Caxton, "to oversee and correct this said book."

John Skelton, like so many other literary men of those days, was
a priest. He studied, perhaps, both at Oxford and at Cambridge,
and became tutor to Prince, afterwards King, Henry VIII. We do
not know if he had an easy time with his royal pupil or not, but
in one of his poems he tells us that "The honour of England I
learned to spell" and "acquainted him with the Muses nine."

The days of Henry VIII were troublous times for thinking people.
The King was a tyrant, and the people of England were finding it
harder than ever to bow to a tyrant while the world was awakening
to new thought, and new desires for freedom, both in religion and
in life.

The Reformation had begun. The teaching of Piers Ploughman, the
preaching of Wyclif, had long since almost been forgotten, but it
had never altogether died out. The evils in the Church and in
high places were as bad as ever, and Skelton, himself a priest,
preached against them. He attacked other, even though he himself
sinned against the laws of priesthood. For he was married, and
in those days marriage was forbidden to clergymen, and his life
was not so fair as it might have been.

At first Wolsey, the great Cardinal and friend of Henry VIII, was
Skelton's friend too. But Skelton's tongue was mocking and
bitter. "He was a sharp satirist, but with more railing and
scoffery than became a poet-laureate,"* said one. The Cardinal
became an enemy, and the railing tongue was turned against him.
In a poem called Colin Cloute Skelton pointed out the evils of