The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1915-12-26
BY HAYDEN CHURCH

ms descendant, land in connection with
his Imprisonment a curious story is
told. 1t had been decreed that he
should starve to death, but his taller,
more in jest than in earnest, told him,
after informing him of his sentence,
that if he could supply himself with
any form of food, he, the jailer, would
cook it for him. AS it happened, Sir
Thomas ade friends with stray cat,
which ro;tmed in and out of the prison
and, according to the legend, every
day thereafter this cat caught a pigeon
and brought it to the captive. who, in
turn, handed it over to the jailer The
latter, keeping his word, cooked the
birds, and thus my forbear managed
to keep soul and body together until
eventually, the day of his deliverance
came. He afterwards inserted a cat
into his coat of arms.
1--WE next come to his son, Sir Thomas
Wyatt. poet and ambassador to Henry
VIII, the father of the sonnet in the
English language having introduced it
from Italy. Quite expensive books have
been published of late years to show
| the important part he played in the
formation of the English language as
spoken today, and he is more truly the
father of it than was Chaucer, and lit
erary papers have admitted that due
recognition of this fact has been too
Thomas Wyatt the younger, was the
leader of that famous rebellion in
Mary's reign for which he suffered
execution.
Here. too, you will see Henry
Wyatt, appointed governor of Norwich
castle in 1885, and keeper of the Kings
jewels in 1896 Richard Wyatt master
of the carpenters company, and found
er of almshouses at Godalming early
in the seventeenth century. There are
many others, such as a sheriff of Buck
inghamshire and Bedfordshire in 1410.
etc, and the intermarriages show that
the Wyatts intermarried with some of
the best blood in England
Coming down to more recent times
you see that there is only one genera
ton between me and the battle of
Waterloo, for a great uncle died there.
My uncle, the late Daniel Frederick
Wyatt, of whom / have many delight
full memories, was one of the original
founders of the Y. NJ c. A. in the
forties.
Such, so far as ancestry goes, is
briefly 'the poet of Berkshire whose
home there, though the admirer who
thus christened him little rocked 1t,
was the great Asylum for the Grim
ina1 Insane.
1t was not curiously enough. until
after his confinement in Broadmoor,
poet, though he previously had written
some fugitive verse. my natural bent
always lay in literary direction he
said but as you will see I had lit
tie opportunity of giving scope to 1T.
When, therefore, I found myself at
Broadmoor with plenty of time on my
hands and a supply of books, maya
zines and current literature provided
for the inmates I simply gave way to
my bent and for over Is years read
and studied books of every description.
soaked myself in good literature,
taking many thousands of notes and
extracts in poetry and prose, all OF
which I still have by me.
"While at Broadmoor / had let
ter of appreciative thanks from the
late Mark Twain, wrose work on Joan
of Arc led me to write a little ode
to her memory. Like the rest of my COR
respondence, the great humorist's let
ter was addressed simply to Samuel
Wyatt, Crothorne, Berks.' for during
all the time that I was writing there
few of my correspondents and not one
of the editors who published by work
was aware of my circumstances. An
other of my treasures is letter OF
thanks from Edwin Markham. the
American author of The Man With the
Hoe While at Broadmoor besides con-
stantly writing both verse and prose,
l. LOOK part III sever iitcio SSiiiPS
titions, and, in one or two cases, car
ried off one of an exceedingly limited
number of first prizes, despite the fact
that literally thousands of others COM
peted."
Samuel WAITS story is that of son
inundated for fathers wrong-doing
To understand why he was sacrificed
how it came that, as a supposed victim
Of decisions, he was cast three times
into asylums before being finally lodged
in Broadmoor parted from his wife or
the day after their marriage. and made a
wanderer upon the face of the earth
and this despite the fact that many per-
sons knew the truth, and have since tes-
titled to it in black and white; we'll. to
understand this you must know many
things, chief of them, perhaps, the pecu-
liar religious beliefs of Wyatt's family
and the others by whom, especially in
his youth, this unfortunate man was sur
rounded.
When he was "a he took a position
with the leading firm at Cheltenham, not
far from the home of his people He
had two brothers and two sisters. One
of the brothers was a rancher in South
Dakota. Wyatt declares that at this
time he had discovered unpleasant things
about his father, and it was this discov-
cry that led to his incarceration in asy.
declared that the young man harbored de-
lusions. 1t was an uneading persecution
Wyatt says, and wrecked his whole life
Wyatt was in love, but the prospective