We also find that Skelton “gaue to my lord Cardynall” The Boke of Three Fooles.[112]
What were the circumstances which afterwards alienated the poet from his powerful patron, cannot now be discovered: we only know that Skelton assailed the full-blown pride of Wolsey with a boldness which is astonishing, and with a fierceness of invective which has seldom been surpassed. Perhaps, it would have been better for the poet’s memory, if the passages just quoted had never reached us; but nothing unfavourable to his character ought to be hastily inferred from the alteration in his feelings towards Wolsey while the cause of their quarrel is buried in obscurity. The provocation must have been extraordinary, which transformed the humble client of the Cardinal into his “dearest foe.”
We are told by Francis Thynne, that Wolsey was his father’s “olde enymye, for manye causes, but mostly for that my father had furthered Skelton to publishe his Collin Cloute againste the Cardinall, the moste parte of whiche Booke was compiled in my fathers howse at Erithe in Kente.”[113] But though Colyn Cloute contains passages which manifestly point at Wolsey, it cannot be termed a piece “againste the Cardinall:” and I have no doubt that the poem which Thynne had in view, and which by mistake he has mentioned under a wrong title, was our author’s Why come ye nat to Courte. In Colyn Cloute Skelton ventured to aim only a few shafts at Wolsey: in Why come ye nat to Courte, and in Speke, Parrot, he let loose against him the full asperity of reproach.
The bull appointing Wolsey and Campeggio to be Legates a latere jointly, is dated July 27th, 1518, that appointing Wolsey to be sole Legate a latere, 10th June, 1519;[114] and from the first two passages which I have cited above (pp. xl, xli) we ascertain the fact, that Wolsey continued to be the patron of Skelton for at least some time after he had been invested with the dignity of papal legate. If the third passage cited above (p. xli), “Go, lytell quayre, apace,” &c. really belong to the poem How the douty Duke of Albany, &c., to which it is appended in Marshe’s ed. of Skelton’s Workes, 1568, our author must have been soliciting Wolsey for preferment as late as November 1523: but his most direct satire on the Cardinal, Why come ye nat to Courte, was evidently composed anterior to that period; and his Speke, Parrot (which would require the scholia of a Tzetzes to render it intelligible) contains seeming allusions to events of a still earlier date. The probability (or rather certainty) is, that the L’Envoy, “Go, lytell quayre,” &c. has no connexion with the poem on the Duke of Albany: in Marshe’s volume the various pieces are thrown together without any attempt at arrangement; and it ought to be particularly noticed that between the poem against Albany and the L’Envoy in question, another L’Envoy is interposed.[115] Wolsey might have forgiven the allusions made to him in Colyn Cloute; but it would be absurd to imagine that, in 1523, he continued to patronise the man who had written Why come ye nat to Courte.
The following anecdote is subjoined from Hall: “And in this season [15 Henry viii.], the Cardinall by his power legantine dissolued the Conuocacion at Paules, called by the Archebishop of Cantorbury [Warham], and called hym and all the clergie to his conuocacion to Westminster, which was neuer seen before in Englande, wherof master Skelron, a mery Poet, wrote,
Gentle Paule, laie doune thy sweard,[116]
For Peter of Westminster hath shauen thy beard.”[117]
From the vengeance of the Cardinal,[118] who had sent out officers to apprehend him, Skelton took sanctuary at Westminster, where he was kindly received and protected by the abbot Islip,[119] with whom he had been long acquainted. In this asylum he appears to have remained till his death, which happened June 21st, 1529. What he is reported to have declared on his death-bed concerning the woman whom he had secretly married, and by whom he left several children, has been already mentioned:[120] he is said also to have uttered at the same time a prophecy concerning the downfal of Wolsey.[121] He was buried in the chancel of the neighbouring church of St. Margaret’s; and, soon after, this inscription was placed over his grave,
Joannes Skeltonus, vates Pierius, hic situs est.[122]
Concerning the personal appearance of Skelton we are left in ignorance;[123] for the portraits which are prefixed to the old editions of several of his poems must certainly not be received as authentic representations of the author.[124]