SOURCE: Simpson, James. “Breaking the Vacuum: Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29, No. 2 (Spring 1999): 325-55.

In the essay which follows, Simpson contends that Wyatt and Surrey were writers operating within specific literary traditions, rather than the radical innovators they are often depicted to be.

Thomas Wyatt, who was born 1503, died of natural causes in October 1542. In 1536, and again in 1541, he had come very close to dying of a sharp-bladed unnatural cause. In 1536 he was implicated in the series of executions surrounding the fall of Anne Boleyn, and in 1541 his enemies profited from the execution in 1540 of Wyatt's most powerful protector, Thomas Cromwell. He was arrested for treason and imprisoned in the Tower; before his trial the Privy Council ordered that all his household goods as would be “mete for the Kinges Maiestes use” should be sent to London, and that Wyatt's family...