Thomas Elyot (1490-26 March 1546) was an English diplomat and scholar.
Biography[]
Thomas Elyot graduated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and he inherited his father's lands in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire and his cousin's Cambridge estates. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey made him clerk of the Privy Council, and he became High Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1527. In 1531, he was sent to persuade Emperor Charles V to support King Henry VIII of England's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, but this effort failed; he also did not obtain any of the spoils from the Dissolution of the Monasteries. From 1535 to 1536, he once more served as emissary to Charles V at Naples, where he heard of Thomas More's death. From 1539 to 1542, he represented Cambridge in Parliament, and he died in 1546.