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SKELTON.--John Skelton, poet, priest, and buffoon, was born about the year
1460, and educated at what he calls "Alma parens, O Cantabrigensis." Tutor
to Prince Henry, afterward Henry VIII., he could boast, "The honour of
England I lernyd to spelle." That he was highly esteemed in his day we
gather from the eulogium of Erasmus, then for a short time professor of
Greek at Oxford: "Unum Brittanicarum literarum lumen et decus." By another
contemporary he is called the "inventive Skelton." As a priest he was not
very holy; for, in a day when the marriage of the clergy was worse than
their incontinence, he contracted a secret marriage. He enjoyed for a time
the patronage of Wolsey, but afterward joined his enemies and attacked him
violently. He was _laureated_: this does not mean, as at present, that he
was poet laureate of England, but that he received a degree of which that
was the title.
His works are direct delineations of the age. Among these are "monodies"
upon _Kynge Edwarde the forthe_, and the _Earle of Northumberlande_.


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