Thomas elyot biography

Family and Education

b. c.1490, 1st s. of Sir Richard Elyot of Wiltshire and London by 1st w. Alice, da. of Sir Thomas Delamere of Aldermaston, Berks., wid. of Thomas Dabridgecourt. educ. M. Temple, adm. 1510. m. c.1510, Margaret, da. of John Abarough of Downton, Wilts. s.p. suc. fa. 1522. Kntd. 1530.2

Offices Held

Clerk of western assizes and commr. of gaol delivery, western circuit c.1510-26; j.p. Wilts. 1515, 1525-9, Oxon. 1522-d., Cambs. 1532-d., eastern circuit 1540; commr. tenths of spiritualities, Oxon. 1535, musters, Cambs. 1546; other commissions 1538-d.; sheriff, Oxon. and Berks. 1527-8, Cambs. and Hunts. 1532-3, 1544-5; clerk of the Council c.1523-30; ambassador to Charles V 1531-2.3

Biography

By his own account Thomas Elyot was ‘continually trained in some daily affairs of the public weal ... almost from childhood’. His father, a prominent lawyer of west country stock, was appointed a justice of assize for the western circuit in 1506, and employed his son as clerk on the circuit from about 1510. Meanwhile, the humanistic studies which Elyot was to turn to such good use in later years were not neglected. He says himself ‘that he was educated in his father’s house and not instructed by another teacher from his twelfth year, but led by himself into liberal studies and both sorts of philosophy’, a sufficient refutation of the claim made by both universities to have taught him. He also made some study of medicine, being instructed in the works of Galen and Hippocrates by ‘a worshipful physician and one of the most renowned’, apparently Thomas Linacre. This prodigious programme of self-education was to bear fruit in his writings, where his early reading is marshalled in a vast array of quotation and allusion.4

It was during his years at the Middle Temple and on the western assizes that Elyot made the acquaintance of More, Cromwell and Wolsey. Thomas

​ELYOT, Sir THOMAS (1490?–1546), diplomatist and author, only son of Sir Richard Elyot [q. v.], by his first wife, Alice Fynderne, was born before 1490. He was doubtless a native of Wiltshire, where his father held estates at Wansborough, Chalk, and Winterslow. According to his own account (Dict. pref.) he was educated at home, but his knowledge of Latin and Greek clearly dated from an early age. The tradition that he was a graduate either of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, or Jesus College, Cambridge, is unsupported by documentary evidence. A Thomas Eliett, or Eyllyott, of St. Mary Hall, was admitted B.A. in June 1518, and B.C.L. 26 Aug. 1523 (Oxf. Univ. Reg. Oxf. Hist. Soc. i. 104, 131). Thomas Baker claims Elyot for Jesus College, Cambridge, and says that he proceeded M.A. there in 1506–7. But the name is not an uncommon one, and the dates of all these degrees fail to harmonise with better ascertained facts in Elyot's career. Before he was twenty he read with ‘a worshipful physician’ (probably Linacre) the works of Galen and other medical writers (Castle of Helth, pref.). In 1509 he accompanied his father on a visit to Ivy Church, where a gigantic skeleton had been unearthed (Leland, Collect. iv. 141). In 1511 he became clerk of assize on the western circuit, where his father was judge. The deaths of his father in 1522 and of Thomas Fynderne, a young cousin on his mother's side, in 1523, put him in possession of much landed property, including the estates of Combe (now Long Combe), near Woodstock, and the manors of Calton Parva and West Colvile, Cambridgeshire. Elyot made Combe his chief residence, and was in the commission of the peace for Oxfordshire in July 1522. Before 1523 he attracted the notice of Cardinal Wolsey, who, unsolicited, gave him in that year the post of clerk of the privy council, but his patron neglected to provide for the payment of any salary. In November 1527 Elyot was s

Family and Education

b. by 1518, s. of Nicholas Elyot. m. Elizabeth, 2s. several da.2

Offices Held

Servant of Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton, by 1539, of Sir Anthony Browne from 1542; clerk of peace, Surr. 1542-d.; under steward, former lands in Surr. of Chertsey abbey May 1545-d.3

Biography

Thomas Elyot’s grandfather, a younger son in a long-established Surrey family, lived at Shalford and his father may have been master of the free school at Guildford. Reared in or near Guildford, Elyot is likely to have received his early education at this school and his career suggests that he may later have trained as a lawyer. He was first described as a servant of Sir William Fitzwilliam, who frequently resided at Guildford, when he was required to equip 22 men from Shalford at a view of the musters taken in March 1539. After Fitzwilliam’s death in 1542 Elyot was employed by his widow and his half-brother Sir Anthony Browne, probably as administrator of their property in Guildford and its neighbourhood. Browne died on 28 Apr. 1548 and when Elyot made his will in the following September several items of Browne’s business affairs were still outstanding.4

Browne was returned as knight of the shire for Surrey to the Parliaments of 1545 and 1547, and his servant Elyot was a Member for Guildford on both occasions. Browne, who had been joint keeper of Guildford park since 1527 and keeper since his half-brother’s death, must have had controlling influence with the borough electors, for Elyot’s fellow-Member in both Parliaments was the younger Anthony Browne, aged only 16 in 1545. Elyot’s claim to a seat was perhaps strengthened by his personal acquaintance with the mayor and approved men of the town: on 12 Nov. 1544, at their special request, he and others had granted a lease of property in the town, the profits of which were to be paid to the master of the free school. At a meeting of the Three Week c

English politician and writer

Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1496 – 26 March 1546) was an Englishdiplomat and scholar. He is best known as one of the first proponents of the use of the English language for literary purposes.

Early life

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. Alice's first husband Thomas Dabridgecourt had died 10 Oct 1495 so this next marriage has to follow that date.

Anthony Wood claimed him as an alumnus of St Mary Hall, Oxford, while C. H. 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 Castel of Helth, a list of the authors he had read in philosophy and medicine, adding that a "worshipful physician" (Thomas Linacre) read to him from Galen and some other authors.

Career

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 was appointed High Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1527.

In 1531 he received instructions to proceed to the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to try to persuade him to take a more f