Note 119 — SOME ACCOUNT OF SKELTON AND HIS WRITINGS.

John Islip was elected abbot in 1500, and died in 1532: see Widmore’s Hist. of West. Abbey, 119, 123. “John Skelton ... is said by the late learned Bishop of Derry, Nicholson (Hist. Lib. chap. 2.) to have first collected the Epitaphs of our Kings, Princes, and Nobles, that lie buried at the Abbey Church of Westminster: but I apprehend this to be no otherwise true, than that, when he, to avoid the anger of Cardinal Wolsey, had taken sanctuary at Westminster, to recommend himself to Islip, the Abbot at that time, he made some copies of verses to the memories of King Henry the Seventh and his Queen, and his mother the Countess of Richmond, and perhaps some other persons buried in this church.” Account of Writers, &c., p. 5, appended to Widmore’s Enquiry into the time of the found. of West. Abbey.—Widmore is mistaken: neither in Marshe’s ed. of Skelton’s Workes, 1568, nor in the Reges, Reginæ, Nobiles, &c., 1603, is there any copy of verses by our author on the Queen of Henry the Seventh: see in vol. i. 178, 179, 195, the three pieces which I have given from those sources: two of them at least were composed before the poet had sought refuge at Westminster, for one (written at Islip’s request) is dated 1512, and another, 1516; the third has no date.