Elyot, SIR THOMAS

Elyot, SIR THOMAS, author of The Governour, seems to have been born not later than 1490, in Wiltshire (not Suffolk), and not to have studied at either Oxford or Cambridge. In 1511 he became clerk of assize on the western circuit, in 1523 clerk of the king's council. In a letter addressed to Cromwell he complains that he performed the duties of this clerkship by the space of six years and a half 'without fee, without reward more than the ordinare, and that which more grevith me, without thank of the king.' Later letters reveal him to us much impoverished by lawsuits, and begging for a share in the confiscated property of the monasteries. In 1531-32, as ambassador to Charles V., he visited the Low Countries and Germany, having orders to procure, if possible, the arrest of Tyndale. In 1535 he went on a second embassy to the emperor, whom he seems to have followed from Barcelona to Tunis and Naples. Member for Cambridge in 1542, he died at Carlton, Cambridgeshire, 20th March 1546. His chief work, The Boke named the Governour, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knight, was published in 1531. It may be described as the earliest treatise on moral philosophy in the English language, the author's principal object being 'to instruct men in such vertues as shall be expedient for them which shall have authoritie in a weale publike.' An elaborate tenth edition appeared in two vols. in 1880, with an excellent life, notes, and glossary by Mr H. H. S. Croft. Elyot's twelve other works include Of the Knowledge which maketh a Wise Man (1533); Pasquil the Playne (1533); Isocrates' Doctrinal of Princes (1534); Picus de Mirandola's Rules of a Christian Lyfe (1534); The Castel of Helth (1534); The Bankette of Sapience (1534); Bibliotheca (1538), the first Latin-English dictionary; The Image of Governanee (1540); Defence of Good Women (1545); and Preservative against Deth (1545). These books went through edition after edition in their author's lifetime, and they have now become among the rarest treasures of the bibliomaniac.