Thomas Wilson (rhetorician)

Thomas Wilson (1524–1581), Esquire, LL.D.,[1][2] was an English diplomat and judge who served as a privy councillor and Secretary of State (1577–81) to Queen Elizabeth I.

He was with Sir John Cheke in Padua in 1555–1557, and afterwards at Rome, whither in 1558 Queen Mary wrote, ordering him to return to England to stand his trial as a heretic.

From 1574 to 1577, Wilson, who had now become a prominent person in the diplomatic world, was principally engaged on embassies to the Low Countries, and on his return to England he was made a privy councillor and sworn secretary of state; Francis Walsingham was his colleague.

[10] An inventory made in 1581 includes the furnishings of his estate Pymmes in Edmonton survives and was transcribed and published in 1957.

His earliest work of importance was The Rule of Reason, conteinynge the Arte of Logique set forth in Englishe (1551), which was frequently reprinted.

[10] It has been considered a derivative work, in English, of the Dialectica of John Seton which was circulated as a Latin manuscript before its publication.

[14][15] It has been maintained that the book on which Wilson's fame mainly rests, The Arte of Rhetorique, was printed about the same time, but this is probably an error: the first edition extant is dated January 1553.

He was opposed to pedantry of phrase, and above all to a revival of uncouth medieval forms of speech, and encouraged a simpler manner of prose writing than was generally appreciated in the middle of the 16th century.