V when they captured Rome and imprisoned the Pope in 1527, but he managed to escape and make it back to England. Between 1528 and 1530 Wyatt acted as high marshal at Calais. In the years following he continued in Henry's service; he was, however, imprisoned in the Tower of London for a month in 1536, perhaps because Henry hoped he would incriminate the queen. He was knighted in 1535 and appointed High Sheriff of Kent for 1536. At this time he was sent to Spain as ambassador to Charles V, who was offended by the declaration of Princess Mary's illegitimacy; he was her cousin and they had once been briefly betrothed. Although Wyatt was unsuccessful in his endeavours, and was accused of disloyalty by some of his colleagues, he was protected by his relationship with Cromwell, at least during the latter's lifetime. Wyatt was elected knight of the shire (MP) for Kent in December 1541. Marriage and issue In 1520 Wyatt married Elizabeth Brooke (1503–1560). A year later, they had a son Thomas (1521–1554) who led Wyatt's rebellion many years after his father's death. In 1524, Henry VIII assigned Wyatt to be an ambassador at home and abroad, and he separated from his wife soon after on grounds of adultery. Wyatt's poetry and influence Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English language, to civilise it, to raise its powers to equal those of other European languages. A significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by Italian poet Petrarch; he also wrote sonnets of his own. He took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes are significantly different. Petrarch's sonnets consist of an "octave" rhyming abba abba, followed by a "sestet" with various rhyme schemes. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is cddc ee. Wyatt experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau, epigrams, terza rima, ottava rima songs, and satires, as well as with monorime, triplets with refrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine. He introduced the poulter's measure form, rhyming couplets composed of a 12-syllable iambic line (Alexandrine) followed by a 14-syllable iambic line (fourteener), and he is considered a master of the iambic tetrameter. Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, but he also admired the work of Geoffrey