Vaux, Thomas
, Lord Vaux of Harwedon, an English poet, was the eldest son of Nicholas, the first lord
Vaux, and was born in 1510. In 1527 he was among the
attendants in Wolsey’s stately embassy, when that prelate
went to treat of a peace between the emperor Charles V.
and the kings of England and France; and in January
1530, he took his place in parliament as a baron. In 1532
he waited on the king in his splendid expedition to Calais
| and Boulogne, a little before which time he is said to have
had the custody of the persecuted queen Catherine. In
the following year he was made a knight of the bath, at the
coronation of Anne Boleyn. He appears to have held no
public office but that of the captain of the island of Jersey,
which he surrendered in 1536. He died early in the reign
of Philip and Mary.
As a poet, he has long been deprived of his merit by his
pieces having been attributed to his father, Nicholas lord
Vaux, an error which Dr. Percy first detected, and the
title of Thomas lord Vaux seems now indisputable.*
* It must be remarked, however,
that the late Mr. Ritson, as well as sir
Egerton Brydges, intimate a suspicion
that William, the eldest son of Thomas
lord Vaux, might have been the writer
of these poems. See Poetical Register
for 1801, p. 195.
The
largest collection of his poetry is in the “
Paradise of dainty
Devises,” lately reprinted in the “
Bibliographer;” and
Dr.
Percy and Mr. Ellis have printed “
The Assault of Cupid,” and the “
Dyttye, or sonet made by the lorde Vaus
in time of the noble queeneMarye, representinge the image
of Deathe;” but the popular notion of lord Vaux’s having
composed this last on his death-bed, seems unfounded.
From the prose prologue to Sackville’s “
Induction,” in
the “
Mirror for Magistrates,” it would seem that lord Vaux
had undertaken to pen the history of king Edward’s two
sons cruelly murdered in the Tower of
London; but what
he performed of his undertaking does not appear. Lord
Vaux, as a poet, is more distinguished by morality of sentiment than by imagery; yet even in the latter, his two
celebrated poems of “
The Assault of Cupid,” and the
“
Aged Lover’s renunciation of Love,” are far from deficient and the sweet and touching simplicity of the ideas,
and the airy ease of the language, entitle them to high
commendation.
11 Bibliographer, vols. I. and III, Park’s Royal and Noble Authors. Ath.
Ox. vol. I. new edit. Warton’n Hist, of Poetry.
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