12 Facts About Thomas Elyot

Thomas Elyot is best known as one of the first proponents of the use of the English language for literary purposes.

Thomas 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.

Thomas Elyot's title was disputed, but Cardinal Wolsey decided in his favour, and 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.

Thomas Elyot was appointed High Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1527.

Thomas Elyot was probably suspected, like Vaughan, of lukewarmness in carrying out the king's wishes, but was nevertheless blamed by Protestant writers.

Thomas Elyot was one of the commissioners in the inquiry instituted by Cromwell prior to the suppression of the monasteries but he did not obtain any share of the spoils.

Thomas Elyot had purchased from Cromwell the manor of Carleton in Cambridgeshire, where he died.

Thomas Elyot married Margaret a Barrow, described as a student in the "school" of Sir Thomas More.

Thomas Elyot received little reward for his services to the state, but his scholarship and his books were held in high esteem by his contemporaries.

Thomas Elyot was a supporter of the humanists' ideas concerning the education of women; writing in support of learned women, he published the Defence of Good Women.

Thomas Elyot expressly acknowledges his obligations to Erasmus's Institutio Principis Christiani but he makes no reference to the De regno et regis institutione of Francesco Patrizzi, bishop of Gaeta, on which his work was undoubtedly modelled.