SKELTON, JOHN (1460?–1529), poet, born about 1460, seems to have been a native of Norfolk. An elder branch of the Skelton family was settled in Cumberland. Blomefield's statement that the poet was born at Diss, where he was afterwards beneficed, and that he was son of William Skelton whose will was proved at Norwich on 7 Nov. 1512 by Margaret, his wife, is ill supported. William Skelton's will makes no mention of a son John, and the name of the poet's mother seems to have been Johanna or Joan. John claims to have been educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, and he wrote of both universities with affection. He is probably identical with the ‘one Scheklton’ who, according to Cole (in his manuscript Athenæ Cantabr.), graduated M.A. at Cambridge in 1484.
On 9 Dec. 1472, and on 23 Feb. 1473, one John Skelton, who was, like the poet, of a Norfolk family, received payment of forty shillings from the exchequer in the capacity of under-clerk. But chronology does not permit the poet's identification with the under-clerk, who was subsequently knighted (cf. Letters and Papers, &c., of Henry VIII, iv. pt. i. No. 1235, v. No. 166).
Skelton was from youth a close student of the classics and of current French literature, and, while still associated with the university, apparently of Oxford, translated ‘out of fresshe Latine’ Cicero's ‘Letters’ and the history of Diodorus Siculus in six volumes (cf. Dyce, i. 420–1). The former is not known to be extant. The latter remains among Archbishop Parker's MSS. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (No. ccclvii.; Nasmith, Catalogue, p. 362). In 1490 Caxton, while noticing these translations in the preface to his ‘Boke of Eneydos compyled by Vyrgyle,’ appealed to Skelton to correct that work, and described him as ‘late created poet laureate in the university of Oxford.’ That title seems to have been a merely academical honour, bestowed, together with a wreath of laurel, on any graduate who had especially distinguished himself in rhetoric and poetry. Skelton subsequently asserted that he received the degree by the unanimous vote of the senate (Against Garnesche). Soon afterwards a similar honour was conferred on him in partibus transmarinis—at Louvain, according to his panegyrist, Robert Whittington (Opusculum Roberti Whittintoni, 1519); but the registers of Louvain University fail to report the circumstance. In 1493 Skelton was admitted to the same title by the university of Cambridge.
At an early age Skelton began writing verse in honour of the royal family or of members of the nobility. An attractive English poem on the death of Edward IV in 1483, with a Latin refrain, is probably his earliest extant composition, and he may be the author of verses presented to Henry VII at Windsor in 1488 (cf. Ashmole, Garter, p. 594; Dyce, ii. 388). In 1489 he produced an elegy on the death of Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, who was killed by rebels in Yorkshire on 28 April 1489 (cf. reprint in Percy's Reliques, ed. Wheatley, i. 117 sq.)—a tragedy which also evoked a poem from Bernard André. The earl's son, Henry Algernon Percy, fifth earl, to whom the elegy was dedicated, subsequently proved a generous patron. When Prince Arthur was created Prince of Wales in 1489 Skelton celebrated the event in a composition called ‘Prince Arturis Creacyoun,’ of which only the title remains. Again, in 1494, when Henry (afterwards Henry VIII) was made Duke of York, Skelton offered his congratulations in a Latin poem, the manuscript of which was seen by Tanner in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, but cannot now be traced. There is a likelihood that Skelton wrote the long poetic epitaph on the king's uncle, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, who died in 1495 (Dyce, ii. 388). The king's mother, the Countess of Richmond, who interested herself in literature, is believed to have noticed Skelton approvingly, and for her he translated ‘Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun,’ a rendering (now lost) of Deguilleville's prose ‘Pelerinage de la Vie Humaine,’ on which Lydgate had already tried his hand. A sympathetic elegy on Henry VII in 1509 may also be assigned to Skelton's pen (ib. ii. 399).
Skelton's literary energy was rewarded by his appointment, before the end of the fifteenth century, as tutor to Henry VII's second son, Prince Henry (afterwards Henry VIII), born in 1491. Skelton claims to have taught his pupil to spell, and to have introduced him for the first time to the ‘Muses Nine.’ For him he wrote ‘Speculum Principis,’ which he describes as a treatise on the demeanour of a prince. This work was probably identical with ‘Methodos Skeltonidis Laureati (sc. Præcepta quædam moralia Henrico principi postea Henr. VIII missa) Dat. apud Eltham A.D. MDI,’ a mutilated copy of which was in Tanner's days in the Lincoln Cathedral Library. When Erasmus, in 1500, dedicated to Prince Henry his ode ‘De Laudibus Britanniæ,’ he mentioned Skelton as a member of the prince's household and as ‘a light and ornament of British literature.’
According to Churchyard, Skelton was ‘seldom out of princis grace,’ but on 10 June 1502 one John Skelton was committed to prison by order of the king in council, and in the same year a widow
