John Skelton

John Skelton, also known as John Shelton (c. 1463 – 21 June 1529), possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet and tutor to King Henry VIII of England. Skelton died in Westminster and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, although no trace of the tomb remains.

Skelton is said to have been educated at Oxford, though it is documented that he studied at Cambridge. He could be the "one Scheklton" mentioned by William Cole as taking his M.A. degree at Cambridge in 1484, but this is unconfirmed. In 1490, William Caxton, in the preface to The Boke of Eneydos compyled by Vyrgyle, refers to him as though Skelton already had a scholarly reputation when the book was published. "But I pray mayster John Skelton," he says, "late created poete laureate in the unyversite of Oxenforde, to oversee and correct this sayd booke ... for him I know for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe every dyffyculte that is therin. For he hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle, and the boke of dyodorus siculus, and diverse other works... in polysshed and ornate termes craftely... suppose he hath drunken of Elycons well."

The laureateship referred to was a degree in rhetoric. As well as Oxford, in 1493 Skelton received the same honour at Cambridge, and also at Leuven. He found a patron in the pious and learned Countess of Richmond, Henry VII's mother, for whom he wrote Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun, a lost translation of Guillaume de Diguileville's "Pèlerinage de la vie humaine." An elegy "Of the death of the noble prince Kynge Edwarde the forth," included in some of the editions of the Mirror for Magistrates, and another (1489) on the death of Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, are among his earliest poems.

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