Sir Thomas Elyot
born c. 1490
died March 26, 1546, Carleton, Cambridgeshire,
Eng.
English author and administrator, memorable for
his championship and use of English prose for
subjects then customarily treated in Latin. Both
as a philosopher and as a lexicographer, he
endeavoured to “augment our Englysshe tongue” as
a medium for ideas.
He was clerk to the Privy Council (1523–30) and
was knighted in 1530. A member of Sir Thomas
More’s circle, Elyot was suspected of being out
of sympathy with Henry VIII’s plan to divorce
Catherine of Aragon and probably owed his lack
of advancement to his friendship with More. In
1531 he published The Boke Named the Governour,
dedicated to the king, and that autumn went as
the king’s envoy to the court of the Holy Roman
emperor Charles V.
Elyot’s
very popular Governour, a plan for the
upbringing of gentlemen’s sons who were to bear
authority in the realm, was the first important
treatise on education in English and did much to
form the later English ideal of the gentleman.
His Castel of Helth was a popular regimen of
health that, written in the vernacular and by a
layman (although he had received some
instruction in medicine), incurred censure but
was widely read. His Dictionary, the first
English dictionary of Classical Latin, was
published in 1538. The aim of all Elyot’s works
was usefulness: he brought classics and Italian
authors to the general public through his
translations, he provided practical instruction
in his own writings, and he added many new words
to the English language.
