Tudor Poets Not Named Shakespeare:
Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, and Philip Sidney
Thomas Wyatt’s Poetry about Anne Boleyn
An interesting post that hypothesizes why Wyatt was released from the Tower
Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Wyatt on Amazon
Prisoned in Windsor
Henry Howard’s Poems on PoemHunter
Tottel’s Miscellany – Howard’s Poems included
Sir Philip Sidney on PoemHunter
The Poetry Foundation information on Philip Sidney
The Major Works
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Transcript of Tudor Poets:
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast’s first ever minicast. I’m your host, Heather Teysko. I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and to being fully in touch with our own humanity.
So I’m trying something new this week, which is a minicast. My next regular episode, like I said, is going to be on the economy of the weald in Kent and Sussex, the iron industry that fed Henry VIII’s Navy like I talked about last week.
But I thought I’d mix things up a little bit. So I’m experimenting with the format of this show and trying to get on a pattern of doing a regular episode every other week. I thought I would throw in these little smaller minicasts in between.
So I’d love to know what you think about it. Is this something you like? Let me know if you like the format, or if you want to give me some feedback. There are a couple of ways you can get in touch. Maybe the easiest is you can tweet me at @Teysko o or you can text the listener feedback line, which is 801 6TEYSKO or 801 683-9756. Or you can also go on the Facebook page and leave me a note there. That’s facebook.com/englandcast.
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So yeah, thanks for bearing with me as I experiment here, and I hope you like the changes that are going on. Okay, so let’s get to the story.
So there are three poets I want to talk about today. Any of those three could have had a full episode devoted to them, and they may in the future. They are Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Henry Howard, and Sir Philip Sidney.
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Thomas Wyatt deserves our recognition and our interest because he survived imprisonment in the Tower of London, having been accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn. Along of course with Mark Smeaton, and her own brother, and the other handful of men who were executed.
He has left us some lasting poetry on that experience. But he also, for poets and for writers, is remembered as one of the fathers of the English sonnet. So he has more to say than just about his experience in the Tower.
He was born in Kent in 1503. He entered Henry VIII’s service when he was just 13. He was a “Sewer Extraordinary”. The term back then meant someone who waited tables, rather than sewers as we might think of them. So he was waiting tables.
Then he also went to St. John’s College in Cambridge. He married a woman called Elizabeth Brooke. She was from a noble family, her brother was a baron. He had a son Thomas Wyatt the Younger in 1521.
He was rising quickly through court circles, due in part to his good looks and his charm. Plus, he was skilled in music and languages. So he was just kind of pretty much of a dreamboat. He went on several diplomatic missions for Henry VIII.
In 1524, he also became the keeper of the King’s jewels. Some of the places where he went as a diplomat are France and Italy. It was there that he became acquainted with the French and Italian poetry. So that had a big impact on him.
Wyatt’s father seemed to have been associated with Anne Boleyn’s father, and he did know Anne earlier on in his life. Later, he would also become a high marshal at Calais. He was one of the people who were sent to the Pope to try to negotiate a divorce for Henry so that he could marry Anne.
After he’d only been married for a couple of years, Wyatt actually separated from his wife, and he accused her of adultery in 1525. He continued to work in diplomacy.
By the time Anne was arrested, he was also arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. But he was released after just a month, which was really quite extraordinary. And of course, we can only imagine what his relief would have been. He returned to full favor.
There’s been speculation for almost 500 years about the nature of Wyatt’s relationship with Anne Boleyn. And I don’t actually have the answer, surprise, surprise! But it seems like there was an aspect of unrequited love on the part of Wyatt, who may have taken Anne’s flirtatious nature a bit too seriously? I don’t know.
He was also briefly imprisoned again in 1541, but released, and he died in 1542 of unknown causes. But he was still sadly estranged from his wife, and he had been living with his mistress and their daughter.
He wrote one of his most famous poems for which he will always be remembered in the Tower. He most likely or probably saw Anne Boleyn being executed from his room in the Tower, where he was being held. So this is his very famous poem, the Latin of it translates roughly to the “Thunder Rolls Around the King.”
I’m not going to read the whole thing. But I’m just going to read two verses that really quite stick with you.
“These bloody days have broken my heart,
My lust, my youth did then depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa regna tomat.
The bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all favour, glory, or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.”
So, it really stuck with him what he saw when he was in the Tower.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Along with Wyatt, there was Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. Those two men were the first to produce sonnets in English and together they share the title “father of the English sonnet”. So who was Henry Howard?
He was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn. He had royal blood in his veins. He was brought up at Windsor with Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, who was 16 months younger than he was.
He’s born in 1517. By 1532, he’s part of the group that went with Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn to France. That’s the place where Anne most likely slept with Henry for the first time. Finally, Henry the king, not Henry, Anne’s cousin. Anne wasn’t sleeping with Henry, her cousin. Anne was sleeping with Henry king. There’s like way too many Henrys right now. So Henry cousin goes with Henry king and Anne to France. Anne sleeps with Henry king. There you go. 1532.
Henry cousin, our Henry, Henry Howard, he stayed in France for a while. He came back for Anne’s coronation later on the next summer. He married and had a son in 1536, which was also of course the year that all hell broke loose for the country in general.
Of course, his cousin Anne was tried and beheaded. Then Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII died, and then the Pilgrimage of Grace happened when the North rebelled against the Reformation. I actually did an episode on that, short episode several years ago, about six years ago or so. I’d like to revisit that sometime.
Anyway, the Pilgrimage of Grace, you can listen to the episode I did about that if you want to learn more about it. But it was a general uprising against the Reformation.
Henry Howard fought the rebels. His problem was though, is that the Howard influence was decreasing in the following years, thanks of course to the fall of Anne Boleyn and the rising of the Seymours.
Henry Howard faced a tough time. He was actually accused of being sympathetic to the Pilgrimage of Grace, which is kind of stupid considering he fought against the rebels. But he wound up being imprisoned in Windsor. He was released later in the year. He attended Jane Seymour‘s funeral.
But while he was in prison, he wrote a poem Prison in Windsor Castle, which recounted the kind of juxtaposition of his days growing up with a son of a king, and then his current situation. So he says:
“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, Where I in lust and joy
With a king’s son my childish years did pass
In greater feast than Priam’s sons of Troy?
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour;”
So Henry Howard returned to favor. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1541. But then he had a very swift fall. As King Henry’s health was failing in 1546, Henry Howard made the mistake of mentioning to Prince Edward, that it was obvious that his father would become the Protector when Henry VIII died.
Edward, of course, would still be a minor. You know, it was actually treasonous to talk about the death of a king. So that in and of itself would have been enough. But then he very stupidly put royal arms on the shield, which was just kind of dumb. I don’t know what he was thinking there. But he was arrested, he was tried for treason, and he was executed in 1547.
Sir Philip Sidney
The final poet I’m going to mention here – Sir Philip Sidney. He’s a generation after these first two. Sir Philip was born in 1554 in Kent. He is remembered for his poetry but also as a national hero. He defended the Protestants in the Low Countries, and he died of a battle wound.
His death is remembered as being supremely poetic. He was laying there dying of a gunshot wound, and he gave up his water to another wounded soldier. He told the soldier, “Thy necessity is greater than mine,” which of course, hearkened back to his noble upbringing, and it was just this kind of wonderful way to be remembered.
So his father, Sir Henry Sidney had been a close personal advisor to Edward VI. Then when Edward died, he somehow managed to stay in favor with Queen Mary. He named his son after her husband Philip II of Spain, and Philip of Spain also agreed to be the child’s godfather.
Philip’s mother was Lady Mary Dudley. She was the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Of course, he’s famous for being Queen Elizabeth’s secret crush. Phillip also would marry Francis Walsingham’s daughter, Frances. Francis Walsingham named his daughter Frances. One spelled with an “I” the other with an “E”.
Anyway, so he was kind of part of this large network of Protestant nobility. When he was 13, he started at Oxford. Then in 1572, he began his diplomatic service as an envoy to the King of France. He lived through the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, where the Protestant Huguenots were massacred by Catholics throughout France.
Sidney started writing poems. He wrote a play called The Lady of May that was performed at the Earl of Leicester’s royal entertainment for the queen in 1578. He was kind of starting to write poetry early on.
Then he’s also remembered because he had a big fight with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. It’s called the “tennis-court quarrel”. They were apparently talking about the rights of play, and different ranks, and how they were playing. But there were all these tensions beneath it.
The two had been rivals for Anne Cecil, who was William Cecil’s daughter and Oxford had married her. It was just really quite a messy situation. The Queen admonished Sidney for his behavior.
He left court, he went to his sister Mary’s estate at Wilton, where he took up writing a long poem called the “Arcadia” for her, for his sister.
He also wrote a sonnet cycle then. Shakespeare actually made a lot of fun in Sidney and a couple of his plays, including a character master Slender and the Merry Wives of Windsor, which referenced his marriage negotiations with Anne Cecil.
So Phillip Sidney died at Arnhem in the Netherlands on October 17, 1586, after he was wounded in a battle against the Spanish Catholic forces. His wound turned gangrenous, and like I said, apparently, according to legend, he gave up his water to another wounded soldier and said “Thy necessity is greater than mine”.
He had a huge state funeral. His father-in-law, Francis Walsingham almost went bankrupt putting on this amazing funeral for him. It happened only eight days after Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded. So it was kind of strategically timed to have this big funeral, right when all of that was going on to sort of divert attention. He’s buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
So that’s it for this minicast. I’m going to be back next week with a full episode on the economies of Kent and Sussex during the mini industrial revolution that was happening in the mid-16th century, as iron was being mined, making cannon for Henry VIII’s Navy, and I talked about that a lot last week.
So there are a couple of show notes for this minicast. Not a lot because it’s short. But there’s a couple show notes. So remember to go to the website, Englandcast.com. Enter the King’s College Choir’s CD and DVD Giveaway. Send me feedback or nice thoughts via Facebook which is Facebook.com/englandcast. Or tweet me at @teysko.
So yeah, go to the website, enter the contest. Somebody’s going to win. So it’s a really cool collection, the DVD and the CD. Thanks again to the Choir of King’s College Cambridge for providing that.
And so I’m going to be in London and Cambridge this week myself with my daughter. I’m really excited to take her on her very first trip to the UK. She’s already been practicing saying, “mig men” very carefully. So we’re excited to see Big Ben, “mig men”.
Anyway, I hope you all have a fantastic week, and I’m going to be posting the next episode on Sunday the 13th of December. Have a great week!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]