyot was on a second embassy to Charles V in the winter of 1535-1536 and received the news of More's execution while at
Naples. He had been kept in the dark by his own government, but heard the news from the emperor. The story of an earlier embassy to
Rome (1532), mentioned by Burnet, rests on a late endorsement of instructions dated from that year, which can't be regarded as authoritative. In 1542 he represented the borough of Cambridge in
parliament. He had purchased from Cromwell the manor of Carleton in Cambridgeshire, where he died.
Elyot received little reward for his services to the state, but his scholarship and his books were held in high esteem by his contemporaries.
The Boke named the Governour was printed by
Thomas Berthelet (1531, 1534, 1536, 1544, etc.). It is a treatise on
moral philosophy, intended to direct the education of those destined to fill high positions, and to inculcate those moral principles which alone could fit them for the performance of their duties. The subject was a favourite one in the
16th century, and the book, which contained many citations from classical authors, was very popular. Elyot expressly acknowledges his obligations to
Erasmus's
Institutio Principis Christiani but he makes no reference to the
De regno et regis institutione of
Francesco Patrizzi (d. 1494),
bishop of Gaeta, on which his work was undoubtedly modelled.
As a prose writer, Elyot enriched the
English language with many new words. In 1536 he published
The Castell of Helth, a popular treatise on medicine, intended to place a scientific knowledge of the art within the reach of those unacquainted with
Greek. This work, though scoffed at by the faculty, was appreciated by the general public, and speedily went through seventeen editions. His
Latin Dictionary, the earliest comprehensive dictionary of the language, was completed in 1538. The copy of the first edition in the
British Museum contains an autograph letter from Elyot to Cromwell, to whom it originally belonged. It was edited and enlarged in 1548 by
Thomas Cooper,
Bishop of Winchester, who called it
Bibliotheca Eliotae, and it formed the basis in 1565 of Cooper's
Thesaurus linguae Romanae et Britannicae.
His
Image of Governance, compiled of the Actes and Sentences notable of the most noble Emperor Alexander Severus (1540) professed to be a translation from a Greek
manuscript of the emperor's secretary Encolpius (or Eucolpius, as Elyot calls him), which had been lent him by a gentleman of Naples, called Pudericus, who asked to have it back before the translation was complete. In these circumstances Elyot, as he asserts in his preface, supplied the other maxims from different sources.
He was violently attacked by
Humphrey Hody and later by
William Wotton for putting forward a pseudo-translation but
Henry Herbert Stephen Croft (1842-1923) later discovered that there was a Neapolitan gentleman at that time bearing the name of Poderico, or, Latinized, Pudericus, with whom Elyot may well have been acquainted.
Roger Ascham mentions his
De rebus memorabilibus Angliae and
William Webbe quotes a few lines of a lost translation of the
Ars poetica of
Horace.
Select list of Elyot's translations
- The Doctrinal of Princes (1534), from Isocrates;
- Cyprianus, A Swete and Devoute Sermon of Holy Saynt Ciprian of the Mortalitie of Man (1534)
- Rules of a Christian Life (1534), from Pico della Mirandola
- The Education or Bringing up of Children (c. 1535), from Plutarch
- Howe one may lake Profile of his Enymes (1535), from the same author is generally attributed to him.
He also wrote:
- The Knowledge which maketh a Wise Man and Pasquyll the Playne (1533)
- The Bankette of Sapience (1534), a collection of moral sayings
- Preservative agaynste Deth (1545), which contains many quotations from the Church Fathers
- Defence of Good Women (1545).
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