Daniel Skinner

Daniel Skinner was an amanuensis of John Milton. He is best known for his role in the posthumous attempts to publish, and then for trying to suppress, several of Milton's State Papers, including De Doctrina Christiana.

Skinner is presumed to have been a relative of Cyriack Skinner. Biographer Henry John Todd believed him to be probably Cyriack's nephew. He was educated at Westminster School until 1670, and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The College's register records him as 2 October 1674. Daniel Skinner juratus et admissus in socium minorem. and as May 23d, 1679. Daniel Skinner juratus et admissis in socium majorem. These dates, the normal date of admission for major Fellows being July not May and the normal interval between minor and major Fellowship being a year and a half, indicate the extraordinary circumstances that surround Skinner's Fellowship at Trinity.

Skinner attempted to arrange for the posthumous printing and publication, outside England, of some of Milton's state papers, which were at the time unlikely to be publishable in England. In 1675, via Symon Heere, who is presumed to be a Dutch boat skipper, he contacted a printer in Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir of the House of Elzevir, and attempted to have Elzevir publish Milton's Letters. However, Elzevir was reluctant to do so, and (as he later reported in a letter, dated 1676-11-20, to Sir Joseph Williamson, then Secretary of State) after he had received the manuscripts contacted Skinner in Cambridge to tell him that he was unwilling to publish them, given their contents. Elzevir had sent the manuscripts on for review by Philipp van Limborch, at the time a professor at Remonstrant College.

In the meantime, Skinner was approaching Samuel Pepys, whose resident mistress was Mary Skinner, Daniel's sister, about the possibility of patronage. He wrote an ornate and lengthy letter in Latin, which has since been lost, to Pepys on 1676-07-05, in which he noted that after four years he had still not been fully elected Fellow of Trinity.

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