Thomas Wyatt the Younger

Thomas Wyatt the Younger was the son of the poet and diplomat Thomas Wyatt. In 1554 he led a rebellion against Mary I, driven by opposition to her proposed marriage to Philip of Spain and by wider fears about religion and foreign influence. His force reached London but failed to secure entry, and Wyatt was captured, tortured and executed.

Wyatt’s rebellion is a major episode in novels about Mary I and the young Elizabeth. He appears in Philippa Gregory’s The Queen’s Fool and in Alison Weir’s The Lady Elizabeth, where the uprising creates immediate danger for Elizabeth because the government suspected that rebels intended to place her on the throne.