Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/37

Rh contradiction. The Cardinal, at length, "being inveighed at by his pen, and charged with too much truth," issued orders for his arrest, and the satirist fled for sanctuary to Westminster, where Islip the Abbot afforded him an effectual safeguard.

One of the charges afterwards preferred against Wolsey bears a striking resemblance to a passage in one of Skelton's poems. In "Why come ye not to Court?" he writes:

Turning to the articles of impeachment, we find the fifteenth runs thus: "Also the said Lord Cardinal, sitting among the lords and others of your most honourable Privy Council, used himself, that if any man should show his mind, according to his duty, contrary to the opinion of the said Cardinal, he would so rake him up with his accustomable words that they were better to hold their peace than to speak, so that he would hear no man speak but one or two personages, so that he would have all the