About the author

Thomas Elyot (c. 1490–1546) was a humanist scholar and diplomat who rose to some prominence at the court of Henry VIII. Elyot dedicated The Governor to Henry, and was soon thereafter rewarded with the role of ambassador to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

About the text

Drawing on the exempla of Latin and Greek authorities and his own experience in ‘daily affairs of the public weal’ (i.e. the res publica of Plato's Republic) Elyot seeks to describe the ‘education of them that hereafter deemed worthy to be governors of the public weal under your highness’ (A2v). Written in the tradition of Castiglione's The Courtier (though Elyot does not record such a debt), The Governor is a key textual witness to the advent of English humanism. Like Thomas More's Utopia, the work outlines the demands and expectations of an ideal republic. But Elyot's work is a much more conservative work of political philosophy than More's, and focuses principally on the practical requirements for those pursuing a life in statesmanship. Elyot's work was an immediate publishing success, going through eight editions before the end of the sixteenth century.

The arts of memory

Towards the end of the third book, Elyot discusses the importance of drawing on the experience and wisdom of ‘acts committed or done by other men’. Their example, their successes or failings, should guide the reader to adopt a prudent course for present and future action. As he explains, ‘the knowledge of this experience is called example, and is expressed by history, which Tully [i.e. Cicero] called the life of memory’ (book 3, chapter 24, B1r-v). Although Elyot does not broach the subject of the art of memory directly, he knows that memory is one of the parts of Ciceronian rhetoric. In chapter 14 of book 1 – ‘How the Students in the laws of this realm may take excellent commodity by the lessons of sundry doctrines’ – Elyot notes that the law students ‘gather they all [their arguments] into perfect remembrance, in such order as it ought to be pleaded, which is the part of rhetoric named memory’. Elsewhere, in The Castle of Health (1539), Elyot takes an interest in the medical aspect of memory: he notes that ‘imagination [is] in the forehead, reason [is] in the brain, [and] remembrance [is] in the noddle’ (C2v).