Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) was born in Kent at Allington Castle and studied at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was a courtier and diplomat for much of his life and served King Henry VIII as clerk and ambassador. This life was not a serene one, and Sir Thomas was twice arrested and imprisoned as a result of quarrels at court. He spent most of his adult life away from England and was interested in foreign, especially Italian, literature. Wyatt was influenced by the Italian-style sonnets, particularly those of the great fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch (see page 342). Along with Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, he introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England. Although Wyatt never published a collection of his own poems, ninety-seven of them appear in a book now referred to as Tottel's Miscellany, which was first published in 1557 by a printer named Richard Tottel.