E lyot, T homas

Abstract

The only son of Sir Richard Elyot (one of the king's serjeant‐at‐arms, justice of the assize for the western circuit, and a judge in the court of common pleas), Sir Thomas Elyot (c.1490–1546) would have been trained for public service from his youth. In the preface to his 1538 Latin–English dictionary, Elyot presents himself as self‐taught, educated in his father's house and ‘not instructed by any other teacher from his twelfth year, but led by himself into liberal studies and both sorts of philosophy [i.e., natural and moral]’ (translation: Lehmberg 2004). However, despite fashioning himself as an autodidact, Elyot attended the Inns of Court, having been admitted to his father's inn, the Middle Temple, in November 1510. He may also have studied at Oxford (Lehmberg 2004). That said, neither of these institutions would have provided him with the humanistic grounding which so obviously informs his writings.