Thomas Hoby

Sir Thomas Hoby (1530 – 13 July 1566) was an English diplomat and translator. Early life Hoby was born in 1530. He was the second son of William Hoby of Leominster, Herefordshire, by his second wife, Katherine, daughter of John Forden. He was a brother-in-law of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Queen's principal minister, and an uncle of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, who succeeded his father as Secretary of State. Among his siblings was brother Sir William Hoby of Hayles. He matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1546. Encouraged by his sophisticated half-brother, Sir Philip Hoby (later the English Ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire and Flanders), he subsequently visited France, Italy, and other foreign countries, and, as Roger Ascham states, "was many wayes well furnished with learning, and very expert in knowledge of divers tongues." His tour of Italy, which included visits to Calabria and Sicily and which he documented in his autobiography, is the most extensive known to have been undertaken by an Englishman in the 16th century. In this and other respects, it may be regarded as a pioneering Grand Tour. Career Hoby translated Martin Bucer's Gratulation to the Church of England (1549), and Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (1561). The latter translation of The Courtier, entitled The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio, had great popularity and was one of the key books of English Renaissance. It provided a philosophy of life for the Elizabethan era gentleman. A reading of its pages fitted him for the full assimilation of the elaborate refinements of the new Renaissance society. It furnished his imagination with the symbol of a completely developed individual, an individual who united ethical theory with spontaneity and richness of character.