(Whitelocke, ii. 495). Nevertheless he consented to take part in the proclamation of the act for the abolition of monarchy in London, and was elected a member of the council of state in February 1649, and again in February 1650 (Commons' Journals, vi. 141, 361; Noble, Lives of the Regicides, ii. 333). In July 1649 he was elected sheriff of London, and the House of Commons in giving him leave to serve declared that they would regard it as ‘an acceptable service to the Commonwealth if he took the office’ (Commons' Journals, vi. 259).
Wilson died on 19 Feb. 1650, and was buried on 5 March (Smyth, Obituary, p. 28). ‘He was a gentleman of excellent parts and great piety, of a solid sober temper and judgment, and very honest and just in all his actions. He was beloved both in the house, city, and army’ (Whitelocke, iii. 158).
Wilson married, in January 1634, Mary, daughter of Bigley Carleton of London, grocer (Chester, London Marriage Licences, col. 1484). In the contemporary notes appended to the ‘List of Officers of the London Trained Bands’ he is erroneously described as son-in-law to Alderman Wright. His widow became the third wife of Bulstrode Whitelocke [q. v.] (R. Whitelocke, Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1860, p. 284).
[Noble's Lives of the Regicides, ii. 332; Whitelocke's Memorials, 1853; other authorities mentioned in the article.]
WILSON, THOMAS (1525?–1581), secretary of state and scholar, born about 1525, was son of Thomas Wilson of Strubby, Lincolnshire, by his wife Anne, daughter and heiress of Roger Cumberworth of Cumberworth in the same county (cf. Harl. MS. 6164, f. 42b). He was educated at Eton, whence in 1541 he was elected scholar of King's College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1545–6 and M.A. in 1549. Sir John Cheke [q. v.] was elected provost of King's on 1 April 1548, and Wilson came under the influence of the revival of the study of Greek led by Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) [q. v.], and others, through whom he became intimate with Roger Ascham. His Lincolnshire neighbours Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, Sir Edward Dymock, and Cecil also furthered his advance, and the Duchess of Suffolk appointed him tutor to her two sons, Henry and Charles Brandon (successively dukes of Suffolk), who divided their time between Cambridge and Holbeach's episcopal palace at Bugden (Addit. MS. 5815, f. 41). On their death Wilson collaborated with Walter Haddon [q. v.], another Etonian, in producing ‘Vita et Obitus Duorum Fratrum Suffolciensium, Henrici et Caroli Brandoni … duabus epistolis explicata,’ London, 1551, 4to. Wilson wrote the dedication to Henry Grey, created Duke of Suffolk on 11 Oct. in that year, the first epistle, and several of the copies of verses at the end of the volume. It was published by Richard Grafton [q. v.], who had helped Wilson at Cambridge, and suggested to him his treatise ‘The Rule of Reason, conteinynge the Arte of Logique set forth in Englishe …’ which was also published by Grafton in the same year (London, 8vo) and dedicated to Edward VI. The first edition is very rare, and the copy in the British Museum has manuscript notes by Sir Thomas Smith; a second edition appeared in 1552, a third in 1553, and others in 1567 and 1580; the third edition contains a passage from Nicholas Udall's ‘Ralph Roister Doister,’ which is reprinted in Wood's ‘Athenæ’ (ed. Bliss, i. 213–14). Wilson also wrote in 1552 a dedication to Warwick, the Duke of Northumberland's eldest son, of Haddon's ‘Exhortatio ad Literas.’
According to John Gough Nichols, Wilson's ‘Arte of Rhetorique’ was published at the same time as, and uniform with, the ‘Rule of Reason,’ but the earliest edition of which any copy is known to be extant is dated ‘mense Januarii 1553.’ It is entitled ‘The Arte of Rhetorique, for the use of all suche as are studious of eloquence, sette forthe in Englishe by Thomas Wilson,’ London, 4to; it bears no printer's name. Wilson describes it as being written when he was ‘having in my country this last summer a quiet time of vacation with Sir Edward Dymock.’ The copy of the first edition in the British Museum was given to George Steevens [q. v.] by Dr. Johnson. A second edition appeared in 1562 (London, 4to; prologue dated 7 Dec. 1560), and subsequent editions in 1567, 1580, 1584, and 1585, all in quarto. Warton describes it as ‘the first system of criticism in our language,’ though in the common use of the word it is not criticism at all, but a system of rhetoric without much claim to originality, the rules being mainly drawn from Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Wilson, however, did good service by his denunciation of pedantry, ‘strange inkhorn terms,’ and the use of French and ‘Italianated’ idiom, which ‘counterfeited the kinges Englishe’ (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii. 193, 209; Brydges, Censura. Lit. i. 339, ii. 2). In this way Wilson may have stimulated the development of English prose, and it has been maintained that Shakespeare himself owes something, including
