acquisition of much property in Cornwall, including the manor of Polrode in St. Tudy, and the lease of the tolls on tin in Tewington, Tywarnhaile, and Helston. He was placed on the commission of peace for that county in 1510, 1511, 1514, and 1515, and he was on the commission for Middlesex in 1528, 1531, 1537, and 1539. In July 1518 and July 1521 he was appointed one of the commissioners for the duchy of Cornwall, and he was possibly the John Skewes who served in 1521 as high sheriff of Cornwall. Some deeds relating to his property are in Lansdowne MS. British Museum, 207 F.
In July 1516 a grant of the next presentation to a canonry at Windsor was made to Skewes and two others, and in 1525 he was one of the commissioners for the suppression of St. Frideswide's convent at Oxford and other foundations (Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 151). A fee of 6l. 13s. 4d. for his services is entered in 1519 in the expenses of Henry Courtenay, earl of Devon, and the same peer, then the Marquis of Exeter, writing to Wolsey in October 1525, recognised his relationship, calling him ‘my cosyn Skewes’ (Nichols, Lawford Hall, pp. 412–14). So late as 1534 he was employed as counsel. He died without issue on 23 May 1544; his will was dated from St. Sepulchre's parish, London.
His wife, Catherine, daughter of John Trethurffe of Trethurffe in Cornwall, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hugh Courtenay of Boconnoc, died in August 1537 (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 172).
Skewes was the author of the ‘Brevyat of a Cronacle made by Mathewe Paris … of the Conqueste of Duke William of Normandy uppon this Realme,’ Harl. MS. Brit. Mus. 2258, art. 9, pp. 35–125. It is said to have been written with his own hand, and it was given by him to Reginald Mohun. He also wrote a treatise, ‘De Bello Trojano.’ Fuller thought him ‘inclined to the Protestant reformation.’
[Matt. Paris's Hist. Minor (ed. Madden), preface p. xlii; Hardy's Materials, iii. 152–3; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 58–9; Fuller's Worthies (1811), i. 217; Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, p. 709; Tanner's Bibl. Britannico-Hibernica (1748), p. 677; Nicolas's Testamenta Vetusta, ii. 495; Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 705; Prynne's Writs, iv. 280, 780–3; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. ii. 654, 727, iii. 1337; Maclean's Trigg Minor, iii. 333, 385–7; Harl. MS. 4031, f. 77; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, i. ii. iii. and iv. passim, vii. 607.]
SKYNNER, Sir JOHN (1724?–1805), judge, son of John and Elizabeth Skynner of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, was born in London about 1724, and was educated at Westminster school, where at the age of fourteen he became a king's scholar, and was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, at Whitsuntide 1742. He matriculated at Oxford on 19 June 1742, and graduated B.C.L. on 27 Jan. 1751. He was admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn on 21 Nov. 1739, and, having been called to the bar in Michaelmas term 1748, joined the Oxford circuit. In Hilary term 1771 he was made a king's counsel, and appointed attorney-general of the duchy of Lancaster. In the same year he became a bencher of his inn. He was returned to the House of Commons for Woodstock at a by-election in January 1771, and continued to represent that borough until his appointment to the exchequer. He opposed the introduction of the Church Nullum Tempus Bill on 17 Feb. 1772 (Parl. Hist. xvii. 303–4), and on 3 April following was appointed second judge on the Chester circuit. He took part on 29 April 1774 in the discussion of the bill for the impartial administration of justice in Massachusetts Bay when he protested against the introduction of appeal for murder into America, and eulogised Blackstone's ‘Commentaries’ as one of the best books ever written upon the laws of this constitution (ib. xvii. 1294–5, 1296). On 12 April 1776 he was elected recorder of Oxford and presented with the freedom of that city. He contributed to the funds of the Bodleian Library (Wood, Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, 1796, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 949), and (1789) presented a piece of plate to the Oxford corporation.
Skynner was appointed lord chief baron of the exchequer in the place of Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe [q. v.], and received the honour of knighthood on 23 Nov. 1777. On the 27th of the same month he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and was sworn in as lord chief baron (Sir W. Blackstone, Reports, ii. 1178). After presiding in his court with much learning and ability for rather more than nine years, Skynner was compelled to resign, owing to ill-health, in the Christmas vacation of 1786–7 (Durnford and East, Term Reports, i. 551). He was admitted a member of the privy council on 23 March 1787, and retired into the country, living at Great Milton House, which he had inherited from his mother. He died at Bath on 26 Nov. 1805, and was buried in the south aisle of Great Milton church. Skynner married Martha, daughter of Edward Burn and Martha Davie. His wife died on 4 Dec. 1797. Their only child, Martha Frederica, was married, on 1 Aug. 1799, to the Right Hon. Richard Ryder, third son of Nathaniel, first baron Harrowby, and died on 8 Aug. 1821.
