John Skelton

SKELTON, JOHN (c. 1460-1529), English poet, is variously asserted to have belonged to a Cumberland family and to have been a native of Diss in Norfolk. He is said to have been edu cated at Oxford. He certainly studied at Cambridge, and he is probably the "one Scheklton" mentioned by William Cole (ms.

Athen. Cantabr.) as taking his M.A. degree in 1484. In 1490 Caxton writes of him, in the preface to The Boke of Eneydos corn pyled by Vyrgyle, in terms which prove that he had already won a reputation as a scholar. "But I pray mayster John Skelton," he says, "late created poete laureate in the unyversite of Oxen f orde, to oversee and correct this sayd book . . . for him I know for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe every dyffyculte that is therein. For he hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle, and the boke of dyodorus siculus, and diverse other works . . . in polysshed and ornate termes craftely . . . I suppose he hath drunken of Elycons well." The laureateship referred to was a degree in rhetoric. Skelton received in 1493 the same honour at Cambridge. Skelton found a patron in the pious and learned countess of Richmond, Henry VII.'s mother, for whom he wrote Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun, a translation, now lost, of Guillaume de Deguilleville's Pelerinage de la vie humaine. An elegy "Of the death of the noble prince Kynge Edwarde the forth," included in some of the editions of the Mirror for Magistrates, and another (1489) on the death of Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, are among his earliest poems. In the last decade of the century he was appointed tutor to Prince Henry (afterwards Henry VIII.). He wrote for his pupil a lost Speculum principis, and Erasmus, in dedicating an ode to the prince in 1500, speaks of Skelton as "unum Britanni carum literarum lumen ac decus." In 1498 he was successively ordained sub-deacon, deacon and priest. He seems to have been imprisoned in 1502, but no reason is known for his disgrace. Two years later he retired from regular attendance at court to become rector of Diss, a benefice which he retained nominally till his death. Skelton frequently signed himself "regius orator" and poet-laureate, but there is no record of any emoluments paid in connection with these dignities. His parishioners thought him, says Anthony it Wood, more fit for the stage than for the pulpit. He was secretly married to a woman who lived in his house, and he had earned the hatred of the Dominican monks by his fierce satire. He was censured by Richard Nix, bishop of the diocese, and appears to have been temporarily suspended. After his death a collection of farcical tales, no doubt chiefly, if not entirely, apocryphal, gathered round his name—The Merie Tales of Skelton. During the rest of the century he figured in the popular imagination as an incorrigible practical joker. His sarcastic wit made him some enemies, among them Sir Christopher Garnesche or Garneys, Alexander Barclay, William Lilly and the French scholar, Robert Gaguin (c. 1425-1502). Earlier in his career he had found a friend and patron in Cardinal Wolsey, and the dedica tion to the cardinal of his Replycacion is couched in the most flattering terms. But in 1522, when Wolsey in his capacity of legate dissolved convocation at St. Paul's, Skelton put in circu lation the couplet : Gentle Paul, laie doune thy sweard For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard.

In Colyn Claute he incidentally attacked Wolsey in a general satire on the clergy, but Speke, Parrot and Why come ye nat to Courte? are direct and fierce invectives against the cardinal who is said to have more than once imprisoned the author. To avoid

another arrest Skelton took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. He was kindly received by the abbot, John Islip, who continued to protect him until his death on June 21, 1529.

In his

Garlande of Laurell Skelton gives a long list of his works, only a few of which are extant. The garland in question was worked for him in silks, gold and pearls by the ladies of the coun tess of Surrey at Sheriff Hutton Castle, where he was the guest of the duke of Norfolk. Ttie composition includes complimentary verses to the various ladies concerned, and a good deal of informa tion about himself. But it is as a satirist that Skelton merits attention. The Bowge of Court is directed against the vices and dangers of court life. He had already in his Boke of the Thre Foles drawn on Alexander Barclay's version of the Nar renschiff of Sebastian Brant, and this more elaborate and imag inative poem belongs to the same class. Skelton, falling into a dream at Harwich, sees a stately ship in the harbour called the Bowge of Court, the owner of which is the Dame Saunce Pere. Her merchandise is Favour; the helmsman Fortune; and the poet, who figures as Drede (modesty), finds on board Favell (the flatterer), Suspect, Harvy Hafter (the clever thief), Dys dayne, Ryotte, Dyssymuler and Subtylte, who all explain them selves in turn, until at last Drede, who finds they are secretly his enemies, is about to save his life by jumping overboard, when he wakes. Both of these poems are written in the seven-lined Chau cerian stanza, but it is in an irregular metre of his own that his most characteristic work was accomplished. The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, the lament of Jane Scroop, a schoolgirl in the Benedic tine convent of Carowe near Norwich, for her dead bird, was no doubt inspired by Catullus. It is a poem of some 1,400 lines with many digressions. We learn what a wide reading Jane had in the romances of Charlemagne, of the Round Table, The Four Sons of Aymon and the Trojan cycle. Skelton finds space to give his opinion of Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate. He seems fully to have realized Chaucer's value as a master of the English language. Gower's matter was, he said, "worth gold," but his English antiquated. The verse in which the poem is written, called from its inventor "Skeltonical," is here turned entirely to whim sical use. The lines are usually six-syllabled, but vary in length, and rhyme in groups of two, three, four and even more. It is not far removed from the old alliterative English verse, and well fitted to be chanted by the minstrels who had sung the old ballads. For its comic admixture of Latin Skelton had abundant example in French and Low Latin macaronis verse. He makes frequent use of Latin and French words to carry out his exacting system of frequently recurring rhymes. This breathless, voluble measure was in Skelton's energetic hands an admirable vehicle for in vective, but it easily degenerated into doggerel. By the end of the 16th century he was a "rude rayling rimer" (Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie), and at the hands of Pope' and Warton he fared even worse. His own criticism is a just one : 'Pope said: "Skelton's poems are all low and bad, there is nothing in them that is worth reading" (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 87).