Twene hope and drede My lyfe I lede, But of my spede Small sekernes; Howe be it I rede Both worde and dede Should be agrede In noblenes: Or els, &c.”[110] “To my Lorde Cardynals right noble grace, &c. _Lenuoy._ Go, lytell quayre, apace, In moost humble wyse, Before his noble grace, That caused you to deuise This lytel enterprise; And hym moost lowly pray, In his mynde to comprise Those wordes his grace dyd saye Of an ammas gray. _Ie foy enterment en sa bone grace_.”[111] We also find that Skelton “gaue to my lord Cardynall” _The Boke of Three Fooles_.[112] What were the circumstances which afterwards alienated the poet from his powerful patron, cannot now be discovered: we only know that Skelton assailed the full-blown pride of Wolsey with a boldness which is astonishing, and with a fierceness of invective which has seldom been surpassed. Perhaps, it would have been better for the poet’s memory, if the passages just quoted had never reached us; but nothing unfavourable to his character ought to be hastily inferred from the alteration in his feelings towards Wolsey while the cause of their quarrel is buried in obscurity. The provocation must have been extraordinary, which transformed the humble client of the Cardinal into his “dearest foe.” We are told by Francis Thynne, that Wolsey was his father’s “olde enymye, for manye causes, but mostly for that my father had furthered Skelton to publishe his _Collin Cloute_ againste the Cardinall, the moste parte of whiche Booke was compiled in my fathers howse at Erithe in Kente.”[113] But though _Colyn Cloute_ contains passages which manifestly point at Wolsey, it cannot be termed a piece “_againste the Cardinall:_” and I have no doubt that the poem which Thynne had in view, and which by mistake he has mentioned under a wrong title, was our author’s _Why come ye nat to Courte_. In _Colyn Cloute_ Skelton ventured to aim only a few shafts at Wolsey: in _Why come ye nat to Courte_, and in _Speke, Parrot_, he let loose against him the full asperity of reproach.