Thomas Elyot

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Thomas Elyot’

Thomas Elyot (?1490-1546) was the son of a judge, and under the patronage of Cardinal Wolsey he was appointed clerk to the King’s Council in 1523. After Wolsey’s fall from favour, Henry VIII suspected Elyot of sympathies with Queen Catherine, and a year after he was knighted in 1530 he was sent abroad as ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire. That same year, 1531, he published The Boke Named the Govenour, the work for which he is most remembered. Elyot also wrote on medicine, made the first English translations of several Greek classics and published a groundbreaking Latin dictionary. Less creditably, he played a key part in bringing the exile William Tyndale, whose Bible translations are the basis of the Authorised Version, to trial and execution by the Imperial authorities near Brussels in 1536.

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Up Before the Bench by Thomas Elyot

As a young prince Henry V was ‘fierce and of wanton courage,’ Thomas Elyot tells us, but there was one man with courage to match his.

Young prince Henry, son of King Henry IV of England, won himself a reputation as an irresponsible tearaway. It was this that led his counterpart in France, the Dauphin, to underestimate him; had the Dauphin heard this tale, first told by Tudor diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot, surely he would have thought twice before despatching that infamous box of tennis balls on Henry’s accession in 1413.

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