An Interview with Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Elder

Sir Tom: Making sure its razor is as sharp as your tongue.

Wendy: Tom (moving her seat back three spaces), can we please return to the interview?

Sir Tom: Perchance that would be for the best. Did you not once tell me that little is known of my early years?

Wendy: Yes—and the same goes for Anne Boleyn. Nobody guessed—not even your parents—that history would remember your lives forever.

Sir Tom: I like the sound of that. Anne would too, that I know.

Wendy: I’m glad. So your schooling happened…?

Sir Tom: I was a scholar at John’s College, sent by my father there in 1516. But when I was 17 my father called me home, to be wed to Lady Elizabeth Cobham. It was not a good match. I would have divorced her, but that was impossible after the King had severed ties with the papacy. Also, it would have cast a dark light over the good names of my children. Elizabeth and I separated finally in 1525.

Wendy: This marriage produced a son and a daughter, did it not?

Sir Tom: Aye. Young Tom and Bess—named for her mother.

Wendy: So, as an adult you became a civil servant, like your father?

Sir Tom: By the time I was twenty-one, I gained a position at court. But I found I had a great liking for travel, and soon began my career as a diplomat. In 1525, I served with Sir Thomas Chene when the King  sent him as embassy to the King of France.

Wendy: Sir Tom, could you please tell us your most exciting moment as a Tudor diplomat?

Sir Tom: Aye… I suppose that would have been when the Spaniards captured me in 1527, just before the sacking of Rome.

Wendy: I remember you telling me about this. You were on a mission to the Pope…?

Sir Tom: Aye… I went with Sir John Russell as his esquire and equerry, when King Harry sent him to give aid to Pope Clement VII. Sir John had the misfortune to fall from his horse and break his leg at Narni, a small town close to Florence. His injury meant I had to act in his stead to best serve the King. Soldiers captured me on my return to Narni and Sir John. I knew the soldiers planned to ransom me, but I made my escape before any money changed hands. Not long after that, Sir John and I escaped from Rome when the Duc of Borbon’s army began its bloody assault on the Holy city. Never was I more relieved to make my return to English soil. The following year I went to Calais, where I served the King as his Marshal until 1532.

Wendy: There was an important event that happened in Calais, at the end of 1532?

Sir Tom: You refer to when the King and the Lady Marquess of Pembroke came to Calais for a meeting with François, the King of France?

Wendy: Yes—you knew the Lady Marquess of Pembroke well, did you not?

Sir Tom: Aye. But you know full well who she was, Wendy…

Wendy: Could you please tell my readers…?

Sir Tom: My cousin, Anne Boleyn. Not long after this she became Queen to King Harry. What good that did her I know not.

Wendy: You had an important part to play at her coronation?

Sir Tom: My father was ill, so I took his part as Ewer to the King. By the time of her coronation, Anne was big-bellied with a girl-child. No one knew that then. All our hopes were for a prince. I do not believe the King ever forgave Anne for giving him yet another daughter. When he executed her three years later, the grief broke my heart. Not only Anne dead, but also so many of my close friends. Do you know her last thoughts were of me? She gifted to me her own treasured prayer book. No doubt she wondered if I too would follow her to the execution block. God knows my poor father worried himself ill because he so feared for me. If the Duke of Suffolk had had his way I know my blood would have flowed too that May.

Wendy: You wrote a poem about this dreadful time?