Note 53 — SOME ACCOUNT OF SKELTON AND HIS WRITINGS.

Garlande of Laurell, vol. i. 410.—After noticing that while Arthur was yet alive, Henry was destined by his father to be archbishop of Canterbury, “it has been remarked,” says Mrs. Thomson, “that the instructions bestowed upon Prince Henry by his preceptor, Skelton, were calculated to render him a scholar and a churchman, rather than an enlightened legislator.” Mem. of the Court of Henry the Eighth, i. 2. But the description of the Speculum Principis, quoted above, is somewhat at variance with such a conclusion. The same lady observes in another part of her work, “To Skelton, who in conjunction with Giles Dewes, clerk of the library to Henry the Seventh, had the honour of being tutor to Henry the Eighth, this king evinced his approbation,” ii. 590, and cites in a note the Epistle to Henry the Eighth prefixed to Palsgrave’s Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, 1530, where mention is made of “the synguler clerke maister Gyles Dewes somtyme instructour to your noble grace in this selfe tong.” Though Dewes taught French to Henry, surely it by no means follows that he was “his tutor in conjunction with Skelton:” a teacher of French and a tutor are very different.