Henry Wyatt

“ Five men stood near him, and, tanned and browned as they were, it was obvious that they belonged to the white race. He surmised readily by their air of perfect confidence and freedom that they were renegades, also, and he was not wrong. As he was soon to learn, they were Simon Girty, name of incredible infamy on the border, Moses Blackstaffe, but little his inferior in cunning and cruelty, and McKee, Eliot and Quarles. So Braxton Wyatt, white youth among the Indians, was not alone. He had found men of his race as bad as himself, and Henry knew that he would thrive in such company. ”

“ In Wyatt’s Complaint we hear a strain of manly grief which commands attention, and we listen to it with respect for the sake of him that suffers. Surrey’s distress is painted in such natural terms, that we make it our own, and recognise in his sorrows emotions which we are conscious of having felt ourselves.
[786] Wyatt’s best poem, in this style, the Epistle to John Poins, is a very close imitation of the tenth satire of Alamanni; it is abridged, but every thought and every verse in the English is taken from the Italian. Dr. Nott has been aware of this ”

“ It may have been, however, that some of those of more advanced age had the same intentions, and that, had Sir Thomas Wyatt been successful, they would gladly have joined him. And now there was a great commotion, it being known that the insurgents were approaching close to the west end of London. On this Queen Mary came into the City, and arriving at Guildhall, where a large concourse of people was assembled, made a vehement oration against Wyatt and his followers, Bishop Gardiner exclaiming as she concluded, “How happy are we, to whom God has given so wise and learned a Queen!” ”

“ With the ground cleared by the retirement of his unpopular colleague, Sir Thomas Wyatt was able to display to far greater advantage that wealth of tact and diplomatic talent, which had rendered him such an invaluable servant to Henry [283] at the Emperor’s Court. He immediately saw that it was useless to blame Francis, as Bonner had done, for an act which the situation had forced upon him, and he forbore to mention the affair of Brancetour again in the presence of the French King. ”

“ John Andre, a British officer, was clerk in a mercantile house in London; being anxious for a military life, he obtained a commission as ensign in the regiment commanded by Sir Henry Clinton, then about to embark for America. His energetic and enterprising spirit soon raised him to the rank of major and aid-de-camp to Sir Henry. Benedict Arnold, the American traitor, a man guilty of every species of artifice and deception, smarting under the inflictions of a severe reprimand from his superiors, for misconduct, was resolved to be revenged by the sacrifice of his country. ”

“ With the accession of the Plantagenets, in 1154, and especially through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Guienne, French influence acquired a marked predominance in English illumination; and for about one hundred years from that date, the progress of style in England and France was parallel and almost identical. Gradually, in each, the Romanesque features disappeared, and by the middle of the 13th century, the fulness of mediæval illumination, as reflecting the perfection of Gothic architecture, was attained. ”

“ Locomotive bell and coughing exhaust were music to Wyatt as the heavy train tooled into motion. At a car window he caught one glimpse of a panic-smitten face—a face with the unseeing eyes of fear, with a red mustache that blazed against a leaden pallor. Then Maximilian Veazie was flicked forever from his life.
“Well, there goes my one big scoop!” said Wyatt, a bit grimly. “There'll never be another one like that for me!”
But then he laughed—laughed in the knowledge that any loss for the sake of love is golden gain. ”

“ Wyatt watched him, thinking He will raise that gun and fire and that will be the end of it.
The man's voice reached him, thin with distance and surprise. "Hey, it's a man. It's human. It ain't no monster after all—"
From inside the open hatch of the globe Wyatt heard a radio-transmitted voice speaking.
"If you will withdraw your—er—aircraft as a sign of good faith, our representatives will come to—"
Wyatt didn't hear the rest of it too clearly. He was struggling with the reaction of relief. Not only for Earth, but for himself. ”

“ That is not the end of the poem. Wyatt points the moral. "Alas," he says, "how men do seek the best and find the worst." "Although thy head were hooped with gold," thou canst not rid thyself of care. Content thyself, then, with what is allotted thee and use it well.
This satire Wyatt wrote while living quietly in the country, having barely escaped with his life from the King's wrath. But although he escaped the scaffold, he died soon after in his King's service. Riding on the King's business in the autumn of 1542 he became overheated, fell into a fever, and died. ”

“ Wyatt collected a considerable force at Rochester and marched upon London, when taking the first to the left, then the second to the right, they found themselves masters of Southwark. He had intended to give battle in Bermondsey, and put a cannon at the corner of the street, but it did not go off so well as he expected. In the meantime the queen's forces began pouring upon him some of the juice of the grape, from the Tower, and intimating to his followers that it might affect their heads, he withdrew as far as Kingston. ”

“ Next day the kind old lady sent him a pair of silk stockings, a hat, a black silk waistcoat, and a dollar in money.
Wyatt was now transferred to the castle at Laguna, above Santa Cruz, where he found five-and-twenty English prisoners, among whom was a physician, Dr. Ross. It was some time before he was healed of his wounds, but eventually did recover.
One day a man came to the castle with a drum on his back, and Wyatt at once asked him to be allowed to beat it. To this he consented, and Wyatt beat a march. ”

“ Wyatt had committed his adventures to paper before starting, and had disposed of the MS. to a publisher. The book sold well, and the sixth edition was called for in 1755, but in it no further particulars are given of Wyatt, so that it must be assumed either that he was then dead or that he was still abroad.
What strikes one in reading his Memoirs is the indefatigable energy and the resourcefulness of the man. He could turn his hand to anything. He kept his eyes open, and was ever eager to acquire information.
His Life and Surprising Adventures has his portrait in copper plate prefixed to it. ”

“ It was not long before her confidence in the commander of the royal troops was justified, and news was brought that put an end to all fear. Wyatt was taken.
308 At the head of that body of his men who had been allowed to clear the enemy’s lines, he had ridden on towards the City, had passed Temple Bar and Fleet Street, till Ludgate was reached. There he halted. He had kept his tryst, fulfilled the pledge he had given, and knocked, as he had promised, at the gate. Let them open to him; Wyatt was there—successful so long, he may have thought there was magic in the name—Wyatt was there ”

“ Holling had little to say, but he spoke of the rising value of land in the neighbourhood; and Wyatt was a landlord. Wyatt heard with a wretchedly simulated cheerfulness on his sad-eyed, sallow face. What would it profit him though he gained the whole world?
Wyatt had been in his day the brightest and best of companions; but when a man's material heart within him has taken on autumnal tints the man's spirits droop also. Both, the doctor knew, were symptomatic. ”

“ Wyatt, as if unconscious that he had left the great body of his army behind him, and had now the enemy betwixt it and himself, rushed along past Charing Cross and through the Strand to Ludgate, in the fond hope still that the citizens would admit him and join him. In the passages of the Strand were posted bodies of soldiers under the Earl of Worcester and the contemptible Courtenay, who, on the sight of Wyatt, fled. It was supposed to be cowardice on his part, but was most probably treason, for he had engaged to unite with Wyatt, but had not the honesty to do one thing or another. ”

“ What can it mean? I haven't seen Wyatt for years, but I remember now that he was appointed Governor of Pentonville some time ago. But who the deuce is the man Hawker? I never heard the name. Papers of importance to me? What could they be, and how did the fellow get them? There must be some mistake. And yet—"
He read the letter a second time, and it turned his curiosity into a desire to probe the mystery. He concluded to put off the interview with his nephew, and see him later in the day. He hailed a cab, and told the driver to take him to Pentonville. ”

“ Thus humanity, masquerading as caution, finally triumphed, and the officer, blindfolded, was conducted through devious and winding ways many miles distant, and released within a day's travel of the county town.
Walter Wyatt was scarcely welcomed back to life by the denizens of the cove generally with the enthusiasm attendant on the first moments of his resuscitation, so to speak. He never forgot the solemn ecstasy of that experience, and in later years he was wont to annul any menace of discord with his wife by the warning, half jocose, half tender: "Ye hed better mind ”

“ Wyatt was kept in the Tower till the 11th of April, when he was executed. Unlike Suffolk, he tried to exculpate others, declaring in his last moments that neither the Princess Elizabeth nor Courtenay, who were suspected of being privy to his designs, knew anything of them. Wyatt seems to have been a brave and honest man, who believed himself acting the part of a patriot in endeavouring to preserve the country from the Spanish yoke, and who, in the sincerity of his own heart, had too confidently trusted to the assurances of faithless men. ”

“ Sunlight, reflected in her eyes, made little golden points there.
“There's nothing like these slim, dark girls!” realized Wyatt. “Blondes simply aren't in it!”
She smiled with frank happiness.
“I'm so happy,” quoth she, “that it doesn't seem true. It can't possibly be true that all these wonderful things are happening to me!”
“Why shouldn't wonderful things happen to you? I don't know anybody more worthy to have wonderful things happen!”
“It's right nice of you to say that; but really it's just a little bit too much to be quite sure of—all these things are. ”

“ Wyatt wrote “specials” and occasional exposés and news features, not because he urgently had to, but because he liked to. A benevolent uncle's will had permitted him bachelor rooms in Trinity Court, also a very reputable-appearing roadster and a decent amount of leisure; but still, week by week, he turned out much copy. If writing is in a man's blood, what uncle's will ever shall eradicate it?
Wyatt's present objective was Newspaper Row, where he sought his good friend John Lomax, who had charge of the Boston Messenger's “bone yard.” ”

“ Wyatt's hand quivered out in desperate appeal. “We've got to spare her, to protect her from—”
“You seem to have rather a close personal interest in Miss Forrester. You might at least introduce yourself!”
“I'm Rodman Wyatt, and if I'm not engaged to Disney, I—well, I don't know who is! So you see—”
“I see that you're as bad as a reporter, or worse; and God knows they're the most accursed breed that ever infested honest people's affairs!” The old doctor, quite out of breath with growing indignation, got up and obesely confronted Wyatt. ”

“ The people of Devon gave no support to the movement. The Earl of Bedford appeared at the head of the queen's troops. A number of the conspirators were seized, and Carew with others fled to France.
But the most formidable section of this tripartite rebellion was that under Sir Thomas Wyatt. He fixed his headquarters at Rochester, having a fleet of five sail, under his associate Winter, which brought him ordnance and ammunition. Wyatt was only a youth of twenty-three, but he was full of both courage and enthusiasm, and endeavoured to rouse the people of Canterbury to follow him. ”

“ They've no thought for people's convenience here. Now at Bradford they've got studies on the ground floor, the windows looking out over the boundless prairie. No climbing or steeple-chasing needed at all. All you have to do is to open the window and step out. Still, we must make the best of things. Push us over a pinch of that tooth-powder of yours. I've used all mine."
Wyatt very seldom penetrated further than his own garden on the occasions when he roamed abroad at night. For cat-shooting the Wain spinneys were unsurpassed. ”

“ Wyandots, a tribe of North American Indians of the Iroquois stock; were nearly exterminated in 1636, but a feeble remnant of them now occupy a small district in the Indian Territory.
Wyatt, Richard, sculptor, born in London; studied in Home under Canova, and had Gibson for fellow-student; a man of classical tastes, and produced a number of exquisitely-modelled, especially female, figures (1795-1850) .
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, English poet, courtier, and statesman, born at Allington Castle, in Kent, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge ”

“ Wyatt was continually repeating to himself, though when he sprang through the door he could scarcely draw his breath because of some mysterious, invisible clutch at his throat.
He sought to ascribe this symptom to the density of the pervasive fog without, that impenetrably cloaked all the world; one might wonder how a man could find his way through the opaque white vapor. It was, however, an accustomed medium to the young mountaineer, and his feet, too, had something of that unclassified muscular instinct, apart from reason, which guides in an oft-trodden path. ”