words himself, and consumed much time with a fair tale."
Wolsey was unrelenting in his resentment, and Skelton never ventured from his place of voluntary confinement. He died on the 25th of June, 1529, and was buried in the chancel of the neighbouring church of St. Margaret, where the following inscription was placed upon his gravestone:
"Joannes Skeltonus, Vates Pierius, hic situs est."
He remained, nominally at least, rector of Dysse, till his decease, as the institution of his successor is dated the 17th of the following month.
"This ribald and ill-living wretch," such is the delicate language of Miss Agnes Strickland, who insinuates that King Henry's "grossest crimes" resulted from the "corruption imparted" by his former tutor, had been guilty of an unpardonable enormity in the eyes of the Christian clergy of that day, as perhaps also in the immaculate imagination of Miss Agnes Strickland. The Church that could denounce marriage and countenance brothels was scandalized that one of its ministers should be so obtuse to all notions of decorum, as to enter that state which it had solemnly pronounced dishonourable. Preferring to obey the moral rather than the ecclesiastical law, his name was loaded with disgrace, and "merry Skelton being a priest, and having a child by his wife, every one cried out: 'O! Skelton hath a child, fie on him!'"
His fluctuating reputation has now assumed some definite shape. The high opinion of his contemporaries, of the learned as of the vulgar, was succeeded by the unjust depreciation of the critics in the reign of Elizabeth: he was gradually neglected and almost forgotten. An effort was made in Pope's time to revive his fame by the republication of an edition of his works, but the epithet "beastly,"
