But my recounting is
Of them that do amiss."

*Same as canon.

Yet, although Skelton said he would not decry any good man or any
good work, his spirit was a mocking one. He was fond of harsh
jests and rude laughter, and no person or thing was too high or
too holy to escape his sharp wit. "He was doubtless a pleasant
conceited fellow, and of a very sharp wit," says a writer about
sixty years later, "exceeding bold, and would nip to the very
quick when he once set hold."*

*William Webbe.

And being bold as bitter, and having set hold with hatred upon
Wolsey, he in another poem called Why come ye not to Court? and
in still another called Speake, Parrot, wrote directly against
the Cardinal. Yet although Skelton railed against the Cardinal
and against the evils in the Church, he was no Protestant. He
believed in the Church of Rome, and would have been sorry to
think that he had helped the "heretics."

Wolsey was still powerful, and he made up his mind to silence his
enemy, so Skelton found himself more than once in prison, and at
last to escape the Cardinal's anger he was forced to take
sanctuary in Westminster. There he remained until he died a few
months before his great enemy fell from power.

As many of Skelton's poems were thus about quarrels over religion