On the Discovery of an Elizabethan “Sonet in the commendation of Sir Thomas More Knyght”: Memory, Martyrdom, and Poetry

Abstract

This article introduces the discovery of a “Sonet in the commendation of Sir Thomas More Knyght” found in a copy of the 1557 English Workes printed by Richard Tottel and edited by William Rastell. It argues the sonnet was written by a Tudor Catholic early in Elizabeth's reign and should also be read in light of its 1557 print context: its physical place in Workes alongside Rastell's Preface, and in conjunction with Tottel's Miscellany printed the same year. Read through such a lens, this newly discovered sonnet helps illuminate the idiosyncratic complexity of Catholic experience in Elizabethan England concerning memory, martyrdom, censorship and repression.