Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Thomas Wilson

1523/4–1581

Introduction

Dr Thomas Wilson (not to be confused with Sir Thomas Wilson (1560?-1629), Keeper of the State Papers) occupies a place among the distinguished literary men of his time as a notable humanist statesman and scholar. His achievements are summarized by Albert J. Schmidt in Thomas Wilson, Tudor Scholar-Statesman, Huntington Library Quarterly, 20 (1956-7), 205-18, and in Thomas Wilson and the Tudor Commonwealth: An Essay in Civil Humanism, HLQ, 23 (1959-60), 49-60.

Authorial Literary Manuscripts

Apart from a mnemonic couplet (WiT 0.5), there is no manuscript of Wilson's most famous work, The Arte of Rhetorique (1553). Nor, apart from one extract from a printed source (see Nicholas Udall, UdN 4), are there any known manuscripts of his Rule of Reason (1551), or Discourse upon Usury (1572), or any other work of his published during his lifetime. An address to the Queen on New Year's Day, 1566/7, however, is preserved in his autograph presentation copy (*WiT 2), and an autograph political tract of 1578 also survives (*WiT 1), as well as summaries of one or two other political speeches (WiT 3-8).

Letters and Documents

There are also (not given separate entries in CELM) substantial and largely unedited collections of Wilson's official correspondence in the National Archives, Kew, and the British Library (Additional, Cotton, Harley and Lansdowne MSS), as well as some among the Talbot papers in Lambeth Palace Library. Scribal copies of certain letters are in Cambridge University Library (MS Ee. 2. 34, ff. 87, 101, 105v) and in the Bradford Archives (32D86/19, f. 19r). Facsimile examples of three autograph letters in the British Library (Lansdowne MS 12, f. 6r; Harley MSS 6991, f. 52r, and 6992, f. 116r) are reproduced in Greg, English Literary Autographs, Plate LXIV. A letter in Latin to Sir William Cecil (Lansdowne MS 12, f. 32r) in which he mentions his translation of orations by Demosthenes (published London, 1570) is edited in Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men, ed. Sir Henry Ellis, Camden Society 23 (London, 1843), pp. 28-32.

Verse

'Who, what, and Wher; by what helpe and by whose'

A mnemonic couplet, first published in Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique ([London], 1553).

WiT 0.5

Copy.

A quarto verse miscellany, in a single hand, 114 leaves, bound with a printed exemplum of Thomas Watson's <GREEK> or Passionate Centurie of Love (London, [1581?]).

Compiled by John Lilliat (c.1550-c.1599).

c.1590s

This MS volume printed in full, with facsimile examples, in Liber Lilliati: Elizabethan Verse and Song (Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry 148), ed. Edward Doughtie (Newark, DE, 1985).

Prose

A Discourse touching this Kingdom's Perils with their Remedies

First published in Albert J. Schmidt, A Treatise on England's Perils, 1578, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 46 (1955), 243-9.

*WiT 1
Autograph

Autograph, on two folio leaves, dated 2 April 1578.

1578

Edited from this MS in Schmidt. Facsimiles of part of f. 2v in IELM, I.ii (1980), Facsimile XXXIII (p. 558), and in DLB, vol. 236, British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660. First Series, ed. Edward A. Malone (Detroit, 2001), p. 300.

National Archives, Kew (SP 12/123/17)

Speeches and Orations

Oratio de Clementia

Unpublished.

*WiT 2
Autograph

Autograph fair copy of a Latin New Year's address presented to Queen Elizabeth on 1 January 1566/7, on seventeen quarto leaves.

Copy.

1567
The British Library: Royal MSS (Royal MS 12 A. L.)
Speech(es)

Unpublished?

WiT 3

Copy of a long Latin oration on English commercial grievances delivered by Wilson on 30 October 1567 in his embassy to the King of Portugal, attested by Edward Wilson, notary public, with related papers.

A folio composite volume of state papers relating primarily to England and Portugal from the middle ages to the 16th century, in various hands.

The British Library: Cotton MSS (Cotton MS Nero B. I f. 13 1r)
*WiT 4
Autograph

Copy of a parliamentary speech by Wilson, against vagabonds, April 1571.

A folio volume of transcripts of parliamentary rolls during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from 1558 to 1587, in various professional hands, including that of Ralph Starkey (c.1569-1628), antiquary, 295 leaves, in modern half-morocco gilt.

c.1620s
The British Library: Cotton MSS (Cotton MS Titus F. 1 f. 152v)
WiT 5

Summary of a speech in parliament by Wilson against usury, April 1571.

A folio volume of transcripts of parliamentary rolls during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from 1558 to 1587, in various professional hands, including that of Ralph Starkey (c.1569-1628), antiquary, 295 leaves, in modern half-morocco gilt.

c.1620s
The British Library: Cotton MSS (Cotton MS Titus F. 1 ff. 163r-4v)
WiT 6

Copy of a speech in parliament by Wilson against Mary Queen of Scots, headed Actio contra Mariam Scotorum reginam, [1572?].

Late 16th century?

A MS Actio contra Mariam Scotorum reginam ascribed to Wilson is preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library (MA 41).

WiT 7 c.1572

Copy of a speech by Wilson against Mary Queen of Scots, in a journal of proceedings in the Parliamentary session from 8 May 1572.

A folio composite volume of state papers, tracts and speeches, in various hands, 298 leaves (plus blanks), in old reversed calf.

Old pressmark N. 2. 12.

Contents