On this page, Hoby records the names of the Englishmen he met in Padua. Many of them would already have been known to him: Sir John Cheke (1514–1557) had been a tutor to Hoby at St John’s College, Cambridge, in the 1540s, during which time he had also been a tutor to the future Edward VI; Sir Henry Neville (c. 1520–1593) had been a successful courtier under Henry VIII and Edward VI and owned a large estate in Berkshire, close to Bisham Abbey, which Sir Philip Hoby owned; and Henry Kingsmill (c. 1534–1577) had lived with Hoby in Paris in 1552 while the latter was translating the third book of Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano. Additionally, Sir Anthony Cooke (1505/6–1576), who had also been a tutor to Edward VI, would become father-in-law to Hoby in 1558, through Hoby’s marriage to Sir Anthony’s third daughter, Elizabeth (1528–1609). Almost all of these visitors were Protestants who had chosen to live abroad rather than stay in England under Mary I.

Thomas Hoby, ‘A Booke of the Trauaile and lief’, fol. 157^r. British Library, Egerton MS 2148. © British Library Board.