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 the 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.

On 9 March 1566 he was knighted at Greenwich, and was sent as Ambassador to France at the end of the month. At the time of his landing in Calais, on 9 April, a soldier at the town gate shot through the English flag in two places. Hoby demanded redress for the insult, and obtained it after some delay, but he was not permitted to view the new fortifications.

Personal life

On 27 June 1558, Hoby married Elizabeth, the third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gidea Hall, Essex. Elizabeth was a sister-in-law of Lord Burghley and a great friend of Queen Elizabeth I. After their marriage, they resided at Bisham Abbey in Berkshire and were the parents of two daughters, who died young, and two sons (both subsequently knighted), including: Thomas Posthumous Hoby (1566–1640), a Member of Parliament for Appleby, Scarborough, and Ripon, who married Margaret (née Dakins) Devereux Sidney (1571–1633), daughter and heiress of Arthur Dakins, already the widow of two men, of Walter Devereux (a younger brother of the Earl of Essex), and Thomas Sidney (a brother of the poet Philip Sidney).

Descendants His eldest son, Edward, did not produce any children from his two marriages; however, he had a natural son, whom he recognized as his own and made him his heir: Peregrine Hoby (1602–1679) with Katherine Pinckney, a favourite of James I. Peregrine was himself the father of Sir Edward Hoby, 1st Baronet (1634–1675), whose baronetcy continued until the fifth Baronet died in 1766, and Thomas Hoby (1642–1706), an MP for Great Marlow and Salisbury

As his second son, Thomas, died without issue, he left his manor of Hackness to John Sydenham of Brympton in Somerset, the son of his first cousin Alice Hoby, daughter of Sir William Hoby of Hayles, who was Hoby's uncle. He made further bequests to other members of the Sydenham family, and he also left each of his servants three years' wages.