George Wyatt writes to Lord Cobham

An elegant manuscript letter by Sir George Wyatt with significant literary associations. Wyatt writes to William Brooke, the tenth Lord Cobham and Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1593 shortly before Cobham became Lord Chamberlain and took control of London's theatres, and by implication the dramatic fortunes of Shakespeare and his company of players. Sir George Wyatt was himself the grandson of the Tudor poet Thomas Wyatt who is credited with introducing the sonnet into English. This letter relates to 'A treatise on the defence of Calais' which Wyatt sent to Cobham on 5 December 1593. (The manuscript of the treatise is in the British Library - Add. Mss 62135 - in a volume which matches the dimensions of this letter.) The text suggests that the diplomatic commission concerning Calais came from Cobham who was at the time one of the great figures of Elizabethan England. Calais had only been been back in French hands for a little over three decades, and its loss was a major blow to British foreign policy. In the letter Wyatt apologises for the delay in completing his treatise, 'my nature would not suffer me to be idle and my duty would inforce me in what I could to shew at ye lest ye desiere I have to serve her Matie though otherwise les furnished therunto then any other.' Wyatt plays down the value of his discourse: 'as a thinge I desiere shuld rather keep wt in ye limits of a private dutie... The thinge is conceavid wt a sudden Pen and hatched wt a weake iudgmet, so as it ca rather creepe, then flye, otherwise then as you shal beare it up wt your accustomed good opinion.' The document runs to 31 lines and around 450 words. It would appear to have been written in three hands. The superscript dedication to Lord Cobham is in one hand, a second hand, presumably secretarial, completes the body of the letter (leaving the actual date blank to be filled in later) and George Wyatt's own signature is written by the author at the foot of the page. The Wyatt and Brooke families were relatives as well as allies during the sixteenth century - in 1554 Brooke had sided with Sir George Wyatt's father in the ill-fated Wyatt rebellion. George Wyatt is credited with restoring the family's fortunes after his father's execution. In addition to the treatise he also wrote a History of Ann Boleyn with whom his grandfather's name was linked with nearly fatal consequences in the 1530s. Sir George Wyatt's son Sir Francis Wyatt became the first English colonial Governor of Virginia from 1621. The volume of documents in the British Library to which this letter relates also contains several letters from father to son. The paper of this letter is browned and there is some loss to the top right hand corner with the loss of about three words. The script is legible throughout. Tudor letters with substantive content like this one are now very scarce. (VI10)