“ He was one of the commissioners in the inquiry instituted by Cromwell prior to the suppression of the monasteries, but he did not obtain any share of the spoils. There is little doubt that his known friendship for Thomas More militated against his chances of success, for in a letter addressed to Cromwell he admitted his friendship for More, but protested that he rated higher his duty to the king. William Roper, in his Life of More, says that Elyot was on a second embassy to Charles V., in the winter of 1535–1536, when he received at Naples the news of More’s execution. ”

“ Defence of Good Women (1545) . His Image of Governance, compiled of the Actes and Sentences notable of the most noble Emperor Alexander Severus (1540) professed to be a translation from a Greek MS. of the emperor’s secretary Encolpius (or Eucolpius, as Elyot calls him) , which had been lent him by a gentleman of Naples, called Pudericus, who asked to have it back before the translation was complete. In these circumstances Elyot, as he asserts in his preface, supplied the other maxims from different sources. ”

“ The story of an earlier embassy to Rome (1532) , mentioned by Burnet, rests on a late endorsement of instructions dated from that year, which cannot be regarded as authoritative. In 1542 he represented the borough of Cambridge in parliament. ”