Thomas Wilson, B.A., M.A., D.C.L., was a Cambridge humanist and tutor under Edward VI; an exile, political activist, and victim of the Inquisition under Mary I; a civil lawyer, member of Parliament, diplomat, and statesman under Elizabeth I. His dialogue on usury and his tumultuous career merit more attention than they have received. He has been known primarily for The Rule of Reason (1551) and The Art of Rhetoric (1553) because these works, the first logic and the first comprehensive rhetoric in English, have offered this age an accessible survey of Tudor principles of composition and, as Hardin Craig shows, a mine of fool's gold for Shakespearean source study.

Wilson was the eldest of five sons of Thomas and Anne Wilson of Strubby, Lincolnshire. His father acquired lands by 1539, probably as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries. Wilson entered Eton College as a king's...