Poetic Statesmanship and the Politics of Patronage in the Early Tudor Court: Material Concerns of John Skelton’s Early Career as a Critical Context for the Interpretation of The Bowge of Courte[1]

Ray Siemens
University of Victoria
siemens@uvic.ca

Ray Siemens. "Poetic Statesmanship and the Politics of Patronage in the Early Tudor Court: Material Concerns of John Skelton’s Early Career as a Critical Context for the Interpretation of The Bowge of Courte". Early Modern Literary Studies 15.1 (2009-10) <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/15-1/siemskel.html>.

1. Skelton’s Bowge of Courte is a document that has met with some divergence in critical opinion, in large part because of its inherent ambiguity. Some believe, for example, Skelton’s anti-court satire to be the textual representative of a now-lost early Tudor courtly entertainment;2 others, a larger group, hold that the Bowge is a verse satire that draws on the medieval tradition of the dream-vision. The form of the Bowge and its use of conventions leads to such disparate opinions, but a degree of the confusion must also be attributed to the interpretation of its subject matter — an act urged by the poet himself who, in the final rhyme-royal stanza, suggests that his audience consider the meaning of the dream-vision by re-casting its fictional events in corresponding terms of the contemporary world:
   

   I wolde therwith no man were myscontente
   Besechynge you that shall it see or rede
   In euery poynte to be indyfferente
   Syth all in substaunce of slumbrynge doth procede
   I wyll not saye it is mater indede
   But yet oftyme suche dremes be founde trewe
   Now constrewe ye what is the resydewe (533-9; emphasis mine)
   

   Given this, and given the nature of typical re-castings of the Bowge’s fictional contents, one might convincingly argue that the author-focussed context in which much criticism urges us to “constrewe” the Bowge’s “resydewe.”perpetuates the greatest degree of critical uncertainty.
   
   
2. Such uncertainty, however, is rarely informed by the conditions of poetic production in which Skelton found himself during the period which led up to and included his work on the Bowge; though neglected, this context draws into question a number of the patterns of critical speculation regarding the “resydewe” of the Bowge.
   
   Patterns of Interpreting the ‘resydewe’ of Skelton’s Bowge
   
   
3. While not specifically engaging the matter of the Bowge’s residue, an examination of the patterns governing such analysis is beneficial. A good number of interpretations, recent and older alike,3 find the Bowge to be a semi-autobiographical and personally-motivated satire of Henry VII’s court, or court life on the whole, wherein the actions of the first-person narrator, Drede, are analogous to Skelton’s own. There is, however, some difficulty with this type of interpretation. This difficulty becomes most apparent when one brings an autobiographical interpretation to the Bowge, when one begins the task of reasonably situating the Bowge within the personal circumstances of Skelton’s life. Few autobiographical interpretations are satisfying, and several leave the reader wondering if such a context can be reconstructed at all.
   
   
4. On a general level, of course, the Bowge of Courte is an anti-court satire, a work often taken to examine court life in general and standard terms; moreover, the Bowge itself probably draws upon the author’s own experience of the English and foreign courts. From the general, though, critical interpretations quickly move to the more specific. The Bowge then can become an examination of the English court, at a particular moment in Skelton’s life. For example, because the author/narrator takes on the role of the ship-jumping character Drede, one might read that Skelton himself has “jumped ship” (or is, perhaps, considering doing so) at the time of writing the Bowge. To this end, we note that Skelton did leave direct court service ca. 1502-3 for the rectory of Diss and, as is widely assumed, did so with some dissatisfaction. This situation, however, does not correspond with the slim set of facts available for exploring the autobiographical nature of the Bowge; the latest possible date for its authorship is established with its first imprint by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499 (STC 22597; Sale 573), some three or four years before Skelton actually left court.
   
   
5. Working with evidence of the printing date, and against the generally-held presumption that the date of composition is ca. 1498-9, it has been suggested that the Bowge might have been composed as early as some two decades prior to its first printing (ca. 1480).4 Associations, it is argued, relating to the physical setting of the Bowge — Harwich and, specifically, Powers’ Key — correspond with what can be historically reconstructed. Such an interpretation also strengthens a view of the relations between Skelton and the powerful Howard family.5 Much as this may be true, such details still do not provide a clearer frame of reference for the critic interested in an autobiographical interpretation because Skelton, as we are able to reconstruct, did not move in court circles until sometime shortly after his laureation at Oxford ca. 1488. Moreover, it is not at all certain that he was writing as early as 1480.6
   
   
6. The generally-held date of composition, ca. 1498-9, is also a possibility.7 However, if we are to believe that the Bowge is a personally-motivated satire, direct or indirect, against the court of Henry VII, this date seems unsuitable as well. This date corresponds with a time in which Skelton was rewarded by powerful patrons.8 Such reward would not be in keeping with a court figure openly satirising the court in print, for Henry VII was not one to reward such subversion, nor would a satire of such a subversive nature be in keeping with Skelton’s poetic mission at the time.
   
   
7. One can look for another date or set of circumstances that the Bowge might fit; alternatively, with the most probable dates and situations exhausted, one might also consider contemplating another biographical-literary version of its poet. While it has not been the pattern of recent scholarship to do so, this paper urges the latter course of action. Though we typically think of Skelton as a figure associated with the biting satire that is thought to have led to his residence in the sanctuary at Westminster,9 we tend to forget that Skelton was not such a figure for much of his early career. That he became a vicious satirist is clear — invective, personally-motivated or otherwise, is often considered Skelton’s chief literary attribute — but what is less acknowledged is that his early works overwhelmingly attest that his younger days are less characterised by the same type of outwardly-directed vituperation.
   
   
8. We cannot know with any certainty the specific situation of the Bowge, but we do know that it was printed in 1499;10 moreover, what we can know with good certainty about Skelton is that elements of his early character, the character that produced the Bowge, are not the same as those chiefly associated with the later Skelton. When we critically consider the Bowge, then, we must keep in mind this less-common view of Skelton — a view formed as much by examining Skelton’s other early works as it is by looking beyond Skelton, solely, to his place in the literary milieu in which he initially wrote and, with gradual preferment, rose.
   
   Skelton, Laureate, and Poetic Statesmanship in the Early Tudor Court
   
   
9. Skelton’s position in the later Henrician court, after the accession of Henry VIII and the displacement (and probably death) of fellow-poet Stephen Hawes, was that of Orator Regius.11 While Skelton’s role was somewhat similar in Henry VII’s court, his place in the earlier court was not so clearly defined. From his Oxford laureation, Skelton saw himself as poet laureate, albeit not in keeping with the general way the title was applied at the time; rather, he adopted the title in the sense that it was held by Petrarch and, closer to Skelton’s time, in the sense that it was practicably defined by the first and most prominent laureate in Henry VII’s employ: Bernard André.12 Skelton associated the honour with the monarchy rather than the universities, a connection suggested by the emphasis he gives to the fact that it was the king who presented him with this honour (Agenst Garnesche 80-5), by the explicit association of the title of laureate with propagandistic works of his early career, and by the overall place he sought for his own poetic works (at least those written before his departure for Diss) in the literary milieu of Henry VII’s court. “Laureate” was a title by which Skelton could define himself in relation to other poets, as well as to the early Tudor court upon which he and his contemporaries relied for their livelihood.
   
   
10. Court-based poetry at the time was supported by the system of patronage that existed under Henry VII. Maintaining Skelton, as well as literary figures such as the foreigners André, Pietro Carmeliano, and Giovanni Gigli, among others, this system made certain demands on its participants.13 André, a Frenchman, would act as Henry’s official historiographer and, later, tutor to Prince Arthur. Carmeliano and Gigli, both Italians, were Henry’s Latin secretaries. Skelton, after ca. 1494, was tutor to Prince Henry, also devising interludes and entertainments for the court and serving Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, personally. In addition to these duties, all were expected to produce works of political eulogy and regal magnification for the court.
    
    
11. Royal literary patronage — being contingent on a poet’s ability to serve the court as orator, tutor, secretary, and so forth, as well as a propagandist — was largely dependent on one’s ability to participate in what is best described as poetic statesmanship. As laureate to Henry VII, Bernard André had participated in such statesmanship since Henry’s accession,14 commemorating the major events of the early reign: the victory at Bosworth, Elizabeth’s coronation, the birth of Prince Arthur, the murder of the Earl of Northumberland, and beyond.15 Moreover, André’s career, already established by the time of Skelton’s laureation, appears to have provided a model of successful poetic statesmanship for the newly-graduated poet with court ambitions.16
    
    
12. Skelton, when wishing to enter court life ca. 1488, immediately and rightly embarked on projects similar to those of André. In that year, Skelton praised the king with his commemoration of the feast of Saint George at Windsor Castle (1488).17 In the following year, his Dolorus Dethe treated the Earl of Northumberland’s demise in the northern rebellion (1489). He also celebrated the creation of Arthur as the Prince of Wales (1489)18 and, later, that of Prince Henry as the Duke of York (1494).19 When the French ambassador Gaguin launched a poetic attack on Henry after an unsuccessful attempt at negotiating a treaty with England in 1489, Skelton was among the retinue of poets — André, Carmeliano, Gigli, and Cornelius Vitelli as well — who responded in kind.20 Some time later, Skelton commemorated the king’s suppression of the Cornish Uprising in a lost work which presumably parallelled André’s Douze Triomphes de Henry VII (1497).21
    
    
13. By participating literarily in such acts of statesmanship, Skelton would eventually find a relatively secure place at court. Shortly after Skelton wrote verses for Prince Henry’s creation, he was appointed as his tutor (ca. 1494).22 While tutor, a term which lasted until sometime after Arthur’s death in 1502,23 Skelton received payments from the king (1497, 1498, 1502), enjoyed a fast rise in the clergy (1498), and was praised twice by Erasmus (1499).24 In fulfilment of the office of Prince Henry’s tutor, Skelton again followed the literary precedent set by André, who was Arthur’s tutor.25 Like André, Skelton authored and translated a number of didactic works: tracts relating to governing such as the Boke of Honourous Estate (G 1172; KY 25, L78), Royall Demenaunce (G 1174; KY 30, L108), Soueraynte (G 1191; KY 31, L111), and Speculum Principis (G 1226-32; KY 14, C50); ostensibly moral works like the Boke How Men Shulde Fle Synne (G 1173; KY 25, L76) and Lerne You to Dye When Ye Wyll;26 and others, including the Boke to Speke Well or Be Styll,27 the New Gramer in Englysshe (G 1182; KY 28, L99), and Good Advysement.28 Skelton’s Of Lovers Testamentis and of There Wanton Wyllis (ca. 1495)29 is of this time as well, and, from the same period in which the king made payments to Skelton, are his Diologgis of Ymagynacyon (ca. 1498),30 Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun (ca. 1498),31 and, lastly, The Bowge of Courte (ca. 1498-9). In short, from the time of his appointment as tutor, Skelton completed didactic and moral works in fulfilment of that office at the same time as he participated in the poetic politics, the poetic statesmanship, expected of a court poet.32 But the Bowge, an anti-court satire, seems peculiarly out of place considering Skelton’s poetic mission at this time if we believe that its satiric matter is personally-motivated.
    
    
14. Prior to his appointment as Henry’s tutor, there is precious little evidence upon which to establish Skelton’s exact place within the court, and even whether or not Henry VII was his chief benefactor. His honorary laureations from Cambridge and Louvain before 149333 may suggest the same royal favour that his Oxford laureation might, but no record of payment like that which exists for André’s entry into royal service as laureate is extant for Skelton. One might note that Caxton, in his preface to Eneydos (1490), praises Skelton for his poetic skills34 and for his capability as translator of the Diodorus and the now-lost Epystlys of Tulle (G 1185; KY 27, L88), but Caxton does not explicitly connect Skelton with the court as Erasmus would in 1499.35 Prior to 1494, verses presented at a number of formal occasions — the feast of Saint George, the Dolorus Dethe, the celebration of Arthur’s creation, the Recule ageinst Gaguyne, and the celebration of Prince Henry’s creation as Duke of York — certainly place Skelton in royal circles in some capacity. That said, the precise nature of that capacity cannot be re-constructed, but his presence in court circles without records confirming appointment suggest that Skelton was probably there in the hope of securing preferment from the crown such as that received by André and other court literati.
    
    
15. What can be better re-constructed is the place in court that Skelton saw for himself, before and just after his laureation. With some necessary scrutiny, his early works are suggestive of his place and poetic mission — a mission that sees its expression up to and including the time the Bowge was written.
    
    The Material Concerns of the Diodorus
    
    
16. It is clear from Skelton’s earliest properly-attributable work, the prose translation of the Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus, that he looked chiefly to the court and, specifically, to the crown for support as he prepared to leave Oxford ca. 1488.36 In addition to the lost comedy Achademios,37 his translation was to satisfy requirements for his laureation. Within the Diodorus, Skelton presented himself to England, its humanists, and, specifically, to Henry VII, as one who understood the value of history to the monarchy and, at the same time, he explicated the place he saw for himself in the Tudor court. Skelton had seen the path to preferment — Henry had, in André, recently taken on a poet and historiographer — and, recognizing in part the criteria necessary for a post such as André had recently received, sought to show his ability in the same area. But, in addition to projecting the humanistic concerns one might expect in such a work, Skelton also projects the material concerns inherent in the young poet’s intended move from the halls of learning to those of court.
    
    
17. As the Diodorus’ editors, Edwards and Salter, point out, Skelton did not translate Diodorus’ original history, which was written in Greek; rather, he translated the popular contemporary Latin translation of the work made by Poggio Bracciolini (ca. 1449).38 Traditionally dated ca. 1488,39 the extant witness of the Diodorus is a copy of Skelton’s manuscript and, in the copying of the original, much of the dedicatory material expected in works of this nature appears not to have been retained.40 That said, scribal corrections to the proem’s heading41 and to the first lines of the dedication point to Skelton’s original shaping of preliminary matter. Especially suggestive is one emendation to the dedication that alternates the phrase “Most reuerent Holy Fader,” which would suit Poggio’s dedicatee of Pope Nicholas V, with words more applicable to Skelton’s potential regal benefactor: “Most reuerent & myghty prynce.”42
    
    
18. Even in the absence of Skelton’s own dedicatory material, his appeal for support in the work is evident. In the first place, that Skelton would choose to translate such a text is itself telling. On the surface, the Diodorus is a history of countries and their rulers, and Skelton’s act of apparent classical translation — apparent in the sense that he did not work from the original Greek Diodorus, nor even attempt to establish this pretence — is a humanistic gesture of the type for which Poggio was noted.43 But humanism for Skelton was more a means to an end than a genuine commitment,44 and a humanistic translation of the Diodorus would be helpful in several ways for one interesting in securing royal patronage. The Diodorus was helpful because it already contained arguments which, when properly contextualised, would allow Skelton to draw upon, for his own purposes, the situations that inspired Diodorus and, even more so, Poggio. Diodorus’ project (ca. 50 BC) was to provide a full history for a world whose unification under the Roman empire seemed immanent, situating that singly-governed world in the context of the multitude of governors that preceded it (II: xix). Nicholas V (Tomaso Parentucelli), after emerging triumphant from a viciously-split contest for the papacy which saw the abdication of the antipope and an end to the schism within the church, became patron to Poggio for his translation of Diodorus’ work (Shepherd 433-5). Given this, it is worth noting that Skelton, living in an age which hoped it had witnessed the end of factious warring between the houses of York and Lancaster and had seen the unification of those factions in Henry VII’s marriage with Elizabeth, would provide the same history.
    
    
19. Skelton’s Diodorus, moreover, was made available at a time when the king was himself showing that he held the subject of history in some regard, even if only for its use as propaganda.45 Skelton’s translation of Diodorus’ work — a retrospective of exemplary rulers, organised as a series of accounts and presented with some moral overtones — presented a view of history suitable to the tastes of the king, as well as a vernacular model of the history that was particularly well-suited to Henrician apologetics.46 Offering England’s humanists a useful history, and its propagandists a suitable model of history, the Diodorus could also be used to draw implicit comparisons between the glorious Rome of antiquity, the more contemporary and unified church, and the newly-united England, as well as between the emperor of Diodorus’ Rome, Pope Nicholas V, and Henry VII. In such an offering, and in such implicit comparisons, Skelton was also putting himself forward to Henry VII in the same role that Poggio served Nicholas.
    
    
20. Arguments toward the same end are more explicit in the translated document itself. Initially, Skelton’s concern for support is found subtly in the emphasis placed in Diodorus’ work (and Poggio’s translation of it) on the value of historians and writers to the princes they serve. But, while the untainted sense of the original provides good arguments for the royal sustenance of those who would work with the matter of history,47 Skelton’s main argument is found in the amplifications he made in his translation of Poggio’s text.
    
    
21. Skelton’s translation recognisably anticipates his preferred situation after laureation. Of course, acts of translation are concurrently acts of interpretation, but Poggio’s text at times appears little more than a starting point for Skelton’s meditations. The best explanation of Skelton’s style of translation, which especially in the later books consists essentially of embellishment and expansion with a focus on issues close at hand to the poet, is provided by Skelton’s biographer, Maurice Pollet, who notes that Skelton’s translation suggests that he “had to pave his way to court” (12).
    
    
22. Skelton, seeking advancement in court, uses the Diodorus to promote his cause. Discussion of the muse Thalia, who illustrates poetic commendation, speaks overtly to Skelton’s skills and their value:48
    

    Dame Thalia the thirde her name is assigned, whiche denomynacion representeth the commendacion of poetes immortaly registred, whiche they haue pourchaced by merytis of their famous lytterature, whos names so contynued by season of yeris passyngly moche enlengthed, alleway more & more enverdured they be with new reportes fresshe and grene perdurably growynge in the solacyous / virydary & most lusty herber of Dame Memorye. (359)

    Following quickly upon this, Skelton notes the placement he desires upon graduation, and the figure from whom he expects to receive this appointment. In his amplification of Poggio’s thoughts on the muse Erato, Poggio’s brief statement becomes the following:49
    
    
    

    The sixte is Dame Erato, whiche, thurgh her bounteous promocion, hir scolers and discyples brungeth vnto so noble auaunsement that whan she hath enryched theym with the gloryous tresour of connynge & wysedom, they shal stande in fauour of ryal princis, and so atteyne vnto the spiritual rowme of prelacye or other temporal promocion . . . (359)

    Skelton himself, whose cunning and wisdom would be proven in this document and by his coming laureation,50 wished to stand in the favour of his royal prince and to receive noble advancement, preferably office of prelate or an equivalent post in the temporal prelacy, the court.
    
    
23. The argument for a prelacy has its roots much earlier in the work, in a conversation between King Darius of Egypt and his chief minister, who is referred to as “Archebisshop of the prelacye” (82). Skelton adapts the conversation to show that written history immortalises those who pursue noble deeds.51 The original recounts a story in which Darius wishes to erect a statue of himself before that of Sesoösis. After the chief priest objects, Darius vows that, once he has lived the same number of years as Sesoösis, he will again ask an assembly of priests to judge whether or not he is worthy to have his statue in that place (Diodorus 205). Skelton follows the story to the point of Darius’ vow but gives the king additional words. In Skelton’s rendition, the king asks the Archbishop to
    

    . . . brynge forth in wrytynge alle such royall fayttes as he wrought whilis his lyf enduryd, for that shold be his very ground wherupon he myght arrette hym-self to exemplefye fayttes of royall courage. (82)

    By the time of Skelton’s work on the Diodorus, Henry VII had completed great deeds; his panegyrists had been quick to accentuate this from the earliest days of his reign. Henry, moreover, had also already appointed one laureate, André, to capture and praise his past (and, presumably, future) exploits. Though André was not a prelate, as the word itself relates to religious office, one condition of André’s appointment clarifies Skelton’s argument in the Diodorus: André’s secular living was a precursor to a clerical one, for he was to receive an annuity from the king until such a time as the church would grant him of a similar magnitude.52 By appealing to the king for a prelacy or similar secular position,53 Skelton urges an appointment with sustenance similar to André’s.
    
    
24. Proving facility with the language of learning, showing an understanding of the art of translation, and demonstrating a keen awareness of the place of history in Tudor poetic propaganda (the last of which would be key to regal preferment), the Diodorus placed Skelton in the circle of André, Gigli, and Carmeliano in terms of intellectual capability. However, it appears not to have produced the result wished by Skelton. While Caxton would praise it, Skelton’s Diodorus did not secure him a prelacy, nor a position like that obtained by historiographer/chronicler Polydore Vergil some years later. Skelton did not supplant André, nor did he join him in predominantly historical endeavours. The Diodorus did probably help to speed his entry into Tudor service and surely worked toward his placement as tutor some six years after its completion, but the body of writings coming immediately after his laureation suggests that the material argument of the Diodorus was not received such that Skelton’s need for a beneficent patron was removed.
    
    
25. With his appointment ca. 1494 as tutor, though, and surely by the time of his 1498-9 payments and praises, Skelton no longer had such a need. The secure nature of the patronage that he received at the time of the Bowge’s printing — a far cry from that which he appears to have had as he translated (and projected his material concerns in) the Diodorus — is reflected in the silence regarding personal material needs in the Bowge. That said, the Diodorus reflects one aspect of the poet’s quest for the “bowge,” the “courtly rations,” necessary for the sustenance that he would later write about in satiric terms.
    
    Extra-regal Patronage, and the Concerns of Skelton’s Dolorus Dethe
    
    
26. In spite of critical conjecture that he was attached solely to the court immediately following his laureation, Skelton’s position at court just after the Diodorus is difficult to establish. His position appears to have remained such that he continued to seek support from, and benefit from the patronage of, a number of benefactors, including Henry VII but not restricted exclusively to him. The verses in Skelton’s Garlande of Laurel that celebrate women associated ca. 1492 with the Howard family, and the Garlande’s setting at Sheriff Hutton (the castle at which Thomas Howard resided at that time), provide one set of clues toward establishing Skelton’s extra-regal patronage in his early years as a court poet.54 This association would last well into Henry VIII’s reign, but the support that led to the composition of these verses may have begun shortly after the completion of the Diodorus. The ca. 1488 date of origin in Skelton’s personal calendar, which roughly coincides with his taking leave of Oxford, also coincides with the release of Thomas Howard (the Earl of Surrey and later Duke of Norfolk) from the tower late in that year to put down the northern uprising. This uprising resulted in the murder that is the occasion for Skelton’s Dolorus Dethe and Muche Lamentable Chaunce of the Mooste Honorable Erle of Northumberlande. As well, Skelton’s setting of works in Howard houses and his versified flattery of more than one generation of Howard ladies testify to that family’s support of Skelton’s early career, possibly such that the rejuvenation of the Howard family fortunes (ca. 1489) connects with Skelton’s gradual rise in court circles.55
    
    
27. Strong or weak as it may have been, Skelton’s service to the Howards was certainly simultaneous with that to Henry VII. But Skelton associated with more northern families than the Howards, for his response to the murder of Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, in a tax revolt in 1489 — the very event that would lead to Henry VII’s appointment to the north of the once-disgraced Thomas Howard — suggests further connections. In writing the Dolorus Dethe, Skelton was acting like André as a Tudor apologist, much as he did in his other poems of the same time. However, in doing so, Skelton sought to set himself apart from other apologists in a manner that would have attracted attention at court as well as in the Percy household. Like the Diodorus, the Dolorus Dethe is a work which documents the material concerns of its author at the time of its composition.
    
    
28. Although both Skelton and André wrote responses to this event,56 Skelton differentiated his work significantly, writing in a very dissimilar style and basing his response to the event on very different grounds. While André’s poem is a brief work containing 12 stanzas of four lines each, Skelton’s is comparatively longer, 217 lines (excluding prefatory and following matter), making up 31 stanzas of rhyme royal. André presented his work in Latin; Skelton found his voice in English, bracing his poem at either end with lines of Latin. Their differing approaches to the event on the surface also reflect their individual relations to the court in 1489. André, a continentally-trained cleric who was imported to England from France, was already receiving a generous annual pension. Skelton, born and trained an Englishman, was still seeking an adequate court living. While he would later fashion himself to be at the pinnacle of court poets writing in English,57 at the time of writing the Dolorus Dethe he was seeking royal favour, and the court lacked a poet working in this tradition.58 Skelton’s use of English and employment of rhyme royal in the Dolorus Dethe, thus, was itself part of a larger strategy to gain recognition at court as an English poet59 (a strategy that also saw his participation in the tradition of the vernacular lyric).60 Skelton was offering the native flavour lacking in the court poetry of the early part of Henry’s reign while upholding the standards of poetic statesmanship, an innovation that brought both valuable material and pro-Tudor sentiments to the vernacular.
    
    
29. Certainly, Skelton’s choice of language and form would draw attention to his work, but the gulf between Skelton and André’s pieces is deeper: the distinction carries also into the matter and tone of each poet’s work. André glosses the event superficially and appears relatively untroubled by the uprising and the murder, whereas Skelton probes more deeply into the event and presents aspects of it in a Lydgate-like moral discourse.61 André’s work is a standard court poem, a conventional victory ode wherein the speaker presents a detached, court-centred view of the event, and ultimately praises the king. Skelton, however, deals with the event itself; he apologises for his plainness both in exposing the bare truth of the matter and in using rude English and unpolished rhetoric.62 While André thus chose to put an expected polish on the event, Skelton’s purpose was different.63 Skelton’s words acknowledge the incident and act as a vehicle by which others might know of the nature of the deed. The Dolorus Dethe looks to the moral centre of the situation, criticizing those who deserted the Earl and examining the bond between the people and their lord. Notably, at the same time it offers Skelton’s services to the new head of the family that had suffered the loss.
    
    
30. Skelton, unlike Henry’s historian André in many ways in his treatment of the event, was also connected personally with the north64 and — as is suggested by his display of knowledge regarding the Northumberland household in the poem — was quite familiar with the people affected by the tragedy; André, lacking similar ties to the land and, seemingly, the same familiarity with the personalities, was less equipped to present a work with those concerns at the centre. As such, Skelton is able to intimate personal concern while presenting an explicit offer of service.65 This becomes evident when we consider that the poem eulogises the Earl in an address to his young successor, Henry Algernon Percy, and also to a member of the Percy household, William Rukshaw.66 At the time of the Earl’s death and the poem’s composition, however, Henry Algernon Percy (but a boy, at 11 years of age) was not old enough to assume control of the household; with the death of his father, Percy became a ward of the king. Percy’s wardship would lessen the potential impact of a direct appeal by Skelton and, while a plea to Percy in a propagandistic court poem could be construed as a petition to the king for royal appointment to the Percy household, Henry VII’s involvement with his wards generally did not run in this direction. The situation, though, does help explain the concluding address to Rukshaw.67 Skelton’s address to Rukshaw — who was at Cambridge at the same time as Skelton (ca. 1480) and who, after leaving Cambridge that year, had found immediate employment in the Percy household68 — draws upon this previous intimacy. By addressing a man who had been in the service of the Percies for nearly a decade, Skelton was appealing to an influential member of the household, one who might be of best assistance to him.
    
    
31. In lamenting the death of the Earl, Skelton was, thus, doing more that fulfilling his duty as propagandist for Henry VII and vying for a stronger position in the Henrician court as a uniquely English poet. By addressing the young Percy through the event, with direct and indirect appeals,69 his poem is a personal solicitation, a vehicle for Skelton’s potential advancement — be it a monetary reward for the eulogy, or the longer association with the Percy household that is suggested by other works and circumstances.70
    
    
32. The extra-regal support provided to Skelton by the Howards and the Percies would, like Skelton’s own acts of Tudor apologetics, attract notice of the kind that could work towards a more secure court appointment. He would continue to write state-oriented and propagandistic works after the Dolorus Dethe, though never in the same concentration as that of the several year period beginning with the completion of the Diodorus. Moreover, while he would ultimately receive a stable court appointment as tutor to prince Henry, this would occur roughly six years after the completion of the Diodorus, after writing verses in praise of the prince at his creation as Duke of York. But the position as tutor itself — in addition to reflecting his status as laureate, his intellectual standing in the milieu of Henry’s early court, and his perseverance in seeking a generous royal appointment — is not solely an indication of Skelton’s deserved embrace by the king. The position also reflects further extra-regal patronage: that of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII.71
    
    
33. Skelton’s placement as tutor was not explicitly a regal appointment, because Margaret, not Henry, was charged with the education of the younger prince.72 In Henry’s 1497 payment to Skelton, as is often noted, the document refers to Skelton as the “kinges moder poete.” Certainly, his works of a more pious nature are suggestive of his association with this patroness. “Uppon a Deedmans Hed,” one of the lyrics in Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne (ca. 1495), may have been written at the occasion of a token provided by Margaret shortly after Skelton’s appointment (Kinney 82). Skelton would also translate Guilleville’s La Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine for her73 and write an epitaph for her at Westminster. Skelton probably also wrote the “Prayer to the Father of Heaven” (ca. 1487)74 and adapted “Wofully Araid” (ca. 1495) for Margaret.75 Concurrent with the patronage of the Howards, the Percies, and the king, Margaret’s influence on Skelton’s position, moreover, is evident after his first departure from court circles, for she would provide him his living at Diss.76
    
    Concerns of Patronage, Acts of Poetic Statesmanship, and the Bowge
    
    
34. What emerges from such a consideration of Skelton’s early works — one which looks to the conditions of poetic production in the early Tudor court, the acts of poetic statesmanship integral to the role of court poet (and “laureate,” as Skelton viewed the title), and the multiple ends that Skelton sought in his two major early works (the Diodorus and the Dolorus Dethe) — is, clearly, that there is an autobiographical context for many of his works. This context is, however, not the same as that of the later Skelton, the Orator Regius to Henry VIII who directly satirised the court in his interlude Magnificence and scolded Wolsey in his Why Come Ye Nat To Courte, and others. Rather, the earlier context reflects the personal material concerns of a poet operating within the system of regal and extra-regal patronage that existed in the earliest years of the Tudor era.
    
    
35. While Skelton received some recognition for his Diodorus — and may have been rewarded to some degree for his works immediately following which commemorated, eulogised, and responded to important events in the court — Skelton’s early career saw him vying in the Diodorus, the Dolorus Dethe, and other works for necessary extra-regal patronage and increased regal recognition. Even when granted that recognition, in the form of the support and attention given to the tutor to a potential heir to the throne, Skelton does not turn to the invective we associate with him from his time at Diss and beyond. Rather, he continued his participation in acts of poetic statesmanship and added to them also the production of didactic and moralistic materials: the Boke of Honourous Estate, Royall Demenaunce, Soueraynte, the Boke How Men Shulde Fle Synne, Lerne You to Dye When Ye Wyll, the Boke to Speke Well or Be Styll, the New Gramer in Englysshe, Good Advysement, and Speculum Principis,77 among others, the majority of which are accepted to follow the printing of the Bowge. He had written some satire before the Bowge — consider, for example here, the lyric “Of all nacyons vnder the heuyn” of his Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne — but this was satire that was put in terms favorable to the court; in the case of “Of all nacyons vnder the heuyn,” the target of Skelton’s satiric canon was painted with the negative identities of political traitor, pretender to the throne, and others.
    
    
36. Skelton’s invective, then, had not by the time of his composition of the Bowge turned on the court, nor was it (in that form) the dominant mode of his writing. As noted earlier, the time it is typically and most sensibly thought that Skelton produced the Bowge (ca. 1498-9) is the same time in which he received promotion (from subdeacon, to deacon, to priest) in the church, two generous payments from the king, and praise from Erasmus; it is also the time in which his literary projects specifically looked toward pleasing the crown, the Diologgis of Ymagynacyon and the Tratyse of Triumphis of the Rede Rose among them. It was, in short, a time during which Skelton saw the fruition of his long labour, a time during which the concerns for stable patronage put forward in his early work had been clearly and positively satisfied.
    
    
37. Given this context, the Bowge does not appear at all to be an autobiographically-influenced, specifically English, and personally-motivated anti-court satire. Akin to most other works of Skelton’s early career, the Bowge reflects the material concerns of his position. Unlike those of the Diodorus and the Dolorus Dethe, however, those concerns are implicit in presentation, unified in focus, and inherently reflective of an adherence to court preferences and interests — chief among them those associated with expectations of poetic statesmanship and the requirements of patronage — that would dominate his works after his appointment as tutor. As such, we can expect the Bowge to be more of a general satire, adhering to conventions of the dream-vision and interpreting those of the morality, perhaps containing specific allusions (the “resydewe”) to a foreign court that now are lost on contemporary readers78 but, just as probably, interpreting temporally-fashionable elements of works such as the Ship of Fools for the edification and the pleasure of the court, while providing a general anti-court satire and drawing attention in a conventional way to the traditional allusive operation of the dream-vision.
    
    
Appendix 1: Early Works Mentioned79