Verses on the Trinity Ascribed to John Skelton

Abstract

Among the works listed as ‘Doubtful’ in the standard account of the Skelton canon by Kinsman and Yonge, is a series of prayers, each of two stanzas, to each person of the Trinity.1 The information about these prayers that they give is both inaccurate and incomplete. They describe these prayers as in rhyme royal stanzas; they are in 8-line stanzas rhyming ababbcbc, 48 lines in all. They note the appearance of these prayers in British Library MS Add. 20059, fols 100v–101,2 where they occur without a title or internal headings or attribution, and their appearance in Richard Lant’s edition, Certain bokes compiled by mayster Skelton ([1545]; STC 22598), sig. Cvr–v. But they do not note that they are also in Pithy, pleasaunt and profitable works of maister Skelton (1568; STC 22608), sigs avii–viii, nor that they appear in a manuscript formerly in the possession of J. Meade Falkner, sold at Sotheby’s, 12–14 December 1932, lot 86. This is a paper manuscript of 129 leaves described there as a Book of Hours. This poem, titled ‘A praier to the Father and to the Sonne, and to the holy Ghost compiled & made by the poet Skelton’ is on fols 100v–102v. This manuscript was subsequently in the collection of Robert S Pirie. In his sale at Sotheby’s, New York, 2–4 December 2015, it was lot 661 (where it is described as a prayer book and dated ‘c. 1580’). It is now MS Taylor 23 in Princeton University Library.3