THE AUTHOR

John Skelton (c. 1460–1529) was a scholar and poet whose life was spent in and around the Tudor Court, mainly on its margins. The high point of his career came in the last years of the fifteenth century when he became tutor to the future Henry VIII, then only the younger son of Henry VII. With the death of Henry's older brother, Prince Arthur, in 1502, the Prince became Heir Apparent, an elevation which brought him both a new household and a new schoolmaster. Skelton was dismissed with only a gift of 40s. and the living of Diss in Norfolk as a reward. Thereafter he spent his time attempting to secure a return to royal service through the production of verse and prose on apposite political themes. During 1513 he was briefly employed to write patriotic verses to celebrate Henry VIII's victories at Tournai and Therouanne, but it was not until 1523 that he received a major commission to write for the Court, paradoxically in the form of a request for propaganda verses against the Scots from Cardinal Wolsey, the chief minister whom Skelton had viciously satirized in a series of poems written in the previous years. Thereafter Skelton's career fades into obscurity, until in 1528, the year before his death, he again wrote a commissioned work on a political theme, his Replycacion against two young heretical scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, who had publicly abjured in 1527.