John Scogan, often confounded with an anterior Henry, has been named as the Laureate of Henry IV., and immediate successor of Chaucer.  Laureate Jonson seems to encourage the notion:—­

  “Mere Fool. Skogan?  What was he?

“Jophiel. Oh, a fine gentleman, and master of arts Of Henry the Fourth’s time, that made disguises For the King’s sons, and writ in ballad-royal Daintily well.

  “Mere Fool.  But he wrote like a gentleman?

“Jophiel.  In rhyme, fine, tinkling rhyme, and flowand verse, With now and then some sense; and he was paid for’t, Regarded and rewarded; which few poets Are nowadays."[7]

But Warton places Scogan in the reign of Edward IV., and reduces him to the level of Court Jester, his authority being Dr. Andrew Borde, who, early in the sixteenth century, published a volume of his platitudes.[8] There is nothing to prove that he was either poet or Laureate; while, on the other hand, it must be owned, one person might at the same time fill the offices of Court Poet and Court Fool.  It is but fair to say that Tyrwhitt, who had all the learning and more than the accuracy of Warton, inclines to Jonson’s estimate of Scogan’s character and employment.

One John Kay, of whom we are singularly deficient in information, held the post of Court Poet under the amorous Edward IV.  What were his functions and appointments we cannot discover.

Andrew Bernard held the office under Henry VII. and Henry VIII.  He was a churchman, royal historiographer, and tutor to Prince Arthur.  His official poems were in Latin.  He was living as late as 1522.

John Skelton obtained the distinction of Poet-Laureate at Oxford, a title afterward confirmed to him by the University of Cambridge:  mere university degrees, however, without royal indorsement.  Henry VIII. made him his “Royal Orator,” whatever that may have been, and otherwise treated him with favor; but we hear nothing of sack or salary, find nothing among his poems to intimate that his performances as Orator ever ran into verse, or that his “laurer” was of the regal sort.

A long stride carries us to the latter years of Queen Elizabeth, where, and in the ensuing reign of James, we find the names of Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton interwoven with the bays.  Spenser’s possession of the laurel rests upon no better evidence than that, when he presented the earlier books of the “Faery Queen” to Elizabeth, a pension of fifty pounds a year was conferred upon him, and that the praises of Gloriana ring through his realm of Faery in unceasing panegyric.  But guineas are not laurels, though for sundry practical uses they are, perhaps, vastly better; nor are the really earnest and ardent eulogia of the bard of Mulla the same in kind with the harmonious twaddle of Tate, or the classical quiddities of Pye.  He was of another sphere, the highest heaven of song, who