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Thomas Wyatt's poetry was first published in Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets Written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard Late Earl of Surrey and Others in 1557, fifteen years after his death. Despite the fact that the number of Wyatt ...

Thomas Wyatt's poetry was first published in Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets Written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard Late Earl of Surrey and Others in 1557, fifteen years after his death. Despite the fact that the number of Wyatt's poems are greater than that of Surreym Surrey's poems come first in that edition and even in the title of the book Wyatt's name is represented as just one of the "others."
Why such a devaluation of Wyatt? It is highly probable that considering the sixteenth century English society, which was based on the traditional hierarchical system, the "Earl" of Surrey might have prejudiced precedence over the mere "Sir" Thomas Wyatt. But more important than the class difference seems to be the political ideology. Tottel's Miscellany was published under the reign of Catholic Queen Mary. The fact that Wyatt was a Prostestant humanist under the reign of Henry VIII and that Wyatt's son was executed in 1554 for leading a rebellion against Mary made the editor Tottel concentrate on the amatory rather than the political aspect of Wyatt's poetry and present Wyatt not as a Prostestant humanist but as a courtly lover. Ironically, it was the poliical censors that depoliticized the political aspect of Wyatt's love poetry.
In Wyatt's love poems, looking through historical perspective, we can realize that courtly love and court politics have an inseparable relationship, and that political power is expressed in terms of sexual desire and sexual desire, in terms of political domination.