It is a singular but incontrovertible fact, that there are many individuals now living, who are indebted for various benefits, and even no inconsiderable wealth (in their corporate capacity), to the liberality of long-departed jesters at our English Courts. The estates so long held by the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, at Walworth, were originally the pious gift of the first English jester on record.C The name of this joculator was Hitard, perhaps Hit-hard, from the success of his sayings. He belonged to Edmund Ironside, who, out of gratitude, bestowed on him the town of Walworth, in the year 1016. That most gallant King could have had little leisure to listen to the wit of Hit-hard, for his entire reign was comprised within seven months of the year last mentioned, and he was fighting against Canute and his Danes nearly the whole time. Hit-hard was more fortunate, for he continued landlord of Walworth during the reigns of Canute, Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and100 a portion of the reign of Edward the Confessor. In the latter reign, after a quiet enjoyment of his dignity for about thirty years, Hit-hard resolved to proceed to Rome, there to live the remainder of his days, and there to die. Previous to setting out, he performed a grateful act most gracefully. He drew up a deed by which he conferred the whole of his possessions at Walworth,—that was, in fact, the whole of Walworth itself,—upon the Cathedral of Canterbury. He even went down to the ancient city, and entering the church, placed the deed of conveyance, with his own hands, upon the high altar. And then the venerable ex-jester to the gallant Ironside set off to the Holy City, helped on his way, no doubt, by many a “Pax vobiscum!” In the stormy times that followed, we have no record of any individual court jester, though there is no reason to doubt of the presence of that official at our Courts before the Conquest. William, both as Duke and King, possessed this ordinary gay appendage to his household. He loved mirth, as he loved good living; and as we know that he conferred a manor on his cook, for making an excellent soup, we may be prepared to find that he was not an indifferent patron to a meritorious fool.
Accordingly, the great Conqueror, solemn man as he sometimes was, did not think his household complete without the jester. Indeed, we hear of more than one. They were princely fellows, and had a right princely master. One of these, Gollet, or Gallet, a native of Bayeux, hearing of a conspiracy against William’s life, went to his chamber-door, and roused the great Duke out of his first sleep, by beating against it with an iron hammer, and crying out at the same time, according to the rhymed edition of the story, by Robert Waice:
“Ouvrez, dit-il, ouvrez, ouvrez!
Jà morrez tout; levez, levez!”
This good turn merited great recompense; but we know101 not what Gollet got for his faithful service. On the other hand, we hear of a guerdon to another of William’s fools, but we are not told of any special act of which it was the reward. The lucky personage was Berdic, the Joculator, who retired from Court and merry duty, the lord of three towns, with five carucates of land, and all rent-free; notice of which will be found in Domesday Book, under the head of “Gloucester.” So cunning was Berdic in mixing sweet and pungent together, that he died a sort of Cr?sus, but he was neither the first nor last of court fools who left land and gold-pieces, at his death. It is a pity that the Norman could not take a joke as readily as he could reward a jester. We all know how, by resenting the sarcasm of the French King Philip, on his obesity, he lost his own life.
We hear of no fool of merit at the bachelor and uproarious Court of William Rufus. That King, indeed, hardly needed one, for he was accustomed not only to make his own jokes, but to laugh louder at them than any other person. We know that the fool often combined the office of servant with that of jester, and it is, perhaps, not unreasonable to conclude that the chamberlain of Rufus was also his joculator. He certainly fooled his master. Witness the occasion when Rufus burst into a fit of fury at the chamberlain bringing him a pair of boots that had cost but three shillings. “Son of an ass!” exclaimed the ruby-faced and flaxen-haired monarch, “bring me a pair that costs a silver mark!” The chamberlain obeyed, after a court fool’s fashion. He changed the boots for a pair of inferior value, charged Rufus a higher price, and laughed in his sleeve at seeing the King well pleased, and unconscious that he had been tricked.
There was one other person at this Court who had something of the jester in him;—namely, that well-known priest Ralph, whose wit raised him to an eminence that cost England rather dear. When he was in power, and the King102 ordered a tribute to be levied, Ralph ordered one of double the amount, and exacted it with stringent severity. At this process Rufus would laugh heartily; and he had little cause to pay a fool, when he possessed a witty follower like Ralph, whose tricks were so much to the taste and so greatly to the profit of this rude but discriminating monarch.
The court of his brother and successor, Henry I., was less riotous, but not less luxurious or licentious, than his own. Henry was naturally prodigal, and in his Queen, Matilda, he possessed a partner who helped him pleasantly on the road to ruin. Matilda cared less for the jester than for the minstrel, and accordingly, she wasted much of her wealth, her husband’s, and that of the public, on melodious clerks, foreign joculators who could chant a merry stave, and “singing scholars,” who crowded to a Court where they found, in return, as good entertainment as they could give.
Among these gay fellows, or minstrels, was an individual of some celebrity, a Picard or Norman, it is not exactly known which, and who is sometimes described as a “barber.” His name was Rahere, and of all court minstrels or jesters he is the one above all others whose memory hundreds of living people have good reason to bless daily. Stow speaks of Rahere as “a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore, in his time, called the King’s Minstrel.” There have been writers who have questioned the correctness of this description, but it is, in a very great measure, supported by the author of a paper in the Cottonian Manuscripts.D
According to this valuable record, the writer of which relies on the authority of men who “saw Rahere, heard him, and were present in his works and deeds, of the which,” adds the writer, “some have taken their sleep in Christ, and some of them be yet alive, and witnesseth of that that we shall after say.” According, then, to the manuscripts103 above-named, “this man, Rahere, springing or born of low lineage, when he attained the flower of youth, he began to haunt the households of noble men and the palaces of princes.” The writer goes on to state that Rahere spared neither tricks, nor flattery, nor pleasant deceits, in order to draw towards him the friendship of those above him. Nor was he content with all this, says the chronicler, “but often haunted the King’s palace, and among the noiseful press of that tumultuous court, enforced himself with polite and carnal suavity, by the which he might draw to him the hearts of many one there; in spectacles, masks, and other courtly mockeries and devilish intendings, he led forth the business of all the day.” Rahere was constantly, we are told, in attendance on the King, or in the suite of noblemen; “proffering service that might please them, he busily so occupied his time that he might obtain the rather the petitions that he might desire of them. Thiswise, to King and great men, gentle and courteous, and knowing and familiar, he was.” In short, according to the manuscript writer, Rahere was an exceedingly joyous and cunning fellow, who, having played the fool at Court for great men’s pleasure and his own profit, was soon after made wise through Grace, by the intervention of Bartholomew the Apostle. He had spent half his days in harping and dancing and jesting, and then, growing weary of it, hurried to Rome, there to repent of his sins and be converted from his fiddling, dancing, drinking, jesting, and philandering ways. And this was so effectually accomplished, that on his road homeward he had a vision “full of dread and of sweetness.” The chief figure therein was the apostolic Bartholomew, who, intimating that Rahere had been taken from the foolery of an earthly to be an agent of a celestial Court, added with great topographic and indeed general lucidity, that he (the Apostle) “had chosen a place in the ‘Subburbs’ of London, at ‘Smythfeld,’ where in my name,” said he to the ex-jester, “thou104 shalt found a church, and it shall be the house of God, where there shall be the Tabernacle of the Lamb, the Temple of the Holy Ghost.” Rahere woke from his dream, and was inclined at first to take it all for a mere fantasy; but weighing the matter well, he ultimately, after long consideration, resolved to devote his fool’s gains to pious ends; and he founded, not without some little opposition on the part of those who
“Preferred, no doubt,
A rogue with venison, to a saint without,”
and who hoped he had come back rather a merry sinner than a solemn saint, a church and priory, of which he was, as was due to him, appointed the first Prior. Kings of England, in after-time, learned to respect the holy place; but there was a world of trouble before the entire object was carried out. Rahere had adversaries of every sort; but he had not lost his wit for having acquired a sense of piety, and so he bent himself to every humour, still played the fool awhile in various forms, when he could draw help towards the attainment of his end, and had merry words for everybody, in order that everybody might in return lend him ready succour. He, of course, overcame all opposition; holy men assembled around him; he preached sermons of varied character, to suit his audiences; he worked pretty little miracles, wrought wonderful cures, and, if he was occasionally in a difficulty, and seemed for a moment no wiser than an ordinary mortal, St. Bartholomew stepped in and helped him through triumphantly. Nothing at last became too difficult for him to surmount, and a hidden thief or a secret sin could no more escape his bodily or mental eye, than the seat of disease can be concealed from the sight of Mr. Luther Holden, who now demonstrates anatomy on the spot where the ex-court-jester changed his mirth and motley for prayers, cassock, and good works.
105 The successors of old Rahere in the Priory had much of the spirit of their founder. They were at the head of a high-spirited corporation, full of zeal, cheerfulness, and indomitable independence. They enjoyed separate jurisdiction, and resisted all interference on the part of prying prelates who endeavoured to force-in the wedge of episcopal authority. When this was the case, the brotherhood cried, “Rahere to the rescue!” and defied the whole membership of bishops. One result was that they were let alone, and this immunity they purchased by their gallantry, having successfully resisted an attempt to meddle with their affairs, by sorely thrashing the offending bishop and terribly mauling his body of followers. The time came, however, when the downfall of their house was inevitable. It shared in the general dissolution of religious houses, and Henry VIII. founded it anew, out of the old prior-minstrel’s funds, as an hospital “for the combined relief and help of a hundred sore and diseased.” Much more than this is now effected in the establishment of St. Bartholomew, which has grown out of the pious foundation of Rahere. There is no disease or suffering that medical care can assuage, which is turned away from this great temple of charity. Let the call be made at any hour of the day or night, there is ready answer, and as ready help at hand. The sufferer has but to knock, or those who act for him in his helplessness, and “it is opened to him.” He has no need of a letter of recommendation to entitle him to receive balm for his wounds. There is now accommodation for about 600 in-door patients, of whom there are ten times that annual number, and among them a mortality of about one a day. The out-door patients amount to nearly twenty thousand; the casualty patients to some thousands more. It is a pleasing sight, to see the wards where anguish is soothed, and the mutilated made whole. It is almost a mirthful sight, to witness the busy crowd at the dispensary bar, carrying off their bottles of106 variously coloured liquids,—the elixir, and not the aqua vit?, which is to pour strength into their veins and infuse it into their muscles. Let me add that it is a touching, solemn, and instructive sight, which may be looked upon silently and reverently, in that little dead-house, with its cover over it, as if it would be less obtrusive on the eye of idle passers by. There may be seen many a stalwart form that possessed, a few days since, the strength of giants, and which, crushed beyond the reach of science or art to repair, lie there prematurely ready for the inevitable grave.
In speaking of St. Bartholomew’s, it would be ungrateful to pass over the name of Dr. Radcliffe, the most munificent of its modern benefactors. But the establishment itself would probably never have existed, certainly would not have existed here, but for the King’s minstrel, the “pleasant-witted gentleman,” who was the gayest at the gay court of Henry Beauclerc, and whose bones lie in the adjacent church of St. Bartholomew the Great. The tomb is worth visiting, for it covers the dust of a noble man. His effigy, watched by an angel, and prayed for by two canons, lies under a canopy of great richness and elaborate workmanship. It was probably erected by his admirers of much later times than that which immediately followed his decease, for the shields upon it are those of England and France united, a combination that was not known for many years subsequent to the decease of the founder of the old priory. One can hardly stand altogether unmoved in presence of such a memento. There is great temptation, when looking at the effigy, and remembering the self-denial and charity, of the man, to fall into the pleasantest bit of Popery, on turning away, and to pray with all one’s heart that God may have mercy on the soul of the King’s minstrel, Rahere!
The reign of Stephen does not furnish us with the names of any fool of distinguished quality; though Stephen himself, and particularly previous to his accession to the throne,107 was remarkable for the affability with which he associated with men of every condition. This was more especially the case when he was keeping house with his bride in the Tower-Royal. But neither in court or castle was there much patronage of the jester during the nearly nineteen years of the calamitous reign of Stephen. The court of his successor saw the joyous brotherhood fully restored, and its members seem even, not merely to have practised before him at home, but to have accompanied him abroad. “When King Henry sets out of a morning,” says his secretary, Peter of Blois, “you see multitudes of people running up and down, as if they were distracted; horses rushing against horses, carriages overturning carriages, players, gamesters, cooks, confectioners, morris-dancers, barbers, courtesans, and parasites, making so much noise and, in a word, such an intolerable tumultuous jumble of horse and foot, that you imagine the great abyss hath opened, and that hell hath poured forth all its inhabitants.” The court of Henry’s consort, Eleanor of gay Guienne, was a not less joyous one than her husband’s; but the joy was only empty noise and outward show, and beneath all the glittering were grief and settled gloom.
During the reign of their lion-hearted successor, we meet with an illustration, showing how fools could be employed in order to support a vicious political system. Richard the First’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, may with propriety be called, the “proud,” for he sealed public acts, says Lord Campbell, “with his own signet seal, instead of the Great Seal of England.” Proud as he was, this Picard prelate (who was Bishop of Ely) was of very mean extraction. To him Richard left, conjointly with the Bishop of Durham, the guardianship of the realm, during the King’s absence in the Holy Land. Longchamp however clapped his colleague into prison, and ruled England by his sole authority. He maintained the state of the most ostentatious of sovereigns, and set such an example of arrogance and want of principle,108 that his body-guard became terrible for their rapine and licentiousness; and his servants, even when their master lodged for a night in a monastery, devoured in that one night the revenue of several years. The people at large suffered in proportion, and suffering was followed by grumbling, and that was succeeded by wrath. But, says the author of ‘The Lives of the Chancellors,’ (apparently translating a passage from Roger Hoveden in Ricardo I., p. 340,) “to drown the curses of the natives, he brought over from France, at a great expense, singers and jesters, who sang verses in places of public resort, declaring that the Chancellor never had his equal in the world.” The above, it will have been seen, is an example of jesters being employed, not with license to speak bold and droll truths to their master, but with commission to utter sorry jokes and dreary falsehoods, for the purpose of deceiving a nation.
I have previously noticed that Blondel, whom tradition makes the discoverer of his captive master, by means of a song, is called, by Bouchez, “that buffoon of a minstrel.” By others he is styled a “troubadour knight.” However much or little of the character of the jester may have entered into the character of the minstrel Blondel, it would not be easy to say. We may speak with more certainty of another of Richard’s minstrels, Anselme Fayditt, whose poetry the Proven?al critics eulogized for its wit and good sense, “poésie à bons mots et de bon sens.” A third minstrel, Fouquet de Marseilles, is also celebrated for his ready wit, which made him the “delight of the court.” There probably was some difference of quality in the latter minstrels, for while Fayditt ultimately travelled about the country, on foot, in search of a livelihood, singing songs, and accompanied by a runaway nun who sang as well as Fayditt himself, Fouquet, in strong contrast with such a vagabond, abandoned minstrelsy, turned monk, and became Bishop of Toulouse.
109 Of the above quality were the most favoured plaisants at the Court of Richard. The private households had their jesters of a less refined quality, and the following graphic description of one attached to a Saxon master, is probably as faithful a portrait as could be drawn of a Saxon nobleman’s fool in the days of King Richard the First.
“Beside the swineherd was seated, on one of the fallen Druidical monuments, a person about ten years younger in appearance, and whose dress was of a fantastic appearance. His jacket had been stained of a bright purple hue, upon which there had been some attempts to paint grotesque ornaments of different colours. To the jacket he added a short cloak, which scarcely reached halfway down his thigh. It was of crimson cloth, though a good deal soiled, lined with bright yellow; and as he could transfer it from one shoulder to the other, or at his pleasure throw it all around him, its width contrasted with its want of longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery. He had thin silver bracelets on his arms; and on his neck a collar of the same metal; bearing the inscription, ‘Wamba, the son of Witless, is the Thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood.’ This personage had sandals, and his legs were encased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red and the other yellow. He was provided also with a cap having around it more than one bell, about the size of those attached to hawks, which jingled as he turned his head from one side to the other. And, as he seldom remained a minute in the same posture, the sound might be considered as incessant. Around the edge of this cap was a stiff bandeau of leather, cut at the top into open work, resembling a coronet, while a prolonged bag arose from within it, and fell down on one shoulder, like an old-fashioned night-cap or jelly-bag, or the head-gear of a modern hussar. It was to this part of the cap that the bells were attached, which circumstance, as well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own half-crazed, half-cunning, expression of110 countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within-doors. He bore a scrip attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to entrust with edge-tools. In place of these he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling that with which Harlequin operates his wonders upon the modern stage.”
Of what quality was the wit of Wamba, may be seen in the romance of ‘Ivanhoe,’ from which, it is hardly necessary to say, the above extract is made. We come now to the successor of Richard, whom we shall find a liberal master to his fool.
King John was a very lugubrious joker himself; but he not only kept a merry jester,—he also knew how to be exceedingly liberal to him. Of the King’s deadly practical joking we have an instance in his conduct to Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Norwich, who had retired from his office in the Exchequer in obedience to the terms of the Papal edict. The King shut him up in prison, and, making him wear a ponderous sacerdotal cope of lead, which covered him from the head to the heels, left him thus helpless, to die of famine. It was after another fashion that John rewarded his fool. The name of this official was William Piculph (or Picol), and he received from the monarch who possessed so little land of his own, a landed estate. This fool by feudal tenure held his territory and its dependencies at Fons Ossane, in Mortain, of John, under an easy quit-rent; namely, that during his life he should act as jester to the King, providing his Grace with as much fun as could make him smile. After the death of Piculph, the domain was to descend to his heirs, on condition of their presenting the sovereign annually with a pair of gilt spurs. A copy of the original deed is111 to be found in the ‘Monnaies Inconnues des évêques, des Innocents, et des Fous.’
It is just twenty years ago, since M. Rigollet, under the modest appellation of “M. J. R. D’Amiens,” published in his work on the then hitherto unknown coins and tokens of various Brotherhoods of the olden time who took Folly for their patron, a copy of the document by which our King John may be said to have ennobled his fool. This document has not escaped the acute vision of Mr. W. J. Thoms, who has cited it, in his selections from the L’Estrange papers; but as its singularity is fully equal to its brevity, my readers will, I hope, approve of my venturing to place it before them. It is to this effect:—“Joannes, D. G., etc. Sciatis nos dedisse et presenti charta confirmasse Will. Picol, Follo nostro, Fontem Ossane (Menil-Ozenne, pays de Mortain), cum omnibus pertinenciis suis, habend. et tenend. sibi et heredibus suis, faciendo inde nobis annuatim servitium unius Folli quoad vixerit; et post ejus decessum heredes sui eam de nobis tenebunt, et per servitium unius paris calcarium deauratorum nobis annuatim reddendo. Quare volumus et firmiter precipimus quod predict. Piculphus et heredes sui habeant et teneant in perpetuum, bene et in pace, libere et quiete, predictam terram.”
The substance of this document, the original of which was found in the then Royal Library of France, is given in my description of it, above; I will only add, therefore, that ample pains seem to have been taken to settle this estate upon Picol the fool. It may be doubted, however, whether the fools of Edmund Ironside, William the Conqueror and John were the only merry officials who held land. The celebrated Baldwin Lepetteur (in another reign) must have belonged to the profession, and we know that, in return for some royal grace, he was bound on every Christmas-day to execute before his lord the King, at Hemmingston Manor, a saltus, a sufflatus, and a bumbulus. At no time, indeed, do our Kings seem to have112 been reluctant to pay for mirth. Henry III. once gave a crown to a witty fellow who had caused him to laugh; but we are not told what the jest was that earned so great a guerdon. Edward II. was even more liberal, for he gave four crowns for the same cause. It does not appear that wit was always the provocation to royal laughter, a fool’s trick would do as well. We see as much by an entry in one of the last King’s accounts, cited in the ‘Antiquary’s Repertory.’ “Item—When the King was at Woolmer, to Morris, then clerk of the kitchen, who, when the King was hunting, did ride before the King, and often fall down from his horse, whereat the King laughed greatly: 20s.”
To return, however, to the reign of Henry III., the successor of John, I may notice as an incident of the social history of the period, that there were few places where the itinerant jester was more warmly welcomed than at the lonely cells of the Friars. We have an instance of this in a story told by Wood, and quoted by Warton, to this effect. A couple of strangers applied one night at the gates of a cell of Benedictines near Oxford, for admission. The itinerants were taken for jesters, and gained a ready admission under that supposition. Cellarer, sacrist, and the whole of the confraternity looked forward to having a merry night of it with the gesticulatoriis ludicrisque artibus of their guests. But these proved to be grave men of long prayers and short meals; very poor in purse, but rich in saving knowledge; without power or taste to make a joke, but with will and ability to enjoin their hosts to live cleanly and soberly and religiously, to serve God faithfully, honour the King loyally, and to put away from themselves all naughtiness. The Benedictines did not care a fig for such serious persons, or their admonitions. They had admitted the wayfarers, supposing them to be jesters; and illogically concluding, because the supposed jesters were monks, they themselves had been deceived by them, they set upon the poor fellows, thrashed them soundly, and turned them out-of-doors.
113 Of a joculator at the court of Henry III. we probably obtain a glimpse in the personage of a certain Master Henry, who is called the “versificator,” a term which was sometimes given to the joculator. “In one of the Tower Rolls,” says Miss Strickland, “dated, Woodstock, April 30, in the thirty-second year of Henry III.’s reign, that monarch directs his treasurer and chamberlain to pay Master Henry, the poet, whom he affectionately styles, ‘Our beloved Master Henry, the versificator, one hundred shillings, due to him for the arrears of his salary, enjoining them to pay it without delay, though the Exchequer was then shut.”
This Master Henry was, doubtless, Henry of Avranches, who is sometimes designated as poet laureate to the King, and of whose works some specimens yet remain. We must not forget the assertion of Ménage, that court poet and court fool were sometimes one and the same; and that Master Henry was qualified for the latter, we may gather from the description given of him in a satirical poem by an angry Cornish writer, Michael Blaunpayne, who thus depicts the royal versificator, enjoying a salary of a hundred shillings a year: “You have the legs of a goat, the thighs of a sparrow, and the sides of a boar. You have a hare’s mouth, a dog’s nose, the teeth and cheeks of a mule. Your face is a calf’s, your head is a bull’s, and from top to toe you are as swarthy as a Moor.” It must be acknowledged, if this signalement may be accepted, that, in outward appearance, Master Henry was well qualified to enact the buffoon at the court of his royal namesake.
The next King, the crusading Edward I., is known to have had a minstrel, harper, or joculator in constant attendance upon him. This official rendered his master good service on that occasion, at Ptolemais, when an assassin wounded Edward with a poisoned knife. It is said that the faithful fellow, hearing the struggle, rushed in and slew the assassin. We detect more of the professional jester in another account114 by Ritson, which says that the cithar?da, as he is called, did not interfere till Edward himself had killed his assailant; and that then the minstrel, or whatever may be his proper designation, snatching up a trivet, tripod, or three-legged stool, began beating the dead man’s brains out. The joke seemed of so unworthy a quality to the King, that he rated the valiant coward soundly. The name of the joculator is not given; but we are more fortunate in the succeeding reign, for there we not only meet with an undoubted court fool, but we learn his name, and are introduced to a member of his family.
First, let me observe that in the ‘Liber Quotidianus,’ the daily wardrobe account of the fourteenth of Edward II. (1320–21), there are entries of rewards to several noblemen’s minstrels, or joculatores, who performed before the King in his own chamber. The singing and the jests were probably rude enough, for Edward II. was a roystering fellow, addicted to getting drunk in as roystering company abroad, and accustomed to pay the people who picked him up and saw him safe home. There is an entry in this very account to that effect,—of recompense to persons who thus looked after him, “in itineribus suis noctanter.”
We get too, as I have just intimated, at the name of the King’s fool, who was probably often abroad with him on these occasions, by an entry in some accounts, quoted in the ‘Arch?ologia’ (vol. ii. p. 6); and not only of the fool, but of his mother, by whose surname indeed we arrive at that of the jester. The entry runs thus: “To Dulcian Withastaf, mother of Robert, the King’s fool, coming to the King, at Baldock, of the King’s gift, 10s.” “Wit-has-staff,” or “Witty-staff,” or “With-a-staff,” sounds very like a sobriquet for Robert himself; and perhaps Dame Dulcian derived the surname from her son’s occupation. At all events, it is pleasant to see Edward acting generously towards the old lady, when she hurried over to the court, at Baldock, to115 behold her son in all the glory of cap, bells, cock’s-comb, and run of the larder.
I might have included among my “Female Jesters” a nameless Joculatrix, or Ministralissa, who, if not attached to the household of Edward II., yet played her part before him for the amusement of himself and a noble company. It was on occasion of the festival of Whitsuntide, which the King was celebrating in the great Hall at Westminster, in the year 1316. While the royal host and his illustrious guests were seated at the banquet, this joculatrix rode into the Hall on a closely-clipped horse, and caracolled round about the tables, jesting the while, to the great amusement of the company. The joculatrix terminated her performance by placing a letter in the King’s hand; after which she gracefully rode away, with countless greetings, to the right and left. The letter contained a remonstrance against the unbounded favour exhibited by the King to unworthy persons, while he neglected his faithful knights and trusty servants. Not one of the latter, probably, would have dared to present the remonstrance; but the license allowed to the jester, or mime, ensured free access, and other immunities, to an agent chosen from among the joyous brotherhood, and still more to a sister of the gay profession. The gates of royal houses were always open to them: “Non esse mores,” is the remark quoted by Percy, “domus regi? histriones ab ingressu quomodolibet prohibere.”
Edward II. not only admired a joculatrix who could ride, but still more a joculator who could not, or who feigned to be unable to keep in the saddle. I have, in a previous page, cited from the roll of expenses of this King, an entry of twenty shillings to a jester who rode before him, who kept continually tumbling off, and who thereby raised an amount of hilarity in the sovereign, that was set down as being worth twenty shillings. Just double the amount, and ten shillings over, were also paid to a jester who, dancing on a116 table in the King’s presence, caused him to laugh immoderately.
The great Scottish contemporary of Edward—Bruce—could also, like other heroic men, stoop to find amusement in the sallies of an official fool. Of this individual, we know indeed only the name, and are not acquainted with his quality. Mr. Irving, the author of a recently published ‘History of Dumbartonshire,’ informs us that Bruce, in his retirement at Cardross, kept for his solace, or his sport, a fool and a lion. The same author quotes the chamberlain’s book of accounts, in which there is an item containing the record of one shilling and sixpence having been expended for the conveyance of Patrick, the fool, to Tarbut, on Loch Fyne: “In expensis hominum transeuntium cum Patricio stulto veniente de Anglia usque Le Tarbutt, 18 denarii;” by which it would seem that Bruce’s fool at Cardross was probably an Englishman. He is sometimes called Peter; and this, and the fact of his being in the household of Bruce, constitute all that we know touching this fool to a hero.
Of the minstrels and jesters of Edward III. we know even less than we do of that of Bruce, for we are unacquainted with any of their names. During the long reign of half a century, the chivalrous Edward was either exulting in glory acquired, or mourning at impending or overwhelming calamity. In the mere official jester he took no delight; but there was a peculiar court amusement of his own devising, which pleased others as highly as it pleased himself,—namely, the tournaments, at which he would tilt in disguise, revealing himself to the delighted spectators only when he had achieved victory. In the shape of a good court jest, too, were the appearances of himself and family at tournaments in the City. At these, Edward would appear in the bustling character of Lord Mayor, fulfilling all its functions. Two of his sons, on these occasions, represented the sheriffs, and the other two, with several noblemen, enacted the parts of117 aldermen. At these festivals, the royal family seemed to have turned into jesters and players, for the entertainment of a public who witnessed the performance with hilarity and admiration.
At the court of Edward’s grandson and successor, Richard II., the ordinary official joculators were doubtless to be found; but we are unacquainted with the name of any especial or favourite individual. They formed part of a very gay and extravagant household, as long as Richard could maintain such an establishment. The very idea of the outlay of this rollicking court even frightened the Commons into a respectful remonstrance; but the King reminded them that, as long as he did not ask them to pay for his pleasures, their interference was only an impertinence. The epoch was undoubtedly one of vast extravagance. It was the period when ladies in England first wore trains,—a fashion which elicited a biting satire from a merry divine. He entitled his work, ‘Contra caudas dominarum,’ Against the tails of the ladies, and it was productive of more mirth at court than a whole year’s wit of a whole household of jesters.
What little gaiety there was at the court of Henry IV. was to be found at Eltham; but even there it was of a very indifferent quality. If kings could not be merry but by the aid of a jester, no monarch more needed a joculator than the once handsome Bolingbroke, whose face became so ugly by eruptions, that even a jester could hardly have looked at it with a smile. Henry, too, was one of those men who are satisfied in their own minds that success in an enterprise is warrant of the approbation of Heaven! He required some of the rough homilies of the court fool to drive him out of a belief which he did not surrender till he ceased to enjoy his usual triumphs. His son kept court apart, and it may fairly be said, that if there was ever Prince or King at whose court we might have expected to meet a more118 than ordinary number of the licensed mirth-makers to royalty, it was that of Harry of Monmouth, who has been poetically, popularly, and historically represented to us as, from his youth upwards, addicted to associate with dissipated and facetious companions; and who, according to tradition, thought as little of smiting the heart of his father as he did of striking his father’s representative, solemn Judge Gascoyne. But all these matters are proved to have been myths, and the son of Bonligbroke neither drank deep with Falstaff, nor fooled it with the philosophic fool Pistol, nor sang staves with Bardolph, nor bandied nonsense with Poins. The Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, is a picture, but it represents no historical fact. The dying father was not robbed of his crown by his son; and they who look upon the tomb of Gascoyne in Harewood Church, Yorkshire, waste all their sympathy, if they give any there to the sleeping judge, on the ground of his having been insulted by a lawless prince. All this, however, will continue to be believed, for Shakespeare, who has set Mark Antony down to whist, has said it; and Rapin, dull, pompous, and obstinate, has declared that Prince Henry’s court was the receptacle of libertines, debauchees, buffoons, parasites, and the like. Carte, on the other hand, asserts that Henry of Monmouth’s court was crowded by the nobles and great men of the land, when his father’s court was comparatively deserted. But no one has so perfectly sifted the many tales touching the inclination of this prince for buffoons and roysterers as Tyler, in his ‘Life of Henry V.’ This writer, whose patient and painstaking spirit I envy, tells us that if Prince Henry was often in the city, and in Eastcheap in particular, it was not for dissipation, but for serious business. It is from this reverend author we learn, that in March 1410, the father of much-abused Prince Harry signed a deed in which it is said, “Know ye that, by our especial grace, we have granted to our dearest son Henry, Prince of Wales, a certain house or place, called119 Coldharbour, in our city of London, with its appurtenances, to hold for the term of his life, without any payment to us for the same.” In this right fair and stately house, which was not far from Eastcheap, councils were held, at which the Prince himself presided. Mr. Tyler not only proves that Henry did not resort to what he calls “a low and vulgar part of London,” for the purposes of riot and revelry with unworthy and dissolute companions; but he shows how the charge of being guilty of such offence may have arisen. “History,” he says, “records nothing of the Prince derogatory to his princely and Christian character during his residence at Coldharbour: it does indeed charge two of the King’s sons with a riot there; but they are stated by name to have been Thomas and John. Henry’s name does not occur at all in connection with any disturbance or misdoing.” Henry’s father, however, seems to have provided for the good cheer of the Prince of Wales; for in the same year that he gave his son the house at “Coldehabergh,” he also gave him an order on the Collector of the Customs for twenty casks and one pipe of the red wine of Gascony, to be delivered free of duty. This, as Pennant says, was “to stock his cellars;” and it was not likely that, thus provided, he would have resorted to neighbouring taverns at Eastcheap. One might as soon expect to hear of the Prince Consort at the Cider-cellars. If the assertion of the chroniclers, that Henry, on his accession, became altogether a reformed man, seems irreconcilable with his modest bearing when heir-apparent, we must remember, on the other hand, that there is no contemporary record of his having committed any act of wildness, riot, and dishonour, while there are many bearing testimony to his virtues; namely, the records of Parliament, which bear witness to his rectitude, modesty, and steadiness; the despatches of Hotspur; the people of Wales; the gentlemen of various counties; and contemporary chroniclers, generally. Of the extravagant expenditure of his120 father’s household there are very numerous complaints; but none of that of his own household, either when he was Prince or King. In the latter capacity, Henry V. patronized the sacred minstrels rather than the laughing fools. He loved minstrelsy, psalms, and decent songs; and he made this love, as Mr. Tyler tells us, “contribute to the gratification of himself and the partner of his joys and cares.... Whether in their home at Windsor, or during their happy progress through England, in the halls of York and Chester, or in the tented ground on the banks of the Seine, before Melun, our imagination has solid foundation to build upon, when we picture to ourselves Henry and his beloved Princess passing innocently and happily, in minstrelsy and song, some of the hours spared from the appeals of justice, the exigencies of the State, or the marshalling of the battle-field.” For Henry’s other good qualities, and for his defects also, I must refer my readers to Mr. Tyler’s volumes, resting content with showing here, that Henry was not a patron of court fools. It may indeed be said that the jester and the minstrel were often to be found in the same person, in England, from the time that the Saxons hovered in the land, or since Canute, his thingmen, and his bards, all sang joyously together, when they celebrated a conquest, than which that of the Norman was not more wonderful. But it is clear that Henry’s minstrels were of a better character than those alluded to above, and that buffoonery was not encouraged at his court. Warton, in his ‘History of English Poetry,’ supports this assertion by saying, that the number of harpers in Westminster Hall at Henry’s coronation was innumerable. “They undoubtedly accompanied their instruments with heroic rhymes. The King, however,” adds Warton, “was no great encourager of the popular minstrelsy, which seems at this time to have flourished in the highest degree of perfection.” For all secular vanities his disgust was great; and he even forbade his triumph at Agincourt to be chanted by the121 harpers or others. Lingard indeed says, that “success gave a tinge of arrogance to his character;” and I may add, that although Henry V. loved books more than court fools, he set an example for the now common and detestable practice, of borrowing books and not returning them to their owners; he had better learned wisdom from fools, than committed this miserable sort of petty larceny.
It is difficult to conclude that the official fool was altogether absent from court in these days, when we remember an incident connected with Henry’s widow, Katherine of Valois. There is some reason to believe that Owen Tudor, when he danced awkwardly before Katherine, and ended by falling into her lap, only played one of those tricks which, by exciting laughter, acquired favour for the performer. The widow of Henry V. resolved to marry the handsome clown; but a deputation was sent to Anglesea to report on the condition of the lady-mother of Owen, and the style of her living. This was a deputation of lords; but they appear to have had the court fool with them, if we may judge from the report they rendered on their return. Such an official was not an uncommon appendage to legations of any sort, and I think he could not have been lacking here. The English envoys found the mother of Owen sitting on a bank in a field, surrounded by her perpendicularly-horned goats, and eating a fried herring, with her knees for a table. What report could be made to a Queen-Dowager resolved upon marrying this same lady’s son? The court wit hit upon one which exactly met the contingency; and when the deputation returned to London, their report was, “that they had found the lady seated in state, surrounded by her javelin men, in a spacious palace, and eating her repast from a table of such great value, that she would not take hundreds of pounds for it!”
In the next reign, that of Henry VI., we find that monarch opening a commission, in 1454, for procuring minstrels for122 his service, by force. A press-gang, as it were, went forth and carried off any likely fellow that suited them, with a good voice, just as the gentleman in the Trench Opera carries off the “Postillon de Longjumeau.” The levy was made de ministraliis propter solatium Regis providendis,—for procuring minstrels, even by force, for the solace or entertainment of the King. The commission enjoins that these shall not only be skilled in their art, as minstrels, but also handsome and elegantly shaped. A reference to the matter will be found in the fourth volume of Warton’s ‘History of English Poetry;’ the author of which, perplexed with the different meanings attached to the word minstrel, would have been inclined to have taken the persons here designated, as singers only, or singers for the Royal Chapel exclusively, but for the directions as to their good looks and comely shapes. These directions seem to him to point to jesters, “tumblers or posture-masters.” It is certain that about a century later, in the reign of Edward VI., it was lawful, when the Chapel Royal lacked young choristers, to carry off duly qualified children from their homes, wherever they might be found.
There is proof that the household jester, as well as minstrel—the two characters often under one hood—was a very common and a liberally-patronized professor of his respective arts, in the days of Henry VI. Warton, in his first volume, cites the Prior’s accounts of Maxtoke, in Warwickshire (to which I have before alluded), under one of its general heads, “De Joculatoribus et Mimis.” Under this head, and having reference only to various years in the reign of Henry VI., we find several sums expended by the brotherhood for itinerant entertainers who have different names, but whose shades of professional difference it is not so easy to determine. Thus we find, “To a joculator, in the Michaelmas week, the sum of fourpence.” Again, “At Christmas, to a cithariste and other joculators, 4d.” The following entries are further illustrations:—“To the mimes of Solihull, 6d.” “To the123 mimes of Coventry, 20d.” “To Lord Ferrers’ mimes, 6d.” “To the lusores from Eton, 8d.” “Ditto, from Coventry, 8d.” “To those from Daventry, 12d.” “To the mimes from Coventry, 12d.” “To Lord Astley’s mimes, 12d.” “To four of Lord Warwick’s mimes, 10d.” “To a blind mime, 2d.” “To six mimes of the household of Lord Clinton.” ... “To two mimes from Rugby, 10d.” “To a certain cithariste, 6d.” “To another from Coventry, 6d.” “To two others from Coventry, 8d.” “To the mimes of Rugby, 8d.” “To Lord Buckridge’s mimes, 20d.” “To the mimes of Lord Stafford, 2s.” “To the lusores from Coleshill, 8d.” “It is here to be observed,” says Warton, “that the minstrels,” or jesters, “of the nobility, in whose families they were constantly retained, travelled about the country to the neighbouring monasteries; and that they generally received better gratuities for these occasional performances, than the others.”
After the death of Henry VI., there appears on the stage a court jester who is said to have made half England merry with his jests. I allude to the famous Scogan (or Scoggin, or Scogin), who was attached to the household of Edward IV., and whose name is not forgotten in these later days.
Oriel College, Oxford, counted about a century and a half from the time of its foundation, in the reign of Edward II. (1326), when, if credit may be attached to the story told by merry Andrew Borde, of Pevensey, Scogan became a student in that college. The young student is said to have been of a good family; and tradition, to be more or less trusted as the reader pleaseth, has preserved a few incidents of his life there, and in other localities. We have a hint of his roystering career in the little incident of Falstaff in his salad days, who “broke Scogan’s head at the court gate.” Ben Jonson alludes to him, in the Masque of ‘The Fortunate Isles,’ as—
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“A fine gentleman, and a Master of Arts,
Of Henry the Fourth’s time, who made disguises
For the King’s sons, and writ in ballad royal
Daintily well....
In rhyme, fine tinkling rhyme, and flowing verse,
With now and then some sense; and he was paid for ’t,
Regarded and rewarded, which few poets
Are, nowadays.”
The specimens we have of Scogan’s poetry do not warrant the praise above given; and we know, from some of his rhymes, that he held the University graduates in very absolute contempt. What he said of the M.A.’s, is not to be repeated. The substance was, that they were mere dolts, beyond the schools; and Scogan did not rank the B.A.’s much higher, as may be seen in the succeeding couplet, which says,—
“A B.A. is not worth a straw,
Except he be among fools.”
The joyous Suffolk student—for Scogan, it is believed, came from Bury—became, in time, a very merry and not very scrupulous tutor. Every sage has his maxim, and Scogan’s was, that “A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.” With such a lecturer, the pupils must have conferred on Oriel a reputation something resembling that which Merton once derived from its students; of which college an old warden used to say, that there could be little doubt of the learning it possessed, seeing that every pupil brought a little with him, and took none away. But even Oriel, in Scogan’s time, had its solemn seasons; and when the plague of 1471 broke out at Oxford, which ultimately caused more devastation in England than the fifteen years of war through which the country had recently passed, Scogan followed the University fugitives who took refuge, and found safety, in the rural hospital of St. Bartholomew.
If the season of trial rendered other men serious, it had no such effect upon Scogan. His irregularities were numerous, and not the least offensive of them was the irreligious125 spirit, combined with avarice, which induced him to help an unworthy candidate into the priesthood, for the bribe of a horse, presented to him by the candidate’s father. Even Oxford grew at last weary of Scogan’s want of decorum; and under compulsion, or following his inclination, the merry Suffolk Punch withdrew from the University, but did not long lack employment. He presented himself to Sir William Neville, a country gentleman, and requested to be engaged by him as his household fool. This negotiation was happily carried out; and some time after, Sir William introduced Scogan to Edward IV. The knight took his jester to court, probably out of vanity; for it was not every household fool that had the wit, talent, and education of this gentleman-joculator. The King was so pleased with his gossip that there was nothing left for the loyal knight, but to offer to make over his joyous retainer to a royal patron. Henceforward, Scogan became the court buffoon of Edward; but, as far as I can judge from the sorry or dirty five dozen of “jests” of which Andrew Borde makes him the hero, he assumed the office of buffoon and dropped that of wit. The choicest story told of him, is that wherein he is described as standing, for a long period, beneath a water-spout, under heavy rain, for a reward, (or for a wager, by which he may not have profited in the same degree,) of twenty pounds,—a large sum in those days, but not too large for the fool who thus risked his life.
It was the characteristic of our English kings, to be liberal to their buffoons,—more liberal, indeed, than they were to more valuable servants,—as I shall more especially show, presently. Edward was so well satisfied with Scogan, that he conferred upon him a town-house in Cheapside, and, still greater mark of the Royal consideration, a country mansion at Bury. At the latter place, he and the princely Abbot were on the most intimate terms, and those of a very joyous complexion:—
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“They’d haunch and ham; they’d cheek and chine;
They’d cream and custard, peach and pine.
And they gurgled their throats with right good wine,
Till the Abbot his nose grew red.
No De Profundis there they sang,
But a roystering catch to the rafters rang;
And the bell for matins, it went ‘ting tang,’
Ere the last of them rolled to bed.”
Scogan, it would seem, was married at this period; and it would also appear that his wife was a fine lady in her way, who, among other matters connected with the fine-ladyism of her times, was very desirous of having a page who might precede her, as she went humbly, in state, to church. In fact, she intimated that it would be impossible for her to find her way to church, without a page. “Poor lass!” said the jester, one Saturday night, “you shall have a guide to church, before the bells ring tomorrow morning.” Accordingly, on the Sunday morning, Scogan arose early, and chalked the road which lay between his house and the church-door; he either strewed the chalk, or drew lines with it. When church-time came, he led his wife to the thresh-hold of their dwelling, to see her new page. When the extremely fastidious lady beheld the practical trick played her by her husband, she waxed so wroth that all his wit could hardly pacify her.
Among the practical jokes of this court fool I recognize many that really belong to a much earlier period, and which must have been current as “stories” at the time they are narrated as having been performed by Scogan himself. The following, however, is said to be properly assigned to him. He had borrowed a large sum of money of the King. Some stories say the Queen, and Fl?gel even names Queen Elizabeth as the patroness of this jester! The sum is set down at ￡500, which is extremely doubtful. Be this as it may, a day for payment had been named; and when that day had arrived, Scogan was not prepared to pay127 the debt. After ranch thought upon the matter, he fell sick and died, and requested his friends to bury him in such a way that the Sovereign should encounter the funeral. They entered into the joke with great alacrity, put on the trappings of mitigated affliction, and in due time carried Scogan forth on a comfortably-arranged bier, when they contrived, as directed, to encounter Edward. When Louis XV. saw the funeral of his old favourite, Madame de Pompadour, he had the bad taste to cut a sorry joke. When Edward met the funeral procession of Scogan, he regretted the loss of his merry follower; and among other kind things to which he gave utterance, remarked, that he freely forgave Scogan and his representatives the sum for which the jester was indebted to him. The buffoon, who had expected this act of release, immediately jumped up, thanked his illustrious creditor, and prudently called all present to bear witness to the Royal act of grace: “It is so revivifying,” said Scogan, “that it has called me to life again.” If this incident be true, we may also believe, as we are requested to do, that great mirth followed thereupon.
Perhaps Scogan presumed upon the liberties allowed him by the King; for we are told that his pranks at court became so boisterously intolerable, that he was at last exiled, and forbidden to return on English soil, upon pain of death. He went to France, thence came back with his shoes full of the soil of Picardy, and he claimed impunity, on the ground that he was not standing on English land. This sort of story is told of so many jesters, that I leave its acceptance or rejection to the decision of my readers. We come again to facts, when we encounter Scogan dwelling for awhile at Jesus College, Cambridge; and there is, probably, foundation for the story which represents him travelling in Normandy.
In the collection of ‘Scogan’s Jests,’ to which I have before alluded, as being collected by merry Andrew Borde, of Pevensey—that learned and mirthful doctor who Latinized128 his name into “Perforatus,” we are informed,—“How Scogan made the country-people of Normandy offer their money to a dead man’s head.”
“Upon a time when Scogan lacked maintenance, and had gotten the displeasure of his former acquaintance by reason of his crafty dealing and unhappy tricks, he bethought himself in what manner he might get money with a little labour. So, travelling up into Normandy, he got him a priest’s gown, and clothed himself like a scholar, and afterwards went into a certain churchyard, where he found the skull of a dead man’s head, the which he took up and made very clean, and after bore it to a goldsmith, and hired him to set it in a stud of silver. Which being done, he departed to a village there by, and came to the parson of the church, and saluted him, and then told him, that he had a relic, and desired him to do so much for him as to show it unto the parish, that they might offer to it; and withal promised the parson that he should have one-half of the offerings. The parson, moved with covetousness, granted his request, and so, upon the Sunday following, told his parishioners thereof, saying, that there was a certain religious scholar come to the town, that had brought with him a precious relic; and that he that would offer thereunto should have a general pardon for all his forepassed sins; and that the scholar was there present himself, to show it to them. With that, Scogan went up into the pulpit, and showed them the relic that he had; and said to them that the head spoke to him, and bade him that he should build a church over it; and that the money that the church should be builded withal should be well-gotten. But when the people came to offer unto it, Scogan said unto them, ‘All you women who have been faithless to your husbands, I pray you sit still, and come not to offer, for the head bade me that I should not receive your offerings.’ Whereupon, the poor men and their wives came thick and threefold to this offering;129 and there was not a woman but she offered liberally, because that he had said so; and he gave them the blessing with the head. And there were some that had no money, that offered their rings; and some of them that offered twice or thrice, because they would be seen. Thus received he the offerings both of the good and the bad, and by this practice got a great sum of money.”
That he subsequently came again to England, may be gathered from stories of a later date. One legend tells us of the King condemning him to be hanged, but allowing him the privilege of choosing a tree from which he was to be suspended. Scogan avoided the penalty by being unable to fix on a tree exactly to his mind. The story, however, is related of earlier jesters than Scogan, and seems to have originally belonged to the buffoon of Alboin, King of the Lombards.
There is nothing more left worth telling, though there is much more that might be told, of Scogan, the gentleman-buffoon of Edward IV. His last expressed desire was characteristic of his vocation and his humour:—“Bury me,” said he, “under one of the water-spouts of Westminster Abbey; for I have ever loved good drink, all the days of my life.” It was a fool’s wish; but for the grave of him who made it, no less an author than Cardinal Pole composed in his younger days, an epitaph which may be worthy the jester, but is certainly less worth citing than that composed by Swift for one of the last of our household fools, and which will be found in a subsequent page of this volume.
The stupid book, edited by Borde of Pevensey, and known to many an antiquary whose patience is not stout enough to hold out to the end of the dirt, dullness, and dreariness which mark what is called ‘Scoggin’s Jests,’ reminds me of a saying of Balzac, with reference to two of the wittiest Frenchmen of the great revolutionary era,—Chamfort and Rivarol. “Those good fellows,” remarks Balzac, “put a130 whole volume into one of their witty sayings; but now-a-days, it is difficult to find one witty saying in a whole volume.” The last part of this remark is most applicable to collections of jests to which the name of some court fool was appended in order to give them currency and an air of authenticity. Even if Scogan’s so-called “Jests” were authentic, they would not be worth citing. They offend in every possible way, and it is impossible to read them and believe them to be genuine, without feeling surprise at an Oxford student becoming such a buffoon, and at such a buffoon as their hero being so liberally recompensed as he was, by the royal Edward.
Let us pass, then, from Scogan and from a King who, with all his patronage of the fool, could least of all the Kings of England bear a political joke, to one who had scant time to listen to jesting. But I will here remind the reader that out of Edward IV.’s barbarity, in executing a merry tradesman in Cheapside, merely for saying that he would make his son heir to the Crown,—meaning his house of business, distinguished by that sign,—Fuller, in his ‘Holy State,’ draws an argument against profane jesting which might have profited all, court fools as well as others, could they only have heard the arguer. Fuller upheld harmless mirth as a cordial for restoring wasted spirits; and he only pronounced jesting unlawful when it trespassed in quantity, quality, or season. When speaking against jesting with God’s word, he asks, “Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice?” With earthly monarchs, fools may have their privilege; but then Fuller remembers the poor mercer’s joke which so angered Edward IV., and he exclaims, “More dangerous still is it to wit-wanton it with the majesty of God.” Finally, he gives these rules against profane jesting,—rules which, when he wrote, while fools were yet in remembrance, if not in favour at court, he knew had been daily transgressed. “If,” he131 says, “without thy will, and by chance-medley, thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray God to forgive thee. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to mend. Oh! ’tis cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither scorn any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. He that relates another man’s wicked jest, adopts it for his own. He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserveth to die a beggar by the bargain. We read that all those who were born in England the year after the beginning of the great mortality, in 1349, wanted their four cheek-teeth. Such let thy jests be,” adds the humorous commentator, “that they may not grind the credit of thy friend; and make not jests so long till thou becomest one.” Such was the comment of a moralist on jesting, suggested by the consequence of non-professional joking on royalty.
From the young King Edward V., no jester had opportunity to draw a smile, except at the banquet at Hornsey Park, the only festival which young Edward held between his accession and his death. His uncle Richard lacked leisure to be “i’ the vein” for these follies; but his wife, Lady Anne, and the young Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen of Henry VII.) kept, for a brief season, such joyous court at Greenwich, such minstreling, and dancing, and witnessing or playing jests, that the oppressed and impoverished people looked on grimly, and murmured rather above their breath. Henry VII., again, was too mean or too wise to lavish money on any mere court gauds, though he was not ungenerous in other respects. He was, at all events, the first English King who lived within his income; and he was better pleased by lending money to fit out the first European expedition that ever reached the American continent than he could have been by any jest, good, bad, or indifferent, that he might have to pay for. Nevertheless, in the days of the Tudors, court fools abounded, and indeed,132 till the fall of the monarchy under the Stuarts, the nest of ninnies was filled with a chirruping brood.
Among these was Patch, who is said to have been jester to Henry VIII. By some, this name is supposed to stand for “fool” generally. Others, with better reason, believe that Patch was the cant-name of Williams and Saxton, fools of Cardinal Wolsey. However this may be, we may be sure that a jester alone could have dared to make such a King as Henry VIII. look ridiculous, as a fool called by this name, “Patch,” is said to have done when he besought the King to grant him a warrant authorizing him to exact an egg from every husband who had serious reasons to be dissatisfied with the conduct of his wife. The King thought it a fair joke, and the warrant being drawn up in sportiveness, he signed the document in full gaiety of spirit. The ink was scarcely dry when the jester, bowing with mock gravity, demanded the first egg from the King. “Your Grace,” said he, “belongs to the class of husbands on whom I am entitled to make levy.” The joke was not very well relished, and the warrant was cancelled.
John Heywood, himself a “King’s Jester” and a poet, has made Cardinal Wolsey’s fool the subject of an epigram, which serves, with its title, to show both the real and the nick-name of the merry retainer. The former, according to Heywood, was Sexton and not Saxton. The epigram is entitled, ‘A Saying of Patch, my Lord Cardinal’s Fool,’ and runs thus:—
Master Sexton, a person of unknowen wit,
As he at my Lord Cardinal’s board did sit,
Greedily caught at a goblet of wine.
“Drink none!” said my lord, “for that sore leg of thine.”
“I warrant, your Grace,” quoth Sexton, “I provide
For my leg; for I drinke on the tother side.”
That Patch was the name of a fool retained by the Cardinal, we have further evidence in the touching biography of133 Wolsey by Cavendish, his “gentleman-usher.” And that Patch had merit of a superior quality, may also be seen in the same little work. When the fallen statesman was proceeding up the hill near Putney, on his way to Esher, having been just before compelled to retire from York House, he was overtaken by Norris, a gentleman of the Royal bed-chamber, who brought with him a gold ring and a letter from the King, with assurances of his own that the Cardinal would soon recover both favour and power. Wolsey, in sudden ecstasy, slipped from his mule; went on his knees in the mud; poured forth very unheroic phrases, ringing of gratitude, but the key-note of which was struck by self-gratulation. The Cardinal was for giving anything he possessed to the bearer of such good news; but then he had so little left to bestow! At length, he rewarded Norris with a gold chain, to the end of which was attached a relic of the True Cross, “which,” said Wolsey, “when I was in prosperity, I would not have parted with for a thousand pounds.” Norris having been thus rewarded, the downfallen but hopeful dignitary looked around for a fitting messenger to convey the expressions of his thankfulness to Henry,—“To that good master whom I have loved more than myself, and whom I have well served. And to say that I have no one now to convey to him the expression of my gratitude!” At this moment, his eye fell upon poor faithful Motley, and the Cardinal immediately exclaimed, “But Patch, my fool, who is with me, will be my interpreter to his Majesty, with you, my good Norris. I give him to his Majesty: Patch is worth a thousand pounds.”
The jester, who was thus set at as high a value as a relic of the True Cross, had no inclination at all to become a court fool. Cavendish describes the unwillingness of Patch in an almost pathetic manner. The jester refused to leave his old master, but six stout men bound him to a horse, not without great difficulty, according to Mr. Tytler; but134 having accomplished the task, the steed was set off at full gallop, and Patch was thus promoted to a court jestership, in spite of himself.
Patch seems to have been bold enough, when he got used to his new service, if the anecdote I have told of him and the King be well founded; but the best known of the jesters who fooled courtiers to the very top of their bent, at the court of Henry VIII., and did not spare the King himself, was Will Sommers, whose alleged portrait at Hampton Court is familiar to all who have resorted to that most pleasant locality. Armin, in his ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ has given another portraiture of Will,—one that may be relied on, for Armin gave it when many persons were alive, well able to judge of its correctness; and this portrait I proceed to place before my readers.
“Will Sommers, born in Shropshire, as some say,
Was brought to Greenwich, on a holiday,—
Presented to the King;—which fool disdain’d
To shake him by the hand, or was ashamed.
Howe’er it was; as ancient people say,
With much ado was won to it that day.
Lean he was, hollow-eyed, as all report,
And stoop he did too; yet in all the court,
Few men were more beloved than was this fool,
Whose merry prate kept with the King much rule.
When he was sad the King with him would rhyme;
Thus Will exil?d sadness many a time.
I could describe him, as I did the rest,
But in my mind, I do not think it best;
My reason this, howe’er I do descry him,
So many knew him, that I may belie him;
Therefore, to please all people, one by one,
I hold it best to let that pains alone;
Only this much:—He was a poor man’s friend,
And help’d the widow often in her end.
The King would ever grant what he did crave,
For well he knew Will no exacting knave;
But wish’d the King to do good deeds great store,
Which caused the court to love him more and more.”
135 Will seems to have been contemporary with Saxton, or Sexton, a fool of some notoriety at the Tudor’s Court, from the circumstance of his being the first jester who wore a wig. There is an entry from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chambers, quoted in the Arch?ologia, to the following effect:—“Paid for Saxton, the King’s fool, for a wig, 20s.” Is it not possible that this jester may have assumed this mode in order to ridicule the new fashion of the ladies, who had now, for the first time in England, adopted the wig—which English lords had begun to wear as early as the reign of Stephen? However this may be, the above is all we know of Saxton in his capacity of fool to Henry. How Sommers looked at Court, the following entry will sufficiently show:—“For making a doublet of worsted, lined with canvass and cotton, for William Som’ers, our fool. Item, for making of a coat and a cap of green cloth, fringed with red crape and lined with frieze, for our said fool. Item, for making of a doublet of fustian, lined with cotton and canvass, for our said fool. For making of a coat of green cloth, with hood to the same, fringed with white and lined with frieze and buckram, for our fool aforesaid.”
In this suit and office, Will’s reputation so stirred Shropshire, that his old uncle trudged up to town to visit him at court. The uncle was no ill man to look at, for when the “kinde old man,” as Armin calls him, entered Greenwich, and on asking the way to the palace, was laughed at by saucy pages, who directed him across the water to Blackwall, others pitied his simplicity, and had respect for a man “with a buttoned cap, a lockram falling band (coarse but clean), a russet coat, a white belt of a horse-hide (right horse-collar, white leather), a close round breech of russet sheep’s-wool, with a long stock of white kersey, a high shoe with yellow buckles, all white with dust,—for that day, the good old man had come three-and-twenty miles on foot.” Lusty old yeoman! How much more respectable than the flaunting136 “gard and gentlewomen in their windows,” who “had much sport” to see him pass on his way. But the old man thought his nephew as good as any of them, and, with dignified self-possession, inquires,—“if there be not a gentleman in the court dwelling, called by the name of Master Will Sommers.” This was giving Will a high position, but it was recognized; and the old uncle was led to Will, who was taking an afternoon sleep in the park, with his head on a cushion supplied by a woman whose son, addicted to the gentle pursuit of piracy, Will saved from the hangman and the gallows at Blackwall. After a little fooling and much hearty greeting, Will took his uncle by the hand: “Come,” says he, “thou shalt see Harry, Cockle,—the only Harry in England;” so he led him to the chamber of presence, and ever and anon cries out, “Awere! room for me and my uncle! and, knaves, bid him welcome!” This was done, perhaps, with a little mock gravity, but Armin tells us that “the old man thought himself no earthly man, they honoured him so much.”
Will, however, paused awhile, for he saw his uncle’s country suit, pronounced it unfit for the King’s presence, and, telling the old man that he must first don a full court-dress, Will takes him to his chamber, and attires him in his best fool’s suit, cap and all. The simple old man simply wore the costume, and when the two stood before the King, Harry laughed at the ridiculous spectacle. The old man, and Will too, seem to have had some purpose in the whole affair, for when the King encouraged them to talk, the uncle bade Will tell him all about Tirrell’s Frith,—a common, of the use of which the Shropshire poor had been deprived by Master Tirrell, who had enclosed it. The King was so interested that he gave orders that the common should be thrown open again; and thereby the sturdy old uncle had not his long walk for nothing, seeing also that, when he returned to his native county, “he, while he lived, for that137 deed was allowed bayly of the common, which place was worth twenty pound a year.”
Of Will’s power to please the King in his moody moments, we have specimens in certain questions put, and indeed answered, by the fool. He put them, as the fool of the play does, “with an anticke look, to please the beholders;” for example, “What is it, that the lesser it is, the more it is to be feared?”—which proves to be, “a little bridge over a deep river,” at which the King “smiled.” At more foolish riddles, the King “laught;” and at others, which cannot possibly be set down here, we are told that “the King laught heartily, and was exceeding merry.” For being made so merry, Harry promised Will any favour he might ask; Will undertook to apply when he had grace to petition. “One day I shall,” said he, “for every man sees his latter end, but knows not his beginning.” And with this jester’s quip, Will took his leave and went away, “and laid him down among the spaniels to sleep.”
Will was but scantily in favour with Cardinal Wolsey, whom he once mulcted of ten pounds. He had entered the King’s private apartment when the Sovereign and the Cardinal were together; and Will apologized for the intrusion by saying, that some of his Eminence’s creditors were at the door, and wanted to be paid their due. Wolsey declared he would forfeit his head if he owed a man a penny; but he gave Will ten pounds, on his promise to pay it where it was due. When Will returned, he exclaimed, “To whom dost thou owe thy soul, Cardinal?” “To God,” was the reply. “And thy wealth?” “To the poor.” At which, Will declared the Cardinal’s head forfeit to the King. “For,” said he, “to the poor at the gate I paid the debt, which he yields is due.” The King laughed, and the Cardinal feigned to be merry, “but it grieved him to give away ten pounds so; yet worse tricks than this Will Sommers served him after, for indeed he (the Cardinal) could never abide him.”
138 Will was not above human infirmities; he was jealous, like greater men at court, and especially when a rival fool vied with him to gain smiles and moidores from the King. We have an instance in the case when “a jester, a big man, of a great voice, long black locks, and a very big round beard,” was juggling and jesting before the King. Armin tells us, that “lightly one fool cannot endure the sight of another;” and Will, angry at his huge rival, sought to recover his supremacy by dashing a bowl of bread and milk over the head, eyes, and beard of his titanic rival. “This lusty jester, forgetting himself in fury, draws his dagger, and begins to protest. ‘Nay,’ says the King, ‘are ye so hot?’ claps him fast; and though he draws his dagger here, makes him put it up in another place. The poor abused jester was jested out of countenance, and lay in durance a great while, till Will Sommers was fain (after he broke his head, to give him a plaister,) to get him out again. But never after came my juggler in the Court more so near the King, being such a man to draw in the presence of the King;” who (after all) could not have been mortally stricken, seeing that jesters carried only daggers of lath; but probably the act itself was considered a bad example and a serious offence.
Of the generous feeling of Will, there is a well-known instance recited in Grainger; according to which it would appear, that in early life Will had been a servant in the family of a Northamptonshire gentleman named Richard Farmor or Fermor. This gentleman was of a compassionate spirit, and hearing of a destitute priest incarcerated in the gaol at Buckingham for denying the King’s supremacy, the kind gentleman sent him a couple of shirts and eightpence. This small but acceptable and praiseworthy charity entirely ruined the donor. It laid him open to a charge of pr?munire; and for giving a change of linen and the price of a meal to a captive Papist, the King confiscated this Fermor’s estates, and reduced him to beggary and starvation. Will found opportunity to serve his old master, but not till139 death was pressing hard upon the King, and making his heart also something less tough and obdurate than it was wont to be. The fool improved his opportunity, and leaving to others to bid the sick monarch repent of his sins, hinted that it would be a better joke if he were to make reparation for them. The fool’s divinity was not so contemptible, for it worked on the dying King, “who,” says Mr. Thoms, in a note to Mr. Collier’s reprint of the ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ “caused the remains of Fermor’s estate, which had been dismembered, to be restored to him.”
The tracts and plays of succeeding years found purchasers or spectators because they reproduced Sommers in his jests, gait, dress, and manners. Rowland has him in his ‘Good and Bad News;’ Rowley, in his chronicle play, ‘When you see me you know me;’ and Nash, in his ‘Summers’ Last Will and Testament.’ From these sources, no indifferent idea may be gained of the once famous Will. The incidents of Rowland’s poem are to be found in Rowley’s play. The latter, printed in 1605, is a chronicle play, including the years 1537–1546, the last year being the one before Henry’s death. It abounds with anachronisms, but also with illustrations of the manner in which Sommers lived at court, how he joked with the King, capped rhymes with their Majesties, and was sometimes anything but decent in his jokes. At his first appearance, Will enters the presence “at Whitehall,” booted and spurred, upon which the following dialogue takes place:—
“K. Why, where hast thou been?
W. Marry, I rise early, and ride post to London, to know what news was here at Court.
K. Was that your nearest way, William?
W. Oh, ay, the very foot-path, but yet I rid the horse-way to hear it. I warrant there is ne’er a Cundid-head keeper in London, but knows what is done in all the courts in Christendom.
140Wols. And what is the best news there, William?
W. Good news for you, my Lord Cardinal, for one of the old women water-bearers told me for certain, that last Friday, all the bells in Rome rang backward; there was a thousand dirges sung; six hundred Ave-Marias said; every man washed his face in holy water; the people crossing and blessing themselves to send them a new Pope, for the old is gone to purgatory.... The news,” adds Will, “after leaving Rome last Friday, was at Billingsgate by Saturday morning; ’twas a full moon, and came up in a spring-tide.”
Queen Jane is represented as looking “bigger” upon the jester; “But I care not,” says Will to the King, “an she bring thee a young prince, Will Sommers mayhaps be his fool when you two are both dead and rotten.” “Do you hear, wenches?” he subsequently says to the maids of honour, likely to be anxious to announce the issue of the event alluded to. “She that brings the first tidings, however it fall out, let her be sure to say that the child’s like the father, or else she shall have no reward.”
Will is described as extravagantly free, not only to the maids of honour, but to the King’s sister. Patch, in this piece, is not the King’s fool, but Wolsey’s. “All the fools follow you, my lord,” he says to the Cardinal, when the latter observes the two fools near him: “I come to bid my cousin Patch welcome to court; and when I come to York House, he’ll do as much for me.” To which Patch, who seems here a natural rather then an artificial fool, replies, “Yes, cousin; hey, da, darry, diddel, day, day.” Will’s attempts to make the King merry are sometimes roughly recompensed. “He gave me such a box on the ear,” says the fool, “that strake me clean through three chambers, down four pair of stairs. I fell over five barrels in the bottom of the cellar, and if I had not well liquored myself there, I had never lived after it.” Patch, too, declares that the King had141 almost killed him “with his countenance.” This sort of fool’s flattery has been very acceptable, it may be observed, to all despotic princes, from Augustus down to the Czar Nicholas. The most amusing of Roman historians tells us that Augustus was always well pleased with those persons who, in addressing him, looked upon the ground, as though there were a divine splendour in his eyes, too dazzling for them to gaze upon. “Gaudiebatque,” says Suetonius, “si quis sibi acrius contuenti, quasi ad fulgorem solis, vultum submitteret.” His eyes nevertheless grew dim as he grew old, when the lustre of the left one, in particular, went out in a most ungodlike fashion.
The Czar Nicholas had a similar weakness, and he used his eyes to frighten or fascinate people. Playing them mildly, he subdued Lieutenant Royer into ecstatic admiration; and, according to Mr. Turnerelli, Nicholas once, with one of his terrible glances, terrified a Swedish Admiral into the Russian service. On another occasion, happening to encounter a poor fellow who had strolled into a private part of the Imperial park, the Czar gazed at him with such lightning in his glance, that the intruder was stricken with brain fever;—an amount of flattery which even Patch never piled up as tribute to the withering power of the terrible looks of Henry VIII. Patch indeed had cause to be afraid of Henry, for his rude essay to make the melancholy Monarch merry, is rewarded by a kicking; for which, however, the King makes compensation. Patch gets an angel, to buy him points; but Will, who contrived that his cousin fool should incur the punishment, obtains a new cap and suit for his pains; for, sayeth he, “so long as the King lives, the Cardinal’s fool must give way to the King’s fool.” But in the latter there is some sound sense, as, for instance, when he exclaims: “Dost hear, old Harry, I am sure the true faith is able to defend itself, without thee!” For some such remark, Wolsey styles him “a shrewd fool.” Will is ready to do anything but flatter,142 which is against his vocation; and get drunk, which is against his health; but he no sooner declines to follow Patch to the cellar, when he foregoes his resolution, and foolishly drinks away his wit, but sleeps it back again.
Its awakening is first tried on the new Queen Catherine; and it is in the accomplished jester’s vein. “Look to thy husband, Kate, lest he cozen thee; provide civil oranges enough, or he’ll have a lemon, shortly.” This play upon the word leman, or “mistress,” was subsequently employed by Heywood, the “King’s Jester,” to point a jest made in the hearing of Queen Mary. Will, however, is much more addicted to uttering bitter sentences against Wolsey, than jokes on the King, Queen, or little Prince Edward. He is especially severe on the “Smoake pence,” a most unpopular tax levied by the priest, and turned, as Will implies, to the Cardinal’s especial profit. The jester proposes to the King, that Wolsey shall be permitted to take the chimneys, since there were bricks enough in the land, or materials for them, to build others. But he protests against the coin of the realm being carried away, seeing, as he says, that there is no mint whence new money can be issued. Indeed nothing can exceed the boldness of Will’s jokes against the Cardinal, except the nastiness of those levelled at the ladies. Both are doubtless traditional, and we may believe that they were uttered with impunity, from the stereotyped speech of the King, “Well, William, your tongue is privileged.”
Sommers was also brought upon the stage by Nash, in his ‘Summers’ Last Will and Testament.’ This piece was written in 1593, and printed some years later. There were then persons living who may have remembered Will, as having seen him in their youth; and what is said of him personally in this piece, may be accepted, I think, as having some foundation in fact. The incidents spoken of connected with his life at court, may also rest upon a basis143 of truth, and are therefore worth noticing. Nash’s play is more like a masque than a comedy, and Rowley’s chronicle-drama abounds in anachronisms. The probable facts, however, are only mistimed, and both dramatists agree, in the main, in the character of Will, “who,” says Mr. Thoms, in the reprint of the ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ “in all probability owes his reputation rather to the uniform kindness with which he used his influence over bluff Harry, than to his wit or folly.”
In the dramatic portrait, then, of this once famous court fool, as limned by Nash, we find Will describing himself as “used to go without money, without garters, without girdle, without a hatband, without points to my hose, and without a knife to my dinner.” As in Rowley, so here, Will quotes Latin; he is also apt at old proverbs, and verbose with old classical stories and tales, in which there are more words, however, than wit. His Latin, indeed, is not always to the point, for he translates memento mori, “Remember to rise betimes in the morning;” nor are his classical stories true to historical tradition, nor his tales remarkable for delicacy of illustration. He has a simpleton’s philosophy, and talks little matters of science very much after the fashion of ‘Conversations at Home.’ He has, too, a fool’s contempt for learning, as may be seen in the following passage, which contains some allusions to his early life:—
“Who would be a scholar? not I, I promise you! My mind always gave me this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me hate it so as I did. When I should have been at school construing Batte mi fili, mi fili mi Batte, I was close under a hedge, or under a barn wall, playing at span-counter or Jack-in-a-box. My master beat me, my father beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this would not make me a squitter-book. It was my destiny. I thank her as a most courteous goddess, that she hath not cast me away upon gibberish;” and so on, with a diatribe144 against the divisions of grammar, and parts of speech generally, as forming a portion of “the devil’s Pater-noster.” And yet, out of the accidence, he coins almost his only fragment of wit throughout a play in which he enacts the character of “Chorus.” “Verba dandi et reddendi,” says Will, “go together in the grammar rule; there is no giving but with condition of restoring.” Altogether we obtain fewer ideas of what Will may have been, from Nash, than from Rowley. The former makes him less attractive, and when the jester closes the piece with a “Valete spectatores, pay for this sport with a Plaudite, and the next time the wind blows from this corner, we will make you ten times as merry,”—we are glad to rejoin, vale et tu, and to get away without paying the price asked for sport which, had it been ten times as merry as is vouched for the next play, would not have sinned with excess of mirthfulness.
It only remains for me to add, that Will survived to hold office under Edward VI. How he sustained his reputation during a portion of the six years’ reign of that young monarch, I am unable to inform my readers. The only trace I have found of him is in a paper by Bray, in the eighteenth volume of the ‘Arch?ologia,’ from which we learn, according to a citation from the household expenses, that the sum of twelvepence was paid “for painting Will Somers’ garments.”
Before proceeding to the next reign, I will take this opportunity to narrate an anecdote of the learned and skilful diplomatist, Pace,—not because he was the namesake of Pace, the “bitter fool” of Queen Elizabeth’s days, but because the anecdote itself has reference to subjects from which Henry could draw amusement, and that there is an illustration in it, in connection with the court jesters.
Pace, we are told, in the collection of letters to and from Erasmus (Basle, 1558), was once in the church at Woodstock, with the King and court, when the Franciscan monk145 who preached, confined himself in his sermon to denouncing the Greek language, and devoting to destruction all who studied it. The choice of such a subject, and the manner in which it was treated, were the more remarkable, as, a short time previously, a Franciscan monk had been silenced for preaching in the same sense. The Oxford students had hooted him in his cell, and the authorities had to interfere. The King had written to the heads of colleges in favour of the study of Greek; and his amazement was all the more unbounded at the audacity of the new monk, who went even further in his wrath against Greek than the Jewish Rabbis, who were wont to solemnly pronounce accursed the man who allowed his children to learn that language. If the King was enraged, the grave and learned Pace, who sat near him, was delighted. He did not dare exhibit his ecstasy; but he was so overcome with a propensity to burst out laughing, that he was compelled to bury his face in both hands, to conceal his strong and risible emotion. He was rather bolder when Henry subsequently ordered the monk to attend him in his closet, where the king pelted him with questions and menaces, and nearly frightened him out of his senses. The poor preacher had been abusing Erasmus without having read his works. He had, however, as he tremblingly remarked, “cast his eye over some pages of the ‘Eulogy of Folly.’” “Ah,” said Pace, “I really believe that the work was especially written with a view to your reverence.” The monk meekly smiled. He had not heart enough to confront the scholar, but he had sense enough to creep out of the difficulty into which he had fallen. He confessed himself to be reconciled with Greek from the sudden conviction which had descended upon him, that it was derived from the Hebrew. King and courtiers present burst into loud laughter at this sapient observation, under shelter of which the speaker was allowed to withdraw in safety. Pace declared that the monk had wit enough to146 make the fortune of a court jester; for if it did not save him from getting into a scrape, it certainly was strong enough to draw him out of one.
Having mentioned the faithful fool of Cardinal Wolsey,—Patch,—I cannot pass over the simpleton, or Morio, Patteson, retained in the household of Wolsey’s successor in the Chancellorship, Sir Thomas More. All persons who are familiar with the biography of the latter eminent individual, will remember how heartily Sir Thomas, from his youth upwards, was addicted to jesting. When he was a page, being then fifteen years of age, in the family of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, he kept the octogenarian prelate and all his guests in roars of laughter, as he waited on them at table. Morton was delighted with the frolicsome boy, who, especially at Christmas and other joyous seasons, was worth any number of ordinary household fools, seeing that his improvised jests were superior to anything done or uttered by the professional joker. More’s manner on these occasions was, however, quite after the fashion of “cousin Motley.” Thus, when the players were representing some comic drama, for the entertainment of their reverend patron, “young More,” as Roper relates in his Life, “would suddenly step up among the players, and, never studying before upon the matter, make often a part of his own invention which was so witty, and so full of jests, that he alone made more sport than all the players besides; for which, his towardliness, the Cardinal much delighted in him, and would often say of him to divers of the nobility who at sundry times dined with him, ‘This child here, waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous rare man.’” As More, in his youth, gratified Cardinal Morton by his wit, so, in his manhood, by his wit as well as his wisdom, he afforded amusement to his capricious Sovereign. When Henry had had enough of the outpouring of knowledge from More (who was yet but Under-Sheriff of147 London and Master of the Requests) on astronomy, geometry, and divinity; then, “because,” says his biographer, “he was of a very pleasant disposition, it pleased His Majesty and the Queen, after the Council had supped, commonly to call for him to hear his pleasant jests.” These latter must have been of a very different quality from those which the King had been wont to make merry with from the lips of Will Sommers, and we cannot be surprised at their exciting such admiration in the Sovereign that he detained the illustrious jester whole weeks at Court, away from his home and domestic enjoyments. Sir Thomas beheld himself in great peril of descending to the vocation of joker in ordinary, and he devised a witty remedy in order to escape the uncoveted distinction. “When Sir Thomas perceived his pleasant conceits so much to delight them that he could scarce once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and children, and that he could not be two days absent from the Court, but he must be sent for again; he, much misliking this restraint of his liberty, began therefore to dissemble his mirth, and so, little by little, to disuse himself, that he from henceforth, in such seasons, was no more so ordinarily sent for.” In short, he feigned heaviness of humour, that he might escape the honours paid to, and the services expected from, a court jester. Had any friend expressed astonishment at the change in his bearing, More might have excused himself nearly in the words of the essayist, who said:—“If my readers should at any time remark that I am particularly dull, they may be assured there is a design under it.”
So More contrived for awhile to be more at home, where he had a wife who missed all the points of his puns, and a household fool who had about as much wit as his mistress. The latter was one Patteson, an ex-mummer, half crazed by a fall from a church-steeple, who had lost his old itinerant vocation, and whom More took into his family, poor, shabby,148 droll fellow as he was, and amused himself, after application to high subjects, by listening to his small wit, even as a man may take now and then to small-beer after too hot and long an acquaintance with ruddy Vin de Beaune.
Patteson founded his desire to be a household fool, on the very sufficient ground that, as he was already laughed at for one, he thought he might as well be hired in a great family, where he should be paid, fed, and lodged for being thus the object of risibility. Sir Thomas answered, that he had had little thought of employing such a retainer, being rather inclined to do all the fooling in his family, himself. The great negotiation, however, was brought to a conclusion by a compromise; the business was to be divided, Sir Thomas continuing unlicensed joker, and Patteson being paid full salary for inoffensive small wit, cleanliness of life, and restraint of his tongue before ladies.
Patteson was not an educated jester, like Scogan and other great wearers of the cap and bells under the roofs of kings. He could not read. “But what of that?” he is said to have asked; “there never was but one that I ever heard of, that never having learned, knew his letters, and well he might, for he made them that made them.” The witty remark deserved to procure for Patteson his desired engagement; and this he had no sooner procured, than he affected to take precedence of his master, in his own house; “for,” said he, “you, brother, are but jester to King Harry, whereas I am jester to Sir Thomas More; and I leave you to determine which is the greater man of the two.”
Patteson occasionally went abroad with his master, probably attending him as his servant, which was often one of the offices of fools. The license of the latter also went abroad with the service of the former, and we are told that once, after he had been many years in More’s service, he attended his master, or at all events was present, at a dinner given in Guildhall, when the conversation fell upon More’s149 refusal to take the oath of supremacy. The conversation of the guests was interrupted by a query of the fool:—“Why, what aileth him,” cried Patteson, “that he will not swear? Wherefore should he stick to swear? I have sworn the oath myself.”
Lord Campbell quotes another illustration of the license of this jester, from ‘Il Moro’, an Italian account of Sir Thomas More, printed at Florence, and dedicated to Cardinal Pole. The incident is supposed to be narrated by the Chancellor himself, and Lord Campbell is of opinion that it does not give us “a very exalted notion of the merriment caused by these simpletons.” Perhaps we might more correctly say, that the incident fails to convey a very elevated idea of the wit that raised the merriment. However this may be, here is the trait in question:—
“Yesterday, while we were dining, Pattison” (so is the name here spelt) “seeing a guest with a very large nose, said, there was one at table who had been trading to the Promontory of Noses. All eyes were turned to the great nose, though we discreetly preserved silence, that the good man might not be abashed. Pattison, perceiving the mistake he had made, tried to set himself right, and said, ‘He lies who says the gentleman’s nose is large, for, on the faith of a true knight, it is rather a small one.’ At this, all being inclined to laugh, I made signs for the fool to be turned out of the room; but Pattison, who boasted that he brought every affair that he commenced to a happy conclusion, resisted, and, placing himself in my seat at the head of the table, said aloud, with my tone and gesture, ‘There is one thing I would have you to know,—that gentleman there has not the least bit of nose on his face.’”
This sort of sparring between patron and jester was commonly indulged in with considerable satisfaction by both parties. It was safer for More to do so, by way of relaxation, with Patteson, than with the King; whose humour might150 take a deadly turn against an unwelcome joke, and particularly against an unlicensed joker. The authoress of ‘The Household of Sir Thomas More,’ following the tradition, describes the banter of Sir Thomas and Sir Witless, as never exceeding the bounds of good-humoured pleasantry; “but Patteson,” it is added, “is never without an answer, and although, it may be, each amuses himself now and then with thinking, I’ll put him up with such a question; yet, once begun, the skein runs off the reel without a knot, and shows the excellent nature of both, so free are they alike from malice and over-license.” It is true that the sayings put in the mouth of More’s “Morio” by the authoress whose words I have just quoted, are for the most part as apocryphal as Borde’s compiled jests to which he has prefixed the name of “Scoggin,” to make them sell. The character of the fool is, however, described according to tradition, in the pleasant addition to the Romance of History, in the work last named. There we see Patteson, with a peacock’s feather in his hand, sitting astride on a balustrade, and exchanging sharp question and answer, and lively comment and reflection, on peacocks themselves and their vanity; and on the advantages of not having as many eyes in their heads as they have in their tails, as they are in consequence less vain-glorious, and see not what passes behind their backs. Patteson, according to this authoress, chopped logic with the young daughters of More; touched a little on sentimental matters; could speak feelingly of religion, death, and the equality of the grave; spoke prophetically on political subjects; and jested with them, or rather at them, on their several lovers.
Lord Campbell naturally suggests, that More’s fool ought to have been a great proficient at jesting, since he practised under so great a master. However this may be, when the Lord Chancellor had commenced to decline from power and dignity, he provided for the future well-being of his fool as151 carefully as he did for that of any greater officer of his household. Wolsey, at his fall, sent Patch as an acceptable gift to the King. More made over Patteson to a less exalted sovereign,—the Lord Mayor of the City of London, “with a stipulation,” says Lord Campbell, “that he should continue to serve the office of fool to the Lord Mayor for the time being.” This rather loosely-worded phrase probably points at the origin of the office of “Lord Mayor’s Fool,” a title which was, however, given to the clubmen in provincial mayoral processions from the year 1444. Whether Patteson was, or was not, the original Lord Mayor’s Fool, by right of nomination to the office, he had as little respect for the dignity of chief magistrate of the city, as any modern merchant prince who, being too lazy or too unpatriotic to perform the onerous duty of the office, affects to despise the dignity which accompanies, and the titles which often follow, a distinguished fulfilment of that duty. So this first official corporation jester flouted his sublime chief. His humour in this respect is well hinted at by the authoress of ‘The Household of Sir Thomas More,’ who depicts Patteson as saying, on one first of April, “I told my Lord Mayor overnight, that if he looked for a fool this morning, he must look in the glass.... I should by rights wear the gold chain, and he the motley; and a proper fool he is, and I shall be glad when his year’s service to me is out. The worst of these Lord Mayors is, that we can’t part with them till their time’s up. Why, now, this present one hath not so much understanding as would foot an old stocking; ’twas but yesterday when, in quality of my Taster, he civilly enough makes over to me a half-eaten plate of gurnet, which I wave aside thus, saying,—I eat no fish of which I cannot affirm, ‘rari sunt boni,’ few are the bones, ... and I protest to you, he knew it not for fool’s Latin.” Patteson himself had a veneration for his old master which he could not entertain for the new, from whose chattering propensity at table, the152 jester picked out views of politics that foreboded evil to his former and now disgraced patron. “For the love of safety, then, Mistress Meg,” says Patteson, in a passage founded on this stray scrap of history, “bid thy good father e’en take a fool’s advice, and eat humble-pie betimes; for doubt not this proud madame (Anne Boleyn) to be as vindictive as Herodias, and one that, unless he appease her full early, will have his head set before her in a charger. I’ve said my say.”
We may take Patteson at his last word, and, leaving him, proceed to greater names than his on the register of Motley in the service of kings.
* * * * *
We now come to a personage of some celebrity, who seems to have been a court jester, without being exactly a court fool. I allude to John Heywood, of North Mimms, in Hertfordshire, whom Sir Thomas More introduced to the King as Sir William Neville did Scogan, and whose introduction was followed by similar circumstances,—his appointment as “jester” to the sovereign.
More had known Heywood early. The latter was a student at what was then called Broadgate, Oxford, now Pembroke. Heywood’s spirit of fun, his humour, and his readiness at repartee made him a favourite with More, who was fond of spending leisure hours with him,—a man of whom it was said that “he had wit at will, and art was all he missed.” Heywood, moreover, was a good vocalist, and no mean instrumental player. Previous to his introduction to the King, More presented him to the lady (afterwards Queen) Mary, who found his merriment so irresistible “that it moved even her rigid muscles,” says Warton; “and her sullen solemnity was not proof against his songs, his rhymes, and his jests.” Mary, however, was more easily moved to mirth than Warton and those whose opinions were followed by him, suspected. Even in her153 womanhood, when we are accustomed to think of her as one solemnly severe, she could (albeit moody and melancholy at times) laugh heartily at a mountebank. In 1556, Strype speaks of her as holding a grand military review in Greenwich Park, at which “came a tumbler, and played many pretty feats, the Queen and Cardinal (Pole) looking on; whereat she was observed to laugh heartily.” Long ere she had ascended the throne, she had learned to laugh at, with, or through John Heywood. Of the latter, Warton says that “he was beloved and rewarded by Henry VIII. for his buffooneries;” and, indeed, that monarch was so satisfied with the quips of his daughter’s favourite, that, as previously stated, he named John “King’s Jester.” He seems to have been a favourite also in the mansions and at the tables of the nobility; and a specimen of his wit there is offered us by Puttenham.
“The following happened,” he says, “on a time, at the Duke of Northumberland’s board, where merry John Heywood was allowed to sit at the board’s end. The Duke had a very noble and honourable mind to pay his debts well, and when he lacked money, would not stick to sell the greatest part of his plate. So had he done some few days before.
“Heywood being loath to call for his drink as often as he was dry, turned his eyes towards the cupboard, and said, ‘I find a great miss of your Grace’s standing-cups.’ The Duke, thinking that he had spoken it of some knowledge that his plate was lately sold, said somewhat sharply, ‘Why, Sir, will not these cups serve so good a man as yourself?’ Heywood readily replied, ‘Yes, if it please your Grace, but I would have one of them stand still at my elbow, full of drink, that I might not be driven to trouble your man so often to call for it.’
“This pleasant and speedy reverse of the former words, helped all the matter again, whereby the Duke became154 very pleasant, and drank a bottle of wine to Heywood, and bade a cup should always be standing by him.”
His boldness with the Queen was quite that of the privileged jester, and he was recompensed for his puns and conceits when men more meritorious were neglected. The following contains good proof of his license. When the Queen once remarked to him that the priests must forego their wives, John exclaimed (and he was a very strict Catholic too), “Then your Grace must allow them lemmans [sweethearts], for the clergy cannot live without sauce.” This epigrammatic turn was very strong upon him; and indeed many of his epigrams, of which he was the author of hundreds, are said to have been versifications of his own jokes. I have already noticed the audacity of his jests with the sovereign, a further instance of which we have in an incident connected with one of his visits to the palace.
“Now, Master Heywood,” said Mary on the occasion in question, “what wind blew you to court?” “There were two,” answered audacious John; “one, that I might see your Majesty, and the other, that your Majesty might see me.” When he was told that a certain Master of Arts had assumed the ordinary attire of the court fool, “There is no great harm in that,” remarked Heywood, “he is merely a wise man in a fool’s coat; the evil is, when the fool puts over his motley the wise man’s gown.”—“How do you like my beer?” asked a host of him, “is it not well hopped?” “So well,” said Heywood, “that had it hopped a little further, it would have hopped into water.” This reminds me of a far wittier saying by a brighter English wit than Heywood—the late Douglas Jerrold; and which is better worth recording. At an hotel at Hastings, Jerrold was dining with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered among other pleasant things, “a bottle of old port.” “Waiter,” said Douglas, with that twinkle of the eye which was always a promise of wit, “Mind, now; a bottle of your old port, not your elder port.”155 Heywood never equalled that, though he gave utterance to as many witty thoughts as the wittiest man of his time. Among them was his remark, to a person complaining that the great number of lawyers would spoil the profession. “Not so,” exclaimed John; “for the more spaniels, the more game!”
His familiarity with Mary, was doubtless founded on his long service. When she was a mere little girl at Greenwich, Heywood officiated as manager of the troop of child actors who performed in her presence. On one occasion he appears to have received six and eightpence for his pains. Later, he wrote ballads for her, sometimes making herself the subject of them. When her coronation procession passed St. Paul’s, there was mirthful John, seated beneath a vine; and, as the Queen approached, he arose and delivered an oration. When Mary was ill, he went to her chamber and recited verses or read plays to her; and when she was dying, says Fl?gel, he stood by her death-bed, and solaced her with music; “Er war auch ein berühmter Musikus, und musste der K?nigin Maria von England, auf ihrem Todbette, mit seiner Musik aufwarten.” This could not have been, however, when her death was very near. Lingard simply says, that “on the morning of her death, Mass was celebrated in her chamber; she was perfectly sensible, and expired a few minutes before the conclusion.”
With the reputation of having been “King’s Jester,” Heywood is also known to us as a poet, a dramatist, and a writer of epigrams. In the first capacity, his most laboured piece is the least successful. I have tried in vain to read through his ninety-eight chapters, in octave stanzas, devoted to the subject of “The Spider and the Fly,” in the gaily-bound copy in the British Museum. I quite agree with Harrison’s description of it (quoted by Warton), that “neither he himself that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can read unto the meaning thereof.” It is far156 less amusing than the comic song, with the same title, by the old free-and-easy poet, Tom Hudson.
As a dramatist, Heywood was among the earliest of English writers of comedy. He was not among the best for delicacy, humour, or decency. All these are of the roughest and dirtiest, such as might have been expected from Will Sommers. I must however differ in some degree from Warton, unassailable as his judgments generally are, when he describes Heywood’s plays as “altogether void of plot, humour, and character.” Yet, I confess, detestable as I hold idleness to be, a man were better occupied in doing nothing than in reading these productions. They hardly repay the curiosity of the student of literature, and even he must rise from the perusal sorely in need of civet wherewith to sweeten his imagination.
It is as an epigrammatist that this honorary jester was most celebrated, and continues to be best known to the few who care to cultivate acquaintance with him. Of the epigrams I will select a few specimens. Bearing in mind that they are often the versification of his jests, and that the latter must frequently have had allusion to passing subjects, the following probably points at a then living prince. It is entitled:—
OF AN ILL GOVERNOR CALLED JUDE.
A ruler there was in a country afar,
And of the people a great executioner,
Who by name, I understand, was called Jude.
One gave him an ass, which gift when he had view’d,
He asked the giver, for what intent
He brought him that ass. “For a present
I bring, Master Jude,” quoth he, “this ass hither;
To join Master Jude and this ass together,
Which two joined in one, this is brought to pass,
I may bid you good even, Master Jude—ass.”
“Maccabee or Iscariot, thou knave?” quoth he;—
“Whom it pleaseth your mastership, him let it be!”
157 The following, too, is very much after the fashion of the French “fous à titre d’office” when they repelled the unwelcome familiarity of certain courtiers.
TWO, ARM-IN-ARM.
One said to another, on taking his arm,
“By license, friend, and take this for no harm.”
“No, Sir,” (quoth the other,) “I give you full leave
To hang on my arm, Sir, but not on my sleeve.”
Here is a jester’s definition of
WIT, WILL, AND WISDOM.
Where will is good, and wit is ill,
There wisdom can no manner skill.
Where wit is good, and will is ill,
There wisdom sitteth silent still.
Where wit and will are both too ill,
There wisdom no way meddle will.
Where wit and will well-ordered be,
There wisdom maketh a trinity.
And the following is not a bad specimen of the ordinary fool’s mock sermon put into rhyme, with the title of
CERTAIN FOLLIES.
To cast fair white salt into wise man’s meat,
To make them count salt, sugar, when they eat,—
A folly.
To bear a man in hand he itcheth in each part,
When the man feeleth an universal smart,—
A folly.
To speak always well and do always ill,
And tell men those deeds are done of good will,—
A folly.
Thy lusty-limbed horse to lead in thy hand,
When on thy lame limbs thou canst scanty stand,—
A folly.
Of sticks for cage-work to build thy house high,
And cover it with lead, to keep thy house dry,—
A folly!
158 From a sermon, to those who needed the instruction that ought to be afforded by one, is not going wide apart. Such a person Heywood seems to have met, and to have reproved by a Latin pun which was unintelligible to this
MERRY WOMAN.
There came by chance to a good company,
A lady, a wanton, and eke a merry.
And though ev’ry word of her own show’d her light,
Yet no man’s words that to her might recite.
She had all the words, which she babbled so fast,
That they being weary, one said, at last,
“Madam, you make my heart light as a ‘kix,’
To see you thus full of your meretrix.”
This trick thus well trick’d out in good Latin phrase,
Brought to this tricker neither muse nor mase.
She nought perceiving was no whit offended,
Nor her light behaviour no whit amended;
But still her tongue was clapping like a patten.
“Well,” said the said man, in language of Latin,
“I never told woman any fault before,
Nor never, in Latin, will tell them fault more.”
It would be hard to say whether Queen Mary laughed or not, when “John, the King’s Jester,” either read to her the following epigram, or recounted the story, by way of joke; but it is worth quoting here, though not so much as a specimen of the royal favourite’s wit, as another proof that in the old pronunciation of the word ache, the latter had the ch soft.
OF THE LETTER H.
H is worst among letters in all the cross row,
For if thou find him either in thine elbow,
In thine arm or leg, in any degree,
In thy head or teeth, in thy toe or knee;—
Into what place soever H may pyke him,
Wherever thou find ache thou shalt not like him.
Heywood has a few epigrams touching fools. The following159 will show that what Selden said of evil-speaking, in reference to James’s court fool, Stone, in courtly prose, had been uttered before him by Mary’s court wit in shambling verse.
A FOOL’S TONGUE.
Upon a fool’s provocation,
A wise will not talk,
But ev’ry light instigation,
Will make a fool’s tongue walk.
And again, on a fool whose foolish wit was called wisdom, Heywood said and sang:—
Wisdom and folly in thee (as men scan)
Is, as it were, a thing by itself; fool,
Among fools, thou art taken a wise man;
And among wise men thou art known a fool.
In the same strain is this quatrain:—
OF EARS AND WITS.
Thin ears and thin wits be dainty;
Thick ears and thick wits be plenty.
Thick ears and thick wits be scant;
Thin ears and thin wits none want.
The following belongs to the satirist:—
OF THE WIFE’S AND HER HUSBAND’S WAIST.
“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the waist;
Which cometh of this, thou art vengeable strait-laced.”—
“Where am I biggest, wife?” “In the waist too,” quoth she,
“For all is waste in you, as far as I can see.”
Finally, here is a fling at farthingales, for which any modern epigrammatist might do what Pope effected for Donne, smooth the versification, and, in addition, turn the point against crinoline.
160
“Alas! poor verdingales must lie in the street;
To house them no door in the City’s made meet.
Since at our doors they in cannot win,
Send them to Oxford, at Broadgate to get in.”
Soon after the death of Queen Mary, in 1558, her orthodox jester, who hated and ridiculed Protestantism as vigorously as any French court fool launched his little quips against the faith of the Huguenots, withdrew from England, and took refuge in the fair Flemish city of Mechlin. It was a likely place of refuge for a lively and “orthodox” voluntary exile. Mechlin, like Troyes in Champagne, was worthy of supplying any Court with fools, for it was the wise men of that city who once tried to put out the moon! It was a jovial place also. Near the gate of St. Catherine, on the Antwerp side, stood the church and monastery of St. Alexis. This monastery contained fifteen hundred nuns, and full as many lady boarders. The good sisters enjoyed the very merriest of privileges. They were not only permitted to receive all sorts of visitors within the monastery, but to return the visit when and wheresoever they pleased. They might, if they chose, live unrestrained in the city; and might either marry or leave it alone, just as their humour prompted. The old and anonymous author of ‘Les Pa?s Bas’ (Bruxelles, 1692, p. 123), assures his readers that the old-established custom had never been followed by ill effect; and that the pious and pretty sisters had even employed themselves in respectable and praiseworthy matters, to the edification of the population which had before them so excellent an example.
One would have liked to have had a dozen of epigrams from merry John Heywood, on these lively ladies, who, to quote a proverb of his own, were “As nice as nuns’ hens;” but he may have been saddened by the aspect of the city itself, which had not yet recovered from the calamity which had fallen upon it in 1546. In the month of August of that161 year (near midnight of the 17th), a flash of lightning pierced the powder magazine, and the explosion levelled a fourth of the city, and blew hundreds of its inhabitants into the air. The ruins long encumbered the place; and it was among the remaining wrecks caused by this catastrophe, and the cheerful nuns of St. Alexis, ever busy and mirthful, that orthodox John Heywood passed the closing years of his life. The Papal favour, which had selected Mechlin as the scene of the jubilee of 1452, had gained for the city the title of “Mechlin the Happy.” Heywood could not go to Rome, as King Edmund’s joculator did, and as one at least of his own sons did subsequently; but, for religion’s sake, he pitched his tabernacle in a city that had been blessed by a Pope, blasted by lightning, and was kept merry by the most vivacious nuns that had ever been heard of, except at Farmoutier. Antony Wood (in his ‘Athen? Oxon.’ vol. i. p. 150) sneers at the idea of a member of the ordinarily unprincipled profession of poets, going into voluntary banishment for the sake of religion. Perhaps, as far as regards Heywood’s case, Antony was not very much mistaken, if it be true that, when Heywood’s last hour arrived, in 1589, he spent it in laughter, jokes, gibes, and fearful jesting with that King Death who was summoning him to his court. Further towards that court we will not follow him; but will rather take leave of him with a glance at the portraiture of the living jester at the courts of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary.
The portrait of Heywood, prefixed to his poem of ‘The Spider and the Fly’ (edition 1556), has nothing in it of the appearance of the court fool. It represents, at full length, a very respectable, middle-aged, and not particularly good-humoured gentleman, with smooth shaven cheeks and chin. He is attired in a close-fitting coat, reaching to the middle of the thigh, surmounted by a long loose-sleeved cloak; the ends of what appears to be trunk-hose appear just below the kirtle portion of the coat; and up to the hose reach long, tight162 stockings, gartered both above and below knee. A flat cap with a protecting fall to keep the back of the head warm, is fixed tight upon that head, which seems as closely shaven as the cheeks and chin; at all events, there is no appearance of hair from beneath it. A dagger, suspended from a girdle, hangs across the thighs in front, and in this girdle John the Jester has passed the thumb of either hand; and he stands resting chiefly on the right leg, the left being slightly bent, and the owner of them having altogether something of the look of a man who would be “jolly” if he could, but who is disgusted at his ill success.
As there is no doubt of Heywood having been named by Mary’s father, “King’s Jester,” we may fairly conclude, assuming this portrait to be a true effigy, that the jester was now a higher personage than the fool. This was not the case in the time of Scogan, who, though a member of the University (as Heywood also was), hired himself out, according to Andrew Borde, as a household fool. We shall also find, in the reign of Elizabeth, that a difference was made between jester and fool; that is, between a clever individual retained or invited to make good jests, without being always obliged to wear motley, and the ordinary fool who had his wages, his privilege of speech, his whipping occasionally, his cumbersome jokes, his freedom of the pantry, and his bed with the spaniels. Tarleton, for instance, was court jester to Elizabeth; but he was not always a wearer of cap and bells. He was not of such good condition by birth as either Scogan or Heywood; he was, what may often be found now in the same person, a tavern-keeper and a low comedian. But he was also “Gentleman of the Chamber” to the Queen; and by that title, he stood near Elizabeth’s chair and wagged his tongue boldly, though not always without rebuke.
It will have been noticed that it was not every King of England who cared to be moved to laughter by the exhibitions of comic minstrels or joculators. Some princes have indeed163 accounted laughter thus raised, as beneath the dignity of men of their rank. Thus Philip, son of the Christian Emperor Philip the Arabian, rebuked his own sire openly, for laughing at the jokes and sports of hired jesters who were doing their best to amuse the sovereign and an august body of spectators. The younger Philip read the elder Philip a severe lecture on his unseemly conduct, which seems to me to have been a greater offence against propriety, than his father’s merriment. The son’s contemporaries gave him the name of Philip Agelastos; and he has come down to us as Philip the Laughless. Old Puttenham, who wrote when court fools were flourishing, praises this impertinent and overstarched young prince. For, says he (in his ‘Arte of English Poesie’, p. 244, edit. 1589), “though at all absurdities we may decently laugh, and when they be no absurdities, not decently; yet in laughing is there an undecency in other respects, sometime, than of the matter itself.” The old man had in his memory, probably, some incidents of uncomely laughter at unseemly court jests of the days of the Tudors.
The dynasty of jesters was not yet overthrown; but I may observe that there were three things which helped to overthrow that dynasty, and to render the vocation a matter of history. When intense gravity of deportment ceased to be considered as warrant for aristocratic breeding, fashionable people, if I may so speak, did not require mirth to be provided for them; they manufactured a better article for themselves. Again, when reading and writing began to be common and yet dearly-prized luxuries, the readers found a richer enjoyment in old authors than in young jesters; and they who held the pen, discovered that occasionally they could be as witty as if they had been bred to the calling. Lastly, came freedom of thought and freedom of expression,—the latter sometimes exercised only with considerable daring; but against these, which symbolize an extending of civilization, the poor fool, his cap, bells, official stick, his quips, and his164 quirps, his whole freight of fun, made utter and irretrievable shipwreck. I find authority for some portion at least of what is advanced above, in a passage from Puttenham, the author, among other things, of the ‘Parthenaide.’ In that work he compliments Queen Elizabeth on her maidenly qualities. the subjoined paragraphs he commends her behaviour at court, while he treats of a court deportment generally. And he pays Elizabeth this compliment at the expense of the Emperor Ferdinand, whom he roundly scolds for “running up and down stairs with so swift and nimble a pace as almost had not become a very mean man who had not gone on some hasty business.” In mean men and fools, hurry is not very censurable. “But,” says Puttenham, “in a prince, it is decent to go slow, and to march with leisure and with a certain grandity rather than gravity, as our sovereign lady and mistress, the very image of majesty and magnificence, is accustomed to go generally; unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless, it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies in the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in Queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honourable princess.” It was a “comeliness” which, when enforced, weighed heavily; and when it vanished, the heart enjoyed its own impulses, and was no longer attracted by the fool and his “marottes.”
It is certain, that with all Elizabeth’s refinement and taste, she had coarser men about her, as jesters, than her sister Mary. The uses to which some of them were put, is sufficiently remarkable. If Catholic Mary had her orthodox jester, the Reformed court of Elizabeth was not without its ultra-Protestant fool.
As we shall find a French jester employed to laugh down the Reformed religion and its professors in France, so in England, Pace, “the bitter fool,” is said to have been engaged165 in a particular way to support it, in England, by destroying certain outward and visible signs supposed to savour too strongly of Popery. According to this story, Pace was employed by Sir Francis Knollys, to break down a crucifix and remove the lighted tapers which Queen Elizabeth persisted in having in her private chapel, in spite even of the friendly and urgent remonstrance of Archbishop Parker, offered repeatedly, but without success. I do not know that there is any reliable authority for this story. Certainly, a jester might dare to do what a Lord Primate would only respectfully insinuate; and, perhaps, Parker remembers the improvement effected in the Queen’s chapel by the court fool, Pace, when, in his letter to Sir William Cecil (October, 1560), after recommending certain personages for church preferment, he says: “Now, if either of them, or any of us all, should be feared to hurt the state of our churches, by exercising any extraordinary patesing, for packing and purchasing, this fear might sure be prevented. We have old precedents in law, practised in times past for such parties suspected, to be bound at their entry, to have the churches in no worse case, by their defaults, than they found them; and then what would you have more of us?” Now Pace, if he destroyed the cross and tapers in the Queen’s chapel, may be said to have left the edifice in a worse condition than it was in when he entered it. It is quite certain that Sir Francis Knollys was violently eager for the destruction of these ornaments. Just a year previous to Parker alluding to “patesing” in churches, Knollys writes to that prelate: “Wishing you prosperity in all godliness, namely in your good enterprise against the enormities yet in the Queen’s closet retained (although without the Queen’s express commandment these toys were laid aside, till now a-late), I shall, with my hearty commendations, commit you and us all to the mighty protection of the living God.” A gentleman who could so boldly write of the166 “enormities in the Queen’s closet,” may well have ventured to employ a licensed jester to remove them. The editors of the Parker correspondence, John Bruce, Esq., and the Rev. T. Perowne, suggest that the word “patesing” refers to the Pates, Bishop of Worcester, in Mary’s time. This indeed is probable enough; but if it be true that, in 1559, Knollys employed Pace to disfigure the Queen’s closet, the term may have reference to the act committed by her Majesty’s fool.
Pass we on now from Pace, and the question connected with him, to one of those fools who were rather hangers-on about court, than actually, exclusively and officially, engaged in the Royal service. Such a one seems to have been that Charles Chester, who resembled those official French jesters who found more delight in annoying the courtiers by his sarcasms, than amusing them, or his Sovereign, by his wit. Chester was especially severe in addressing coarse strictures on Raleigh and Lord Knollys, in their own hearing. Sir Walter resolved to be revenged; and to accomplish it, they invited Chester to supper. The buffoon accepted the invitation without any suspicion, and the two noble gentlemen made him exceedingly drunk at a repast at which he had eaten like Gargantua. Taking him in this condition, with the help of several servants, they fastened him up in a corner of a court-yard, and then some masons, engaged for the occasion, built a brick wall close round his person, and right up to his chin. They kept him there many hours, under a threat of building him in altogether. The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror.
Chester survived to be known to Ben Jonson, who has167 immortalized him as Carlo Buffone, in ‘Every Man Out of His Humour.’ In the character of the persons prefixed to that piece, this buffoon is described as scurrilous and profane; rich in absurd similes and audacious lies; a “good feast-hound or banquet-beagle;” a thorough parasite and glutton, and a stupendous swiller of sack. “His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry;” and it is added of this perverse fellow, that he loaded those with the heaviest reproaches whom he had the greatest reason to respect. Such a character accords well with the noisy, evil-tempered fellow depicted by Aubrey (Lives, ii. p. 14), who tells us that the fool so offended a knight at a tavern by his impertinence, that the angry gentleman beat him, and stopped his mouth by sealing his beard and moustachios together with wax!
It is, however, to be noted, that Carlo in the play is superior to Carlo as described in the persons of the drama. If Jonson’s picture be a veritable portrait, how exquisitely could this buffoon prattle of the advantage of being in debt—advantage so dear to fools of all classes in this present time! How admirably could he hit off an old over-scented lover, “who has his skin tanned in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the sweetness of his youth lasting in the smell of his sweet lady.” How dashingly he hits off a city gentleman; how frolicsomely he exposes the city wives! He alludes to “standing by the fire in the presence,” as if the ways of Court were familiar to him; and to taking tobacco with nobles, “over the stage in the lords’ room,” as if he had right of entry there. Some of his similes are drawn from his profession, for he describes a man’s shield of arms as being “of as many colours as ever you saw any fool’s coat in your life.” What a vade mecum for asses is his instruction to dolts to show how they may pass for sensible fellows in society! How happily, yet briefly, does he paint a student learning to smoke! With what true168 fool’s satire does he exclaim, “Friend! is there any such foolish thing in the world?” and what fool’s philosophy is there in the assertion that “Swaggering is a good argument of resolution!” We probably have something of the look of Chester afforded us in the remark of Macilente, “Pork! I think thou dost varnish thy face with the fat on’t, it looks so like a glue-pot.” And what a sharp touch of the jester’s fence is the reply, “True, my raw-boned rogue, and if thou wouldst farce thy lean ribs with it, too, they would not, like ragged laths, rub out so many doublets as they do.” When Puntarvolo seals up his mouth, as Aubrey’s knight did that of the real Chester, we feel that it could not be for the same reason; and when the vain-glorious cavalier tells us that “Carlo comes not at Court,” we are apt to think, that if Chester was of the times and not also of the household of Queen Elizabeth, she lacked a jester fit to rank with Clod.
This fool, who was an official court fool, must have been a fellow of as much humour as Yoric himself, if we may judge from one sample of his wit, which is no bad sample of his license also, and which is good warrant for his acuteness and discrimination, to boot.
At the court of Elizabeth there was many a cleric of the Vicar of Bray school, and among them Dean Perne, who had oscillated from one faith to another three or four times in about a dozen years, and who never felt in a state of finality anywhere. Perne, with Archbishop Whitgift, was in attendance on the Queen one wet day, when her Majesty was desirous of going out for a walk. The desire was an unwise one, for Elizabeth was in ill health; but the divines were not bold enough to dissuade her. But Clod, the Queen’s fool, was also present, and he had the courage which the others lacked. “Madam,” said he, “Heaven dissuades you, for it is cold and wet; and earth dissuades you, for it is damp and dirty. Heaven dissuades you, too, by this heavenly man, Archbishop Whitgift; and earth dissuades169 you, by me, your fool, Clod, lump of clay as I am. But if neither can prevail you, here is the Dean Perne, who is neither of heaven nor of earth, but hangs between the two, and he too dissuades you.”
The above was witty license at the expense of a courtier; but Clod could exercise wit and audacity at the expense of the Queen. Elizabeth once reproached him with not altogether fulfilling the duties of his office. “How so?” asked Clod; “in what have I failed?” “In this,” answered the Queen, “you are ready enough to point your sharp satire at the faults of other people, but you never say a word of mine.” “Ah!” exclaimed the jester, “that is because I am saved the trouble by so many deputies. Why should I remind your Majesty of your faults, seeing that these are in everybody’s mouth, and you may hear of them hourly?” After all, this was not near so bold as the answers which (years after) Whiston used to fling at Queen Caroline, consort of George II. Whiston, if not kept at Court like the jester of earlier times, was so frequent a sojourner there, that George II. got weary of this heterodox divine, who did not hesitate to tell him, when the King was inveighing against freedom of inquiry in religious matters, that if Luther had been of that opinion, his Majesty would never have been King of England! But where I find Queen Caroline and Whiston nearly resembling Queen Elizabeth and Clod, is on that well-known occasion at Hampton Court, when Caroline said to the eccentric divine, that, bold speaker as he was, he was, perhaps, not bold enough to tell her of her faults. Whiston proved that her Majesty was mistaken, by denouncing her very unseemly behaviour at divine service. Caroline laid part of the blame on the King, acknowledged her fault, promised amendment, and asked what was her next offence. “Nay, Madam,” said Whiston, “it will be time enough to go to the second fault when you have fairly amended the first!” The eccentric character of170 Whiston procured for him from Caroline just that impunity which Clod and Chester and others found at the hands of Elizabeth.
Having had occasion to mention these two Queens in the same paragraph, I will take the opportunity of adding, that if the time had passed by when official fools had place at court, it was not because Caroline was more refined than Elizabeth. The contrary was the fact, if we may believe the following passage, in the ‘Reliqui? Hearnian?:’—“The present Duchess of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline, is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and cunning. She drinks so hard, that her spirits are continually inflamed, and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk, that she was sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along; a thing much noted.” In spite of the words in italics, the story must be taken with some allowance, for old Hearne was a furious Jacobite, and was likely to “embroider” a story to make it tell against a Hanoverian princess. One fact, however, is undisputed, namely, that no jester and king of the very coarsest times ever sat together and exchanged more licentious stories than Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole. The published life of the latter will support this assertion, though I need not make, in such a case, an especial reference. A study of the two reigns will, at least, serve to show that Elizabeth and her court fools were quite as refined as Caroline and her fine gentlemen.
The refinement of Elizabeth seems to have been justly appreciated by those who had to cater for her amusements. For instance, in the “Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court,” edited for the Shakespeare Society, by Mr. P. Cunningham, there is an entry, in October 1573, to the following effect, made by the Master of the Revels:—“Item: sundry times for calling together of sundry players,171 and for perusing, fitting, and reforming their matters otherwise not convenient to be showen before her Majesty.” And again, in 1574, an entry of 40s. occurs, as the sum paid to a court official “for his pains in perusing and reforming of plays sundry times, as need required for her Majesty.”
We have seen Will Sommers sleeping among the spaniels, and there are not wanting instances to show how sharp was the toil and poor the rest of many of those who laboured to amuse the leisure hours of Elizabeth. The following are examples. An entertainment is about to be given in the metropolitan palace, and the properties have to be brought from Richmond or Hampton Court; the passage by water seems to have been slow and uncertain, as is shown in an entry:—“To the porters that watched all night at the Blackfriars Bridge, for the coming of the stuff from court, 2s.” This “bridge” was doubtless a landing stage. To this same Blackfriars “bridge” are brought a number of children, who had been down to Hampton Court to perform in a masque before her Majesty. The little Cupids had looked warm and plump and rosy enough in the presence of the Queen; but they were all sent back (nine of them) in an open boat, in the winter of 1573, and in consequence, there is an entry which has little of the spirit of “Revels” in it, to this effect:—“To Thomas Totnall, for fire, and victuals for the children, when they landed, some of them being cold and sick and hungry, 6s. 6d.”
Not to digress further from the taste of the Queen, as exhibited by her in connection with her court pleasures, I may further state that we have good evidence that Elizabeth was neither unrefined herself nor admired lack of refinement in those who were about her, whether friends, attendants, or jesters, in the frequently-printed account given by Bohun, in his ‘Character of Queen Elizabeth.’ “At supper she would divert herself with her friends and172 attendants; and if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and pleasant discourse, with great civility. She would then also admit Tarleton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and other such-like men, to divert her with the stories of the town and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and chastity. In the winter-time, after supper, she would sometimes hear a song or a lesson or two played upon the lute; but she would be much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, any reproach, or licentious reflection used. Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh, and said, ‘See, the Knave commands the Queen!’—for which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add that he (Raleigh) was of too much and too intolerable a power. And going on with the same liberty, he reflected on the over-great power and riches of the Earl of Leicester; which was so universally applauded by all that were present, that she thought fit, for the present, to bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended that she forbade Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable liberty.”
The maids of honour and the ladies in waiting seem to have been more inclined to follow the example set by their royal mistress than the male courtiers. There was one of these fine gentlemen who would address himself to Mistress Mary Ratcliffe, one of Elizabeth’s maidens of honour, in such a tone that she relished neither his conversation nor discourse. At length, she told him “that his wit was like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and when that was eaten you may throw away the rest.”
The maids of honour were not at all disinclined to be173 frolicsome; but this was with no ill purpose. Observe, however, how this humour was indecently corrected by that same Knollys who was offended with the cross in the Queen’s chapel, and employed Pace, the court fool, to pull it down. Knollys “had his lodgings at court, where some of the ladies and maids of honour used to frisk and hey about, in the next room, to his extreme disquiet o’ nights, though he had often warned them of it; at last, he gets one to bolt their own back door, when they were all in, one night, at their revels, strips off [to] his shirt, and so, with a pair of spectacles on his nose, and Aretino in his hand, comes marching in at a postern door of his own chamber, reading very gravely, full upon the faces of them. Now let the reader judge what a sad spectacle and pitiful fright these poor creatures endured, for he faced them, and often traversed the room, in this posture, above an hour.”
I cite the above illustration of a court jest from the L’Estrange manuscripts, edited by Mr. Thoms. My esteemed and modest friend has supplied a word in brackets, for which, I fear, there is no warrant. I have no doubt that the MS. as it stands is correct, and Knollys was not the last courtier who thought it an excellent court jest to appear in the condition described. One of the greatest wits at the court of Vienna, the Prince de Ligne, is thus described by the Countess de Bohm in ‘Les Prisons de 1793:’—“Je l’ai trouvé le matin entièrement nu, recevant des visites, parlant à des fournisseurs. Il me présenta même à sa belle-fille logée près de lui.” If the court wit of Vienna could do this, and a lady not be startled thereby, in the last century, what may not a courtier have dared a century earlier? However this may be, we have seen that Elizabeth would not tolerate forwardness even in Richard Tarleton, who was, perhaps, the most celebrated of the court jesters to that Queen, and one of the most perfect low comedians that ever trod the stage. To the Leicester above-named174 he is said to have owed his introduction to Elizabeth. Tarleton was a Shropshire boy, and was keeping his father’s swine, near Condover, when an officer of the Earl’s household, on his way to the Earl’s estates in Denbigh, entered into conversation with the young swineherd, and was so struck by his “happy unhappy answers,” that he took the merry lout, nothing loath, with him,” and Tarleton seems to have passed thence to a higher court.
But, not immediately. It is, indeed, somewhat difficult to trace the early part of the career of this jester before he took office under the Queen. It is not, however, altogether impossible, since Mr. Halliwell edited a purified edition of Tarleton’s jests, prefaced it by a biographical sketch, and added elucidatory notes and confirmatory extracts from contemporary and other authors. From all these sources we make out that Tarleton served some sort of apprenticeship in London, and must have had a very fair education for one of his class, seeing that he is described as being “superficially seen in learning,” and having so much as “a bare insight into the Latin tongue.” Not so bad for a young swineherd,—whose wit stood him in good stead for what he lacked in book-learning. To what calling he was bound apprentice is not known: he is said to have been for some time a water carrier; and it was, perhaps, disgust at the drudgery, added to inclination for other liquids, that made of him a tavern-keeper. His grosser sense led him to tippling; but he had intellect enough to qualify him for writing ballads and composing historical pantomimes. Like many modern actors, he united the parts of player and vintner; starred on many stages, sometimes played more than one part in the same piece, and he shifted from inn to inn, as landlord, as he did from stage to stage, as an actor. He was Boniface respectively of three taverns, at least; at Colchester, and in London, in Gracechurch-street and Paternoster-row.
He had probably been for some years a player, slowly175 rising, by dint of his wit, his squint, and his flat nose, to pre-eminence, when in 1583 he was appointed one of the Queen’s players, and one of the grooms of her chamber. Stowe remarks, that till the year just mentioned, Elizabeth had no company of actors of her own, but that at the date named, and at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, twelve of the best players were chosen from among the companies in the service of divers great lords; and that these were “sworn the Queen’s servants, and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber.” Stowe notices “two rare men” among this selected troop, “viz. Thomas Wilson, for a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit; and Richard Tarleton,—for a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extemporal wit, he was the wonder of his time.”
As court jester, Tarleton became as famous and as influential as any official who ever wore clown’s suit. Fuller calls him a master of his faculty, who, “when Queen Elizabeth was serious, I dare not say sullen, and out of good humour, he could undumpish her at his pleasure.” As in other courts, suitors to the Sovereign not unfrequently first presented themselves to the jester. “He was their usher to prepare their advantageous access to her.” He doubtless lined his pockets with pistoles thereby; and for his royal pay he also gave good measure of wholesome severities. “He told the Queen,” says Fuller, “more of her faults than most of her chaplains; and cured her melancholy better than all of her physicians.”
If the Queen admired Dick, the latter had a great measure of reverence for his mistress. He could compare her, he said, to nothing more fitly than a sculler; for, he added, “neither the Queen nor the sculler hath a fellow.” He nevertheless, and as a matter of course, could take great liberties with her. The very first of the ‘court witty jests,’ tells us of his attempting to draw the Queen out of a fit of discontent by “a quaint jest,” in which he pretended to be176 a thirsty drunkard, and called aloud for beer. The liquor was duly supplied to him, and that so liberally, that Elizabeth gave orders that he should have no more, lest he should turn beast, and shame himself. “Fear you not,” said Tarleton, “for your beer is small enough.” So, perhaps, was the jester’s wit, but the Queen thought well of it, for “her Majesty laughed heartily, and commanded that he should have enough.”
Elizabeth probably enjoyed fully as much the jests which her chartered buffoon made at the expense of her courtiers. Some of these were sorry enough; and he would be no less savage on the personal defects and deformities of ladies as well as lords, than the most unscrupulous of the “Fous du Roi” at the court of France. To a lady, suffering from an eruption on the face, and who consequently declined to drink wine with the rest, he exclaimed, “A murrain of that face which makes all the body fare the worse for it.” This rudeness, which drove the poor lady from table, was only rewarded by a shout of laughter.
Tarleton wore his fool’s attire when the Queen dined; and even attended her thus attired when she dined abroad, “in his clown’s apparel; being all dinner-while in the presence with her, to make her merry.” There seems to have been a distrust of the power of the host and the guests to make themselves agreeable, and so the Queen took her fool with her, even when she dined at the Lord Treasurer’s, at Burleigh House, in the Strand. It was to the gate of that house that Tarleton gave the name of “his Lordship’s alms-gate,” because, he said, it was for ever closed.
On one occasion, the noble owner of this mansion having thus entertained the Queen, besought her Majesty to remain all night; a request to which she would not for a moment listen. The lords present applied to Tarleton, offering him any reward if he could succeed in inducing the Queen to sleep at Burleigh House. The rest of the story177 is so strange, that I prefer leaving it to my readers as it is given in the Shakespeare Society’s reprint of the old jest-book.—“Quoth he, ‘Procure me the parsonage of Sherd.’ They caused the patent to be drawn presently. He got on a parson’s gown and a corner cap, and standing upon the stairs where the Queen should descend, he repeated these words:—‘A parson or no parson? A parson or no parson?’ but after she knew his meaning, she not only stayed all night, but the next day willed that he should have possession of the benefice. A madder parson was never; for he threatened to turn the bell-metal into lining for his purse, which he did, the parsonage and all, into ready money.”
Among his best similes, perhaps, was the one he made when asked by a lord what soldiers were like in time of peace. “They are like chimneys in summer,” said Tarleton, whose neat jest on this occasion seems to have passed off without laughter. But perhaps this was not said by him. Not all the jests set down to him were uttered by him. That which describes him as replying to a courtier who saluted him with a “Good morrow, fool and knave,”—“I can’t bear both; I’ll take the first, you are welcome to the other,”—is attributed to an Italian jester.
At this period the court jester was not bound to reside within the precincts of the court, and to wear no suit but his clown’s apparel, without permission to the contrary. This custom had even fallen into disuse in France, where it had prevailed for a very lengthened period. Tarleton’s official duties, however, kept him late at court. We find him on one occasion wending homeward at one in the morning, when it was unlawful for the lieges to be abroad after ten o’clock at night. He accordingly fell into the hands of the watch, to whom, on being challenged, he had announced himself as “a woman;” for what is the use, he asked, of my telling you what you know? The watch declared he must be committed for being out-of-doors178 after ten o’clock. “It is now past one!” cried the watch, emphasizing the enormity. “Good!” said Tarleton; “if it be past one o’clock, it will not be ten these eight hours. Watchmen had wont to have more wit; but for want of sleep they have turned fools.” The guardians of the night recognized the Queen’s jester, and they let him pass, rejoiced at being entertained for a moment by an official whose duty it was to entertain her Majesty’s sacred self.
On another occasion, when challenged in company with two others, he announced his companions as being makers of eyes and light. The pious custodes solemnly laid hold of him for flat blasphemy; but when he explained that one of his companions made spectacles and the other candles, of course the watch fell into uncontrollable laughter, as watchmen will do, even at smaller jests than this.
He was not always in such seemly society as the above; for we meet with him angering a certain huffing Kate, at a tavern; running up a score for sixteen dozen pots of ale at a country ale-house; bandying wit, at his own inn-door, with beggars, whom he sometimes found a match for him; and, after living for days at other hostelries, getting himself arrested as a Jesuit in disguise, and then refusing to discharge his account, because of the false arrest. At ordinaries he would expose the first he could find to his rascally purpose, to the ridicule of the company; and a finely-dressed gentleman passing down Fleet-street, was sure to have an unpleasant time of it, if he happened to be espied by Tarleton. His wife was as often the victim of his wit as any one else; but she was often as sharp as he, and the smart things said were, like Lady Mary Montague at a “Twitnam Assembly,” more smart than clean. When he was keeping an ordinary in Paternoster-row, he and Mistress Richard were invited out to supper, “and because he was a man noted, she would not go out with him into the street, but entreats him to keep on one side, and she another; which179 he consented to. But as he went, he would cry out to her and say, ‘Turn this way, wife;’ and anon, ‘On this side, wife,’—so the people flocked the more to laugh at them. But his wife, more than mad angry, goes back again, and almost forswore his company.” They kept together, nevertheless, at the ordinary, where his customers not only found wit in the royal jester, but wit in his mustard, as he proved, to his own satisfaction at least, when he said that mustard and the person dining, resembled “a witty scold meeting another scold; and knowing this scold will scold, begins to scold first: so the mustard, being licked up, and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first!” It must surely have been brighter jokes than this that procured for him invitations to dinner at the houses of aldermen and justices, who thought it well to treat a Queen’s jester, and laugh at jokes that might have been dished up for their liege lady.
As a stage-player, Tarleton was the favourite clown of the people at large. They roared at the coarse extemporary songs which he rattled forth for their amusement and his profit. They shouted at his admirable “gagging,” his improvised speeches, his interlarded jokes with the audience, and his allusions even to religious controversies then raging. Learned physicians praised the voice which uttered, the comical face which heightened, the wit, and the head which was the very temple and head-quarters of facetiousness. It mattered little whether he was in or out of the vein, he was comic in spite of himself; in spite of themselves, people would laugh, and all essayers in his line were frightened out of their specialty, out of sheer despair of being able to be tolerated while he lived or was remembered. No wonder the Queen liked to see him act, as well as listen to his jests at court. The very rudest as well as the highest, could appreciate him as an actor—all but the county justice immortalized, although not named, by Nash, and in whose180 presence, as also that of the whole township over which this justice presided, Tarleton and his fellow-comedians were playing. The jester had scarcely made his head visible on the stage when the country auditory burst into fits of laughter. “Whereat,” says Nash, “the justice, not a little moved, and seeing, with his becks and nods, he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates, in that they, being but farmers and poor country hinds, could presume to laugh at the Queen’s man, and make no more account of her cloth in his presence.”
Metropolitan magistrates gave more license, and London audiences were not charged with disrespect of her Majesty, because they laughed immoderately at her jester. Tarleton was one night playing at the Bull, in Bishopsgate-street. The play was an old one, touching Henry V.; he, of course, played the clown, but the actor of Judge Gascoyne being absent, Tarleton good-naturedly undertook to play the Judge also. The actor who performed the part of the Prince, dealt the Judge such a box of the ear, when that pseudo-historical incident came on, that Gascoyne shook again, but he did not forget his dignity. He re-appeared as Clown, to whom is told the unseemly scene in court. “Strike a judge!” cried Tarleton. “It could not be but terrible to him, when the report so terrifies me that methinks the blow remains still on my cheek; that it burns again!” “The people,” adds the narrator, “laughed at this mightily;” and we may well fancy a clever and a favourite low comedian turning such an incident to capital account.
It was not exactly a time for jests when
“In the year 1588,” cried Philip, “the English I’ll humble.
I’ve taken it into my Majesty’s pate, and their lion, oh down he shall tumble!”
We do not suppose, however, that the Queen’s jester fell sick181 at his lodgings in Haliwel-street, Shoreditch, because of the Spanish Armada. He is supposed to have been seized by the plague. On the 3rd of September, in the year just named, he, at all events, fell mortally ill; and he at once made his will: in this document he is described as “one of the Gromes of the Quene’s Majestie’s chamber.” He leaves all his goods and “cattells,” etc. etc., to his son Philip; but there is nothing to show that they exist anywhere. Nevertheless, he appoints guardians to his son, delivers to them “one penny of the good and lawful money of England,”—“to the use of the said Philipp Tarleton, by waye of possession and seisin of all my said goodes and cattells,” and having duly executed this deed, which is of some length, the Queen’s jester turned his face to the wall and died, on the evening of the day on which he had fallen ill. Before night had come on, he was lying in a grave of the parish churchyard; where many of the Elizabethan actors lie around him.
People reckoned from his time as from an era. “The year of Tarleton’s death” was as common a saying as “the year of the Armada.” His portrait was to be seen in every house; and in some residences, above the altar of Cloacina was suspended the effigies of joyous Dick Tarleton.
At this period, the household fool was still, and he continued to be so for many subsequent years, to be found on most establishments of any consequence. Some of the best specimens of this class are to be found in Armin’s “Nest of Ninnies.” Before turning to the pages of the old literary actor, it may be as well to state that the ordinary dress of the jester of this period, is depicted by Mr. Douce, as consisting of a motley coat, with a girdle, bells at the skirt and, sometimes, at the elbows. The breeches and hose fitted close to the body, the colour on each leg being different. The hood covered not only the head, but the shoulders, and was crowned by the usual cock’s-comb. Some jesters carried a staff with a fool’s head at the end182 of it; others a staff suspended from which was a blown bladder with a few peas in it. This was the costume of the artificial fool. The natural fool was mostly attired in a long gown-like dress, occasionally of costly velvet, and adorned with yellow fringe,—yellow being then commonly known as the “fool’s colour,” as dark blue was that of the serving man.
The first of the household fools named by Armin, “Jack Oates,” carried a small black-jack quart at his girdle, for Jack’s delight was in beer. He was tall, unwieldly, misshapen. He was given to sport, was quite as much given to swear, was conceited, gamesome, gleesome, “apt to joys,”—but “nastie.” He was the servant, or jester, of Sir William Hollis, whom he called “Willy,” and otherwise used with great familiarity. When strange servants came to the house, he was addicted to setting them at loggerheads; and once, when an earl, arriving on a visit, greeted Lady Hollis, at her husband’s side, by a kiss, Jack Oates gave him a box of the ear, for which Sir William gave the jester a whipping. He deserved as much, for his sorry excuse for giving a cuff to the Earl. “He asked the Earl where his hand was. ‘Here,’ quoth he. With that Jack shakes him by it, and says:—‘I mistook it before, not knowing your ear from your hand; being so like one another.’” The compliment was so ill-turned that Oates was scourged for this also.
This fool could not bear to be in the hall, like him in Mr. Thornbury’s ballad. “He was a little proud-minded, and was therefore altogether in the great chamber, at my lady’s or Sir William’s elbow. Sir William could arouse him to wrath, if not to wit, by threatening to hire a new jester, and yet he loved the fool above all, and that the household knew.” But the threat would sometimes cause Oates to run a muck through the hall, beating all in his way, and crying “Hang Sir Willy! Hang Sir Willy!”
183 It is difficult to fancy how such nuisances could be tolerated, much less loved; and indeed even Sir William Hollis, who loved his fool above all, seems, or pretended, to have got weary of him. There was at least a feigned hiring of a new jester, and the noble company at dinner, on hearing it, “ting’d with a knife at the bottom of a glass, as tolling the bell for the fool,” whose colour, we are told, came and went, “like a wise man ready to make a good end.” Jack, however, had more of the brute than the sage, and he so fell upon his rival that he nearly killed him, and did actually put out one of the poor fellow’s eyes. We can credit what follows, that “ever after Jack Oates would not endure to hear any talk of any other fool, to be there,” but one can hardly credit what is added, viz.—“that the Knight durst not make such a motion.” The influence of these fellows must have been great, if they were all like Oates, and the subserviency of their masters must have been on a par with their egregious folly.
As the fool ruled in the hall, so also would he try to establish a despotism in the kitchen; but the sovereign cook there could successfully banish him the territory by flinging over him a ladle of scalding soup. Such feuds were there in the Lincolnshire household of Sir William Hollis, who, on one occasion, had invited a number of friends to a repast, the chief feature of which was a magnificent quince-pie made of fruit “ready preserved at pothecaries,” in the county town. The cook expected to derive great honour from the dish, and Oates determined to foil his expectations. Jack feigned to be ill, and Sir William kindly led him by the hand to the kitchen fire-side, where the Knight left him seated, with charge to the cook to look to his comforts. Cook and fool, of course, speedily fell out, and Oates, to avenge himself, watched his opportunity, seized on the quince-pie as it was about to be taken out of the oven, and, hiding it beneath his long gown, ran off with it.184 The pie burnt him so terribly that he could think of no better place to eat it in, than the moat. Into this he plunged up to the shoulders, and, cooling the dish in the water, greedily devoured the whole of the contents. The cook, meanwhile, rushed to the dining-hall to make complaint to the host and his expectant guests. “They laught and ran to the windows to see the jest. Jack fed, and feeding greedily, ever as he burnt his mouth, with haste, dipt the pie into the water to cool it. ‘Oh!’ says the cook; ‘it is Sir William’s own pie, sirrah!’—‘Oh!’ says Jack, ‘hang thee and Sir Willie too.’... ‘Save Sir William some,’ says one. ‘Save my lady some!’ says another. ‘By James! not a bit,’ says Jack, and ate up all, to the wonder of the beholders.” Such was the amusement of nobles and gentles, in the days when fools were flourishing, a long time ago!
Armin gives other instances, in the case of “lean Leonard,” fool “to a kind gentleman who dwells in the merry forest of Sherwood,” and whose name Armin omits, “fearing I too much offend by meddling with his fool.” Leonard was a flaxen, curly-haired fellow, who
“Plays on thoughts, as girls with beads,
When their mass they stamber.”
He seems, moreover, to have been slightly deaf, long-necked, hook-nosed, thickly bearded, and sullen of visage. He was remarkable for a very expensive sort of boisterousness. He would play games of chance with imaginary adversaries, with whom he would fall out, and in fighting with which shadowy antagonists, he would injure or destroy the furniture of a whole room. When his appetite prompted, he would break open the dairy, swallow the new cheese-curds, destroy those he could not devour, overthrow the cream-bowls, and then abscond for awhile to Mansfield in Sherwood, till the short-lived anger of his master had passed185 away. On hearing his patron praise a hawk which he possessed, lean Leonard, taking the praise in a gastronomic sense, went and wrung the hawk’s neck, and nearly choked himself by trying to devour it, feathers and all. He seems to have been, at other times, employed in carrying manure from the stables to the garden, in a barrow in which he made his bed by night. One winter time, he showed his professional wit by lighting a fire in his barrow, to warm himself by. The fire seized on the barrow, and this, all in flames, he trundled into the hall, among the men and maids, severely burning several of the latter, and thence into the barn, which was filled with hay and straw, and which was with difficulty saved from destruction. “The world laughed a good deal at these jests,” says Robin,—which shows how mischief could tickle it. The only anecdote I can find of Leonard which may be fairly smiled at, is the one which tells us of a “country plow-jogger who, coming behind Leonard with a lump of shoemaker’s wax in his hand, clapt him on the head, and asked him how he did.” The fool felt the pitch ball, and enraged at not being able to get rid of it, fell to furious fight with the “plow-jogger,” who “belaboured the fool cunningly, and got the fool’s head under his arm, and bobbed his nose. The fool, remembering how his head was, strikes it up, and hits the fellow’s mouth with the pitched place, so that the hair of his beard and the hair of the clown’s head were glued together. The fellow cried, the fool exclaimed, and could not suddenly part. In the end, the people, after much laughing at the jest, let them part fair.”
Armin also notices a contemporary fool named Jack Miller, “one that was more beloved among ladies than thought can hatch or opinion produce.” His principal merit seems to have been in imitating players who dressed in the kitchens and played in the halls of gentlemen’s houses, and who led him into various mishaps, by practising on his simplicity.186 He was famous also for singing a song called Deryes Fair, and for speaking sentences full of the letters b and p, which he could not pronounce without a world of stammering and stuttering, which was a wonderful provocative of mirth to noble lords and ladies who hired him on purpose. Armin saw and heard Miller once exhibit at “a gentleman’s not far from Upton upon Seuerne in Gloxestershire.” At the table were “many gallants and gentlewomen, almost the state of the country.” Well, this state company roared lustily at the fool; one elderly gentlewoman even fainted with exhaustion from immoderate hilarity, and “one proper young gentlewoman among the rest, because she would not seem too immodest with laughter,” confined herself to making a remark which caused ten times more mirth than the fool’s stammering, and which was received with an indulgence which a Roman Emperor especially extended to such comments, by imperial decree.
The last fool in Armin’s ‘Nest,’ is “Blue John.” There is nothing of him however worth narrating. He was an idiot, protected, lodged, and boarded at Christ’s Hospital. He joined in the processions of the boys, imitated the preachers who held forth before them, ran on many messages and made more mistakes, was void of wit, and yet was sufficiently esteemed to induce his patrons to have his portrait taken. They who are curious to see the counterfeit presentment of this species of fool, may gratify their desire by a visit to the “Hospital,” where the boys still wear the colour that was worn by “Blue John.”
I may perhaps fittingly notice here, that, during the reign of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties especially, there was a species of “fool” to be found in great households, who was there for the profit rather than the amusement of the master of the house. “It is very strange,” said Charles II. to some of his courtiers, “that every one of my friends keeps a tame knave.” The tame knaves thus spoken of (in the ‘Lives of the187 Norths,’ ch. ii. p. 247), were persons who had been pronounced each Fatuus purus et idiota, by a jury; and it was a common practice to beg such a man for a fool, that is to apply to the crown, for the applicant to have custody of the lands and person of the so-called “fool.” In illustration of this practice there are several anecdotes cited by Mr. W. J. Thoms in his ‘Anecdotes and Traditions derived from MS. Sources,’ and edited by him for the Camden Society. The following illustration is from the manuscript papers of Sir Nicholas L’Estrange, and has reference to the reign of which I am now treating.
“Lord North held old Bladwell in his custody as a lunatic, and carried the poor fellow about with him. His lordship was desirous of having and holding Bladwell as his fool, but the obstacle was, not that Bladwell wanted wit, but that he could not be proved to be a fool at all. He had some spirit of mischief in him, of the fool’s quality; as, for instance, when Lord North, taking Bladwell with him to a gentleman’s house, left his lunatic companion in the dining-room, while lord and gentleman conferred together in another room. Bladwell, left alone, amused himself with looking at the figures on the tapestry, and happening to espy that of a jester among them, he quickly cut the figure from the costly arras, and laid it flat on the ground. When the gentlemen returned to the dining room, the owner of the house, observing the damage done to his tapestry, was very indignant; but Bladwell sought to appease his wrath by remarking, “Pray be content, Sir, I have saved your property, and not injured it; for if my lord there had seen the fool, he would have wanted to have and hold him in his own household; and you would have lost that which you may now keep. I have done you a service, Sir.”
During the reign of James I., Sir Christopher Paston was pronounced by a jury, to be in the same condition as “old Bladwell” (who was a wealthy Norfolk gentleman). The188 knight’s family seem to have had charge of their kinsman, whose infirmity was made the ground for a retort, as will be seen by the following incident, recorded also by Sir Nicholas L’Estrange. “Jack Paston began one time to jest upon Capon (who sat very silent and replied nothing), and told him merrily, that he never met with such a dull, clay-pated fool, that could not answer a word, and bade him remember he out-fooled him once. ‘No, faith,’ says Capon, ‘I were a fool indeed, to deal with you at that weapon. I know the strain of the Pastons too well, and you must needs be right bred for it; for I am sure your race has not been without a good fool these fifty years and upwards.’”
It would seem, too, that ambassadors carried in their train individuals who represented the jesters at the court from which the envoys were despatched, even as the latter represented the sovereigns by whom they were commissioned. Thus, when the Earl of Carlisle repaired to the court of France, in 1616, deputed by James I., he went thither at the head of an extraordinary retinue. “The Lady Haddington,” says Mr. John Chamberlain, in a contemporary letter, quoted in Nichols’s ‘Progresses of James I.,’ “hath bestowed a favour upon him that will not easily fall to the ground, for she says, the flower and beauty of his embassy consists in three mignards, three dancers, and three fools or buffoons. The mignards are himself, Sir Harry Rich, and Sir George Goring. The dancers, Sir Gilbert Hoghton, Auchmuty, and Abercromby. The fools, or buffoons, are Sir Thomas Jermyn,E Sir Ralph Sheldon, and Thomas Badger.”
These knights were not the only individuals of the court of James I, who might aspire to fill the office of fool, either in foreign palaces or at home. Sir George Fitz-Jeffrey might have ranked with any of the above. L’Estrange (quoted by Mr. Thoms) says, he might have been “begged189 for a fool;” and in proof of the good ground he has for the assertion, tells the following incident, which occurred at Royston in 1607. “Fitz-Jeffrey being brought up a backstair to the King, to be knighted, was turned out another way, to pass through the presence chamber, which he entered, with his cap on his head, and many of the nobility of the court being there bare, and he, like the Egyptian Apis, thinking they did ‘Sir reverence’ to the new knight, he came to them very courteously, and desired them to be covered, for truly it was more than he expected at their hands, though his Majesty had conferred a great honour upon him. They thanked him very kindly, and desired to be excused, for they knew their duties, and so long as he was in the room they would not be covered. Upon that, away goes the fool, so puffed and swollen with his new honour, as when he comes home, he stuffs the clothes he was knighted in, and hangs them up in his hall for ensigns and monuments of an incomparable coxcomb, worthy to be begged by his respective gentleman of the presence-chamber.”
When such “tame knaves” might be had for nothing, it is almost a matter of surprise that the Sovereign cared for other buffoons about him. But, at the court of James I. both King and Queen found pleasure in maintaining official fools upon their household. Of the fool of Anne of Denmark, that sovereign lady who purchased precious stones so liberally of the father of Herrick the poet—old Herrick, the jeweller—we know little but the name. In the accounts of John Lord Harrington, of Exton, as Treasurer of the Chambers to the wife of James I., Horace Walpole found an item—“Paid to T. Mawe, for the diet and lodging of Tom Derry, her Majesty’s jester, thirteen weeks, 10l. 18s. 6d.” At between sixteen and seventeen shillings per week, Tom Derry cannot be said to have been a very expensive toy to her Majesty. He was of importance enough to have his190 name given to a gallery at Somerset House, in which he used to loiter and exchange jokes with lords and ladies. An entry in the weekly accounts of the time of Charles I. proves this, inasmuch as mention is there made of an order “for colouring Tom Derry’s gallery at Somerset House.” Tom is also incidentally mentioned in the extracts from the accounts of revels at court, edited for the Shakespeare Society by Mr. P. Cunningham; and to this extract my attention was kindly directed by Mr. Cunningham himself;—“To Thomas Derry, her Majesty’s jester, upon a warrant signed by the Lord Chamberlain, dated at Whitehall, 16th July, 1612, for the diet of the said Thomas Derry, and John Mawe his man, from the 25th day of December, 1611, to the 24th of June following, being 26 weeks, at 7s. the week, 9l. 2s.” It is curious that the sum put down for the weekly diet of two persons is less than half of that named in the former entry for the diet and lodging of one. The first entry may have applied to two persons; and in calculating cost, it is necessary to multiply the sum by five, to obtain an idea of its real value as represented in modern currency.
Before Anne possessed Tom Derry to find her in mirth, she used to tax her own ladies in waiting, with whom, when at Winchester palace, she would wile away long winter evenings by playing with them at ‘Rise, pig, and go,’ ‘Come, penny, follow me,’ ‘Fire!’ and, ‘I pray, my lord, give me a course in your park.’ I only regret that Nichols, who tells us thus much in the Appendix to his Progresses of James I., does not add instructions for the playing these games.
The half-year included in the table of the above entries was one in which Tom Derry must have had to draw largely on his wits, to amuse the Queen; for it was then she was most savagely possessed by implacable hatred of “that fellow,” as she called him, poor Sir Thomas Overbury; and Prince Henry was sickening. But both their Majesties were as fond of indulging their taste for dissipation as they were of191 yielding to their strong prejudices. I find the Merry Wives of Windsor played on a Sunday night at Whitehall; and Tom Derry was probably present in October, 1611, when “The Sunday following, att Grinwidg,” before the Queen and the Prince was played ‘The Silver Aiedg,’ and the next night following, ‘Lucrecia.’ With jester, sports, and plays on Sunday as well as other nights, the Queen was not much the happier; and this may be accounted for,—she was the most amiable person possible when she was not put out; she never uttered an angry word except upon some provocation, yet often with little; she was seldom obstinate except in resolutely maintaining her own will, and, like Croaker in the Comedy, was very easily led whenever she had her own way. Tom Derry himself must have hardly earned all he obtained, from so gracious a mistress as Anne of Denmark. A subsequent page will show that one at least of her old and faithful servants could envy the condition of Derry the Jester.
James I. of England only continued a fashion which his grandfather, James V. of Scotland, adopted during the few years of his majority. We learn this incident from Dr. Irving, who informs us that it was the duty of the Scottish court fools, like those in other royal households, to amuse their patrons by their wit and humour, by bold and startling remarks on passing occurrences of importance, and by ludicrous representations of incidents and characters. In Scotland, too, as elsewhere, the jesters were compelled to take as rough jokes as they gave, and these were sometimes of the very rudest sort. They were of the same quality in England, where the King set the example of coarse jesting. An assertion which no one will require me to prove who remembers what James added to his laugh when he took leave of his hospitable entertainer, Fortescue, in the porch at Cornbury. Those who are curious to know, will find the gracious pleasantry detailed in Osborn.
192 One sample of the Scottish court fool, as narrated by Dr. Irving,—will perhaps suffice to give some notion of the wit,—or the want of it,—patronized in the North. The name of the jester was John Low, and this John was once rebuked by a courtier for not having unbonneted and bowed to a number of lords and fine gentlemen who had passed him. “I did not know they were lords,” said John; “by what token do you know a lord?” “Well,” said the courtier, “outwardly, at all events, by their dress; you see them decked in velvet, and with gold about their necks.” “Very good,” said John; “I’ll not forget to be civil to the first I meet,” And thereupon, a short time after, Low was seen bowing and scraping obsequiously to the mules in the court-yard, to the amazement of the King and his courtiers, “Why are you crying ‘good day,’ and making your leg to those beasts?” asked a Chamberlain. “Beasts!” exclaimed Low, in feigned surprise; “I thought they were lords! Look at their velvet coverings, and the gold trimmings about their necks. I was told these were outward tokens of noble lords and gallant gentlemen. What could a courteous fool do but bid them good day! Sure, I shall never learn the difference between a lord and a beast.”
Our James I. may have heard of, but he probably never saw, his grandfather’s fool, Jemmy Camber, “who, being but young, was for the King caught up.” He barely exceeded three feet in height; but at the age of forty years he measured above sis feet in girth, and “would never be but a St. Vincent’s turnip, thick and round.” He was smooth of face, fair of speech, but malicious in his acts. For his further portraiture, here it is limned by Armin:—
193
“His head was small, his hair long on the same;
One ear was bigger than the other, far;
His forehead full, his eyes shone like a flame,
His nose flat, and his beard small, yet grew square.
His lips but little, and his wit was less.
But wide of mouth, for truth, I must confess.
His middle thick. as I have said before;
Indifferent thighs and knees, but very short,
His legs be square, a foot long and no more;
Whose very presence made the King much sport.
And a pearl spoon he still wore in his cap,
To eat his meat he loved and got by hap.
A pretty little foot; but a big hand,
On which he ever wore rings rich and good.
Backward, well made as any in that land,
Though thick; and he did come of gentle blood.”
Of as gentle blood as Jamie was, he was “caught up” for the King’s sport. This fool Camber, with no wit of his own, yet gave rise to the well-known proverb, “Hit or miss.” King James, to cure the fool’s obesity, sent him to sea, under the illustrious guardianship of the Earl of Huntley, “at whose departure,” says Armin, “they discharged ordinance, as one that departed from the land with the King’s favour. Jamie, hearing the ordinance go off, would ask, ‘What do they now?’ ‘Marry!’ says the Earl, ‘they shoot at our enemies.’ ‘Oh!’ says Camber; ‘hit, I pray God!’ Again they discharge. ‘What do they now?’ quoth he. ‘Marry, now the enemy shoot at us.’ ‘Oh, miss, I pray God!’ says Jemmy Camber. So ever after it was a jest in the Scottish court, ‘Hit or miss, quoth Jemmy Camber.’... And long time after, this jest was in memory; yea I heard it myself, and some will talk of it at this day,” says Armin, whose book was published in 1608.
Camber was a natural fool who was cheated out of his French crowns, and sometimes of other things, by sharp-witted lasses. He prattled of the sun blowing cold and the wind shining hot; ran mock races with gigantic footmen, the King laying a thousand marks on the fool, and Lady Carmichael backing the flunkey; and he had extremely dirty tricks played upon him, which highly amused those august personages,194 but the telling of which would not tend to either profit or pleasure. There is something better worth narrating in the account of Camber’s death; which I borrow from Armin. “The King’s chamberlain bid him arise and come to the King, ‘I will not,’ quoth he, ‘I will go make my grave.’ See how things chanced. He spake truer than he was aware. Jemmy arose, made him ready, takes his horse, and rides to the churchyard in the high town, where he found the sexton, as the custom is there, making nine graves, three for men, three for women, and three for children; and whoso dies next, first come, first served.
“‘Lend me thy spade,’ says Jemmy; and with that digs a hole, which hole he bids the sexton make for his grave, and doth give him a French crown. The man, willing to please him (more for his gold than his pleasure), did so; and the fool gets on his horse, and rides to a gentleman of the town, and, on the sudden, within two hours after, he died; of whom the sexton telling, Jemmy was buried there indeed. Thus you see,” adds Robin Armin, moralizing, “fools have a guess at wit sometimes; and the wisest could have done no more, not so much. But this fat fool fills a lean, grave with his carcase; upon which grave the King caused a stone of marble to be put, on which the poet writ these lines in remembrance of him:—
“He that gar’d all men till jeare,
Jemy a Camber, he ligges here:
Pray for his soll, for he is geane,
And here a ligges beneath this steane.”
And now let us follow Motley to the English court of the Stuarts, observing by the way, that, in the words of Mr. Thoms, in a note to Mr. Collier’s edition of Armin’s ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ “the custom of keeping a fool appears to have prevailed in the Scotch as generally as in any other of the European courts, and, it may be presumed, was retained for a long time among the nobility; since among the curiosities195 shown at Glammis Castle, was, within these few years, the dress worn by the domestic fool belonging to the family.”
Returning to the court of James the Unwise, I will venture upon the remark, that that British Solomon played the fool, or was played to, more frequently than most monarchs. Not only did the professional jester exercise his vocation to please the King, but astute ambassadors acted folly in order to obtain certain ends, and courtiers turned amateur fools to win his favour.
Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, used to say of James that “his most intrinsic desires were legible on his countenance.” Gondomar acted with him accordingly. The Spaniard’s manner, we are told by Osborn, was first to disturb the King’s passions, “and after, to appease them by some facetious drollery, before he embarked himself in what he intended to make the employment of the present audience.”
The same author narrates a scene which took place at New Barnet, and which is illustrative at least of the courtier-fool. James was the guest there of a Mr. John West, in whose garden he was one day walking, after dinner, when he stumbled over a mole-hill, and fell heels above head, in so ridiculous a position that all the courtiers present burst into a fit of laughter. They hastened, however, to assist him; but his Majesty repulsed them, with sundry savoury epithets, in the use and application of which, James was wonderfully expert. The royal rage waxed fiercely; but it was softened down by a touch of humour on the part of the host, which was characteristic of the court fool of an older period. “Ah,” so ran the wittily conceited apology of Mr. West, “it is not possible for any good subject to refrain from rejoicing at your Majesty’s activity in tumbling over and over at a mole-hill.” And with this fool’s compliment, the monarch was satisfied.
James undoubtedly enjoyed wit in others besides his professional court jesters, from whom, to tell the truth, he obtained it of a very inferior quality. There was Dean196 Field, who was one of the first fellows nominated by the King for the projected Chelsea College; he owed much of his promotion to his wit, and the same may be said of Dr. Collins. L’Estrange narrates an incident exhibiting the punning inclination of their wits in a disputation held by them in the delighted King’s presence. They had “promised one another,” says Sir Nicholas, “to lay aside all extravagance of wit, and to buckle to a serious argumentation; but they soon violated their own law, for Field began thus—‘Sic disputas, Colendissime Collins,’ and Collins again to him, afterwards—‘Sic disputas, Ager Colende.’
At the court, at which learned men thus trifled, the professional fool often gave offence that was not worth taking, and which indeed the wiser spirits of the court passed by with contempt. We have an instance of this in the case of Stone, whose name has come down to us, through Selden, as a court fool of this reign. The incident shows, too, that the fool’s privilege of speech did not always avail him; and that it was the thin-skinned and thick-headed who were the first to take offence, and to call for punishment on the offender. Selden exemplifies this in his ‘Table Talk,’ with reference to this court fool, Stone. “A gallant man is above ill words, an example we have in the old Lord of Salisbury, who was a great, wise man. Stone had called some Lord about court, ‘Fool.’ The Lord complains, and has Stone whipt. Stone cries, ‘I might have called my Lord of Salisbury, Fool, often enough, before he would have had me whipt.’” This shows, that if Stone had small wit, he at least possessed some discernment, and could distinguish between a grave, wise Lord, and one who had more sensitiveness than sense. And this is all we know of Stone, whose reputation has been obscured by the brighter and more lasting renown of the celebrated jester, Archie Armstrong.
Archibald Armstrong was a native of Arthuret, in Cumberland, and is supposed to have been “caught up” at an197 early age, and attached to the household of King James. Our British King Arthur has left many a memorial of himself in the vicinity of our northern lakes; and the name of the birth-place of the Court fool, is one that carries the thoughts back to the most brilliant of legendary sovereigns.
When first we encounter Archy Armstrong at the English court of James, it is rather in the character of buffoon amid fools of nobility, than of witty court jester. Taken altogether, it may be said of him as old Puttenham said of Thersites, that he was “a glorious noddie;” and he was, commonly, in very glorious company.
I have noticed in a previous page that Sir Thomas Jermyn, Sir Ralph Sheldon, and Thomas Badger were spoken of as “fools or buffoons” at the court of James. But Sir Anthony Weldon names three others,—Sir Edward Zouch, Sir George Goring, and Sir John Finett,—as “the chief and master fools; and surely,” adds Sir Anthony, “this fooling got them more than any other’s wisdom, far above them in desert. There were a set of fiddlers brought up on purpose for this fooling; and Goring was master of the game for fooleries, sometimes presenting David Droman and Archie Armstrong on the backs of the other fools, to tilt one at the other, till they fell together by the ears. But Sir John Millisent, who was never known before, was commended for notable fooling; and he was indeed the best extemporary fool of them all.”
Archie was often ill-treated, favourite as he was with James himself. At one time, the friends of Prince Charles, whenever they could catch him, used to toss him, “like a dog,” as Armstrong himself said, in a blanket. Osborn asserts that the reason for this treatment was told him by Archie himself. The King and his son, with a gallant company, had been witnessing the sports at Newmarket. When these were concluded, they bade each other farewell, and rode off different ways. The company, almost universally,198 turned and accompanied the Prince. Archie remained by his master, to whom he pointed out a circumstance which disagreeably, but conclusively, proved that the popularity of the heir-apparent exceeded that of the reigning Sovereign. The knowledge of this bitter truth, as irrefutable as any told to Lear by his fool, moved James to tears. Archie joked at it, but the King wept. The latter was probably also moved to an extensive demonstration of ill-humour, to the great discomfort of the Prince and his friends, otherwise they would not have so repeatedly satisfied their wrath by tossing the court jester in a blanket.
This jester was himself a good-tempered fellow, by no means lacking sense, especially the sense to grow rich by the exercise of his vocation, however contemptible it may have been. His recorded jests, like Scogan’s, are poor, unauthenticated, and, except on one or two solitary occasions, do not exhibit him in his character of court fool at all. There is, however, one incident which has been highly praised for its wit, is vouched for by Coke, and repeated by Neale, and which may be told, if it be only to show that it is very apocryphal. It refers to the circumstance of the secret expedition of Charles into Spain. Conversing on this matter with the King, Archie said, “I must change caps with your Majesty.” “Why?” asked the King. “Why, who sent the Prince into Spain?” asked Armstrong, in his turn. James, comprehending the fool, said, “But suppose the Prince should come safely back again?” “In that case,” replied the jester, “I will take my cap from my head, and send it to the King of Spain.”
Now there are several objections to the truth of this incident. One is, that similar stories are told of fools of much earlier times; but objections of far greater weight exist in the fact, that Armstrong himself accompanied the Prince and Buckingham, and Endymion Porter, on their celebrated mad-cap expedition. We have double proof of this in a letter199 from Howell, who saw him there, and in one from Archie himself, or written under his dictation, dated from Madrid, and which will be found below, for the first time in print. “Our cousin Archie,” thus writes Howell, “hath more privilege than any; for he often goes with his fool’s coat when the Infanta is with her meninas and ladies of honour, and keeps a blowing and a blustering among them, and flirts out what he lists.” The jester was wonderfully bold, it must be confessed, as may be seen by his comment, when the Spanish Dons and Do?as were discussing the gallantry of the Duke of Bavaria, who, with a small force, had routed the much larger army of James’s son-in-law, Frederick the Pfalzgraf. “Oh!” cried the patriotic fool, “I will tell you a stranger circumstance. Is it not more singular that one hundred and forty ships should have sailed from Spain to attack England, and that not ten of them should have returned to tell what became of the rest?”
This is very good; but, as I have previously noticed, there is a much more interesting letter from Spain than Howell’s,—one from Archie himself. The original (which was kindly pointed out to me by Mr. Hepworth Dixon,) will be found at the British Museum (Additional Manuscripts, 19,402, fol. 79); it is addressed to James I., and is to this effect:—“Most great and gracious King. To let your Majesty know, never was fool better accepted on by the King of Spain, except his own fool; and to tell your Majesty secretly, I am better accepted on than he is. To let your Majesty know, I am sent for by this King when none of your own nor your son’s men can come near him,—to the glory of God and praise of you. I shall think myself better and more fool than all the fools here, for aught I see; yet I thank God and Christ my Saviour, and you, for it. Whoever could think that your Majesty kept a gull and an ass in me,—he is a gull and an ass himself. To let your Majesty know, that I cannot tell you the thoughts of kings’200 hearts; but this King is of the bravest colour I ever saw, yourself except. And this King will not let me have a trunchman. I desire your Majesty’s help in all need, for I cannot understand him; but I think myself as wise as he or any in his Court, as grave as you think the Spaniard is. You will write to your son and Buckingham, and charge them to provide me a trunchmanF and then you shall know from your fool, by God’s help and Christ’s help, and the Virgin Mary’s, more secret business than from all your wise men here. My Lord Aston,—your Majesty shall give him thanks,—writes to you and to your son; do give him thanks, for never kinder friend I found in this world; his house is at my command, and besides he gave me white boots when my own trunk was not come up. I think every day of yourself, and of your Majesty’s gracious favour; for you will never be missed till you are gone, and the child that is unborn will say a praise for you. But I hope in God, for my own part, never to see it. The further I go, the more I see, for all that I see here are foolery to you. For toys and such noise as I see, with God’s grace, my Saviour’s, and your leave, I will let you know more whenever I come to you; and no more, with grief in my eyes and tears in my heart, and praying for your Majesty’s happy and gracious continuance among us. Your Majesty’s Servant, Archibald Armstrong, your X best fool of state, both here and there. Court of Spain, 28th April, 1623.”
The above letter, with its mixture of blustering familiarity, small wit, and profanity, was probably taken down from the201 dictation of Archie. The fool, it will be observed, appends his mark; and the original is entirely in the handwriting of Buckingham. There is in it good illustration of the position occupied by Armstrong; and the letter will, I hope, be considered not superfluous here, for this and other social traits which it contains.
Armstrong returned to England with Prince Charles, into whose regular service he passed, after the death of James. I have said in a previous page, that there were faithful servants of Anne of Denmark who lived to envy her fool; and I may here add that there was one especially who envied him, and who was still more angry when he compared the well-cared-for condition of Archie with his own neglected, despised, and unmerited situation.
The individual to whom I allude is William Belou. According to unpublished documents in the State Paper office relating to the domestic affairs of Charles I., under the dates 1625 and 1626, Belou was a Dane, who, at the age of ten years, was placed in the household of Anne of Denmark by the King of that country, and he accompanied that princess to Scotland. Belou remained in her service till, as he says, “it pleased Almighty God to translate her to a better kingdom.” He subsequently was an attendant on the person of James I., who granted him an annuity of ￡150 for life; which, of course, was not paid. “This pension,” says Belou, in a memorial to Charles, “being the only mark or testimony of my good behaviour in the late Queen’s service, I would not have sold it for ￡1000 in times past.” But the poor pensionary had entered the service of the Duke of Holstein, afterwards of the King of Denmark. He must have been ill requited, for he adds, “I have not only spent my readiest means, but run myself a thousand pounds in debt.” Belou then offers to surrender the patent for his annuity, if Charles will “cause my Lord Treasurer give to Charles de Bowsie and Abraham Decks that they shall receive202 the moneys above specified that I owe them, at a certain day.”
The old servant could get no attention paid to his intercessions; and he came to England, to endeavour to procure by his personal address what he could not obtain by missive, What he did and how he sped, is shown in the subjoined honest, hearty, graphic letter to Mr. Secretary Conway. It is the outpouring of an indignant, but not a disrespectful, discarded servant, “broken in body and mind, and totally ruined in estate.” The picture is admirably drawn, and we find in it our old friends Tom Derry and Archie Armstrong, in such conditions of comfort and well-being, as to show that old fools had more substantial respect at the hands of Charles, than old servants, defrauded of their income.
“May it please your Lordship, according to your direction, I have essayed to you a petition, but find neither matter nor reason for it. I have been worse treated than a natural fool, witness Tom Duri,G who, for aught I know, is better used, according to his estate and quality, than any servant the late Queen left behind her; at least a great deal better than I. I have been worse used than a counterfeit, witness Archie Armstrong, who shows me that the King has given so special direction for payment of his entertainment, that he is better than he was in the late King’s time; when I, having a pension for which I served, toiled, and travelled the space of thirty-seven years, cannot receive one penny, till I have spent three in seeking of it. I have been worse used than a Turk, witness a Turkish ambassador, whom I have seen get audience of the late King; who had his despatch in three weeks, when I, in three winters’ attendance, cannot obtain means or leave to return to my native country, but am constrained to forget and expose my wife and only daughter to rapt and desolation; that bloody inquisition army of203 Wallenstein being within three or four days’ march of a country-house where I left them. All this I have endured patiently, or at least with a forced and seeming senselessness. But now, my honourable Lord, I am worse used than a dog; for having moved a poor humble petition to the King, verbally, at Hampton Court, that if his Majesty will give me no money, he would let me have a pass or a warrant, that I might go out to put my wife and daughter in a surer place, he went away silently, without one word speaking; and I am sure he will speak to his dogs. Since, then, my Lord, I have fallen beneath the degree of a dog, I can petition no more, for fear I fall a-howling when I would complain. Wherefore, I have enclosed within this letter the copy of two petitions given to his Majesty heretofore. I beseech your Lordship to peruse them again, and consider what I can offer more or demand less than I have done in the said two petitions; and, only by procuring me his Majesty’s pass, save me from this last of evils, that it be not saddled on my back as a hedshef of my other wrongs endured, that I have slipped away, like a knotless thread, without his Majesty’s knowledge. If I can obtain this, I rest
“Yours, to serve your Lordship with the best thoughts of my heart and the best report my hard fortune can bring forth,
“William Belou.
“To my very honourable Lord, my Lord Connoway,
Secretary of Estate to the King his Majesty of
Great Britain, give these.”
 
I feel confident that I need not offer any apology for citing the whole of a letter which contains such a graphic sketching of the author’s wrongs, of his attempts to redress them, his feelings at his own condition, and his own anxiety for the safety of his wife and only daughter. Charles will “speak to his dogs,” but will not vouchsafe a word to204 the old servant of his mother, and of his uncle, Ulric of Holstein. The King provides liberally for his mother’s jester, Tom Derry, and more than liberally, it would seem, for his father’s jester and his own, Archibald Armstrong. When poor Belou is about to open the touching Jeremiad of his afflictions, it is the contrast between the happy positions of the two court fools and his own desolate and destitute situation, which first strikes him. The fools are better off than ever they were, whereas the old attendant of nearly forty years’ standing cannot obtain a penny of his due, though he spend three in the seeking of it.
But the day for the fall of Archie Armstrong came too. The fool had not always jested with impunity when he had princes for his subject; and he now fared worse by venturing to tilt against an archbishop. That Archie hated Laud, is sufficiently apparent. It is even said that he once volunteered a grace at a dinner where the prelate was present, and that the court fool, trusting in his privilege of speech, gave it forth in the shape of “Great praise be to God, and little laud to the Devil!” The Archbishop had good ground for offence; but Archie thrusted at him more sharply than this. What he had told Mr. Belou was no exaggeration; he grew rich at court, but his arrogance brought him low.
“Archie, by kings and princes graced of late,
Jested himself into a fair estate;”—
and joked himself out of his enviable position. The attempt to force the English Liturgy upon the Scottish congregations was food for his saucy wit; and when he heard of the orthodox Lizzie, who had flung a stool at the head of the liturgical Dean, in St. Giles’s, Edinburgh, he called it “the stool of repentance.” The dissensions in the North began to assume a very serious aspect; and much uneasiness, with a corresponding amount of obstinacy, was experienced at court. Laud was, right or wrong205 in intention, the cause of all, and as Archie one day met the Archbishop, on his way to the Council Chamber, he could not forbear wagging his rude tongue with the query, “Wha’s fool noo?”
For this offence the jester was immediately taken before the King in Council, where the prelate named his grounds of offence, and the fool pleaded the privilege of his coat. He pleaded in vain, as the following order, dated Whitehall, 11th March, 1637, will show:—
“It is this day ordered by his Majesty, with the advice of the board, that Archibald Armstrong, the King’s fool, for certain scandalous words of a high nature, spoken by him against the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, his Grace, and proved to be uttered by him, by two witnesses, shall have his coat pulled over his head, and be discharged of the King’s service, and banished the court, for which the Lord Chamberlain of the King’s household is prayed and required to give order to be executed. And immediately the same was put in execution.”
The provocation had been long, and had often driven Laud into fits of unseemly passion, which, indeed, drove the prelate to an attempt to bring the wretched jester before that dreaded tribunal, the Star Chamber. On this quarrel and Laud’s vindictiveness, Osborn has a striking passage.
“I shall instance as a blot in the greatest rochet that did in my time appear in the court of England, or indeed any I ever heard of since the Reformation, who managed a quarrel with Archy the King’s fool, and by endeavouring to explode him the court, rendered him, at last, so considerable, by calling the Prelate’s enemies (which were not a few) to his rescue, as the fellow was not only able to continue the dispute for divers years, but received such encouragement from standers-by as he hath oft, in my hearing, belched in his face such miscarriages as he was really guilty of, and might, but for this foul-mouthed Scot, have been forgotten;206 adding such other reproaches of his own as the dignity of his calling and greatness of his parts could not in reason or manners admit; though so far hoodwinked with passion as not to discern that all the fool did was but a symptom, of the strong and inveterate distemper raised long before in the hearts of his countrymen against the calling of bishops, out of whose former ruins, the major part of the Scottish nobility had feathered, if not built, their nests. Nor did this too low-placed anger lead him into a less absurdity than an endeavour to bring him into the Star Chamber, till the Lord Coventry had, by acquainting him with the privilege of a fool, shown the ridiculousness of the attempt; yet, not satisfied, he, through the mediation of the Queen, got him at last discharged the court.”H
There were present, on this occasion, when the Council met to strip a coat from a fool, “the King’s most excellent Majesty,” in person; the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Lennox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl Marshal, and the Earls of Northumberland and Dorset, Salisbury and Holland, the Lord-Keeper (Finch), the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy Seal, and the Lord Chamberlain; Baron Newburgh, and Mr. Treasurer, Mr. Comptroller, Mr. Vice-Chamberlain, Mr. Secretary Cook, and Mr. Secretary Wincebanke.” What an august tribunal for the deposition of a fool!
Archy survived long enough to see himself avenged (if he were sufficiently of evil nature to consider himself to require to be avenged) of many of these his noble enemies. Meanwhile, his crime seems to have sat lightly on his conscience, however heavy the retribution with which it was visited. The discarded jester did not attempt to deny his offence. How he was punished and how he spoke openly of it, is shown in the paragraph here subjoined.
207 “Archye,” writes Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford (Strafford Papers, vol. ii.), “is fallen into a great misfortune; a fool he would be, but a foul-mouthed knave he hath proved himself; being at a tavern in Westminster, drunk, as he saith himself, he was speaking of the Scottish business, he fell a railing of my Lord of Canterbury, said he was a monk, a rogue, and a traitor. Of this, his Grace complained at Council, and the King being present, it was ordered he should be carried to the porter’s lodge, his coat pulled over his ears, and kicked out of the Court, never to enter within the gates, and to be called into the Star Chamber. The first part is done, but my Lord of Canterbury hath interceded for the King that there it should end.”
Laud would have had more vengeance, if he could, but, says the author of the ‘Scout’s Discovery,’—“albeit Archie found favour in his lash, he lost both his coat and his place.” Laud ruined the jester; but he could not subdue his spirit, nor curb his tongue. Archie assumed a suit of sables, and hung about the dead Kings in Westminster Abbey, since he no longer held office in the palace of a living sovereign. “I met Archie,” says a writer in Morgan’s ‘Ph?nix Britannicus,’ referring to a week or two after the dismissal,—“I met Archie at the Abbey, all in black. Alas! poor fool, thought I, he mourns for his country. I asked him about his (fool’s) coat. ‘Oh,’ quoth he, ‘my Lord of Canterbury hath taken it from me, because either he or some of the Scots bishops may have the use of it themselves. But he hath given me a black coat for it; and now I may speak what I please, so it be not against the prelates, for this coat hath a greater privilege than the other had.’” The hint that he could exercise the privilege of a jester’s liberty under the clerical black more freely than he could beneath his motley jerkin, was a Parthian dart thrown by a practised though a retreating soldier. It is certainly not the worst saying ever uttered by Archibald Armstrong.
208 It will be seen, too, that Archie, whether in or out of office, had the wit to thrive. Dr. Octavius Gilchrist, in the ‘London Magazine’ for August and September, 1824, at the conclusion of a review of the old jest book which bore Armstrong’s name on the title-page; but with which the “fool” had no other connection, states that Archie derived considerable wealth from the new year’s gifts presented him by the courtiers. It even seems that the ex-jester became a landed proprietor. “To prove,” says Dr. Gilchrist, “that he saved money and laid it out in the purchase of landed property, we have met with a contemporary authority, in an uncommonly rare tract, printed in 12mo, 1636, and entitled ‘The Fatal Nuptials, or Mournful Marriage.’ This is a metrical account of a lamentable accident that occurred in the preceding year, on Windermere Water, when forty-seven persons (among them a young married couple, with their friends and relations going to keep their wedding) were drowned. The anonymous poet (a very bad one, by the way), meaning to enforce the uncertainty of life, and the liability of all ranks to a similar disaster, introduces Archie, who was probably well known in the neighbourhood of the accident.
“Is’t so, that we in hourly danger stand,
Whether we sail by sea, or go by land?
That we to this world but one entrance have,
But thousand means of passage to the grave?
And that the wise shall no more fruit receive
Of all his labours than the fool shall have.
For the politick Hum must yield to swelling Humber,
As well as the least of his inferior number,
And Archie, that rich fool, when he least dreams.
For purchased lands must be possessed of streams.”
It is tolerably clear, from this, that Armstrong, like Osric, that combination of fool and lord in Hamlet, was of those enviable and respectable people who may be described, as Osric is, in the same tragedy, as being “spacious in the possession of dirt;” or, as the Latin author said it long before, “multa dives tellure.”
209 In short, Archie, saving his disgrace, did not fare so ill. He was in the happy financial condition of the gentleman in Horace, who, let the world rail at him as it might, could point to his money-box, and hug himself complacently on his destiny. He had noble companionship, too, in his retirement. Armstrong repaired to Arthuret, his native place, in Cumberland, and thither also retired, after the cause of Archie’s royal ex-master had become desperate, that Dick Graham who had been master of the horse to Buckingham, and who had accompanied his patron in that expedition to the Spanish Court where the Jester had played as prominent a part as any of his betters. Had the ex-jester been of the quality of mind of illogical persons who see in every disaster that befalls those with whom they are in antagonism, a divine justice descending on the head of their enemy, Archie might have solemnly declared that the monarchy fell because it had ceased to respect the privileges of fools.
But it was not Armstrong’s disposition to be solemn. While institutions decayed, he survived. The Monarchy went down, and the Commonwealth went over it, and went down too, and Archie still found himself upon his legs. The church-register of Arthuret, as quoted by Lysons, in his Magna Britannia, shows that the jester could find damsels too ready to be fooled by him. But let us hope that the joculator of old turned honest man at last. One thing is certain, that in 1646 he made an honest woman, as the old phrase goes, of confiding Sibella Bell. The church-register makes record of the marriage of this pair; but neither in that nor any other register is record made of the lives led by this wedded couple. The only further, and that an important, entry, containing a notice of our once lively friend of the cap and bells, is the duly-registered circumstance of his death. The date of his burial alone is given, and that ceremony took place, characteristically enough, (in the year above-mentioned) on April 1, All-fools’ day!
210 To Archie Armstrong succeeded Muckle John, the last, perhaps, of the official court fools in England. In the Strafford Papers (vol. ii. p. 154) there is a letter from Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford, in which the latter is informed, “There is now a fool in his (Archie’s) place, Muckle John, but he will never be so rich, for he cannot abide money.” Love of the precious metals was, indeed, a passion with Armstrong, whose avarice, however, was sometimes disappointed. It was especially so on an occasion when a nobleman placed in Archie’s hand some pieces of money which the jester thought too little for his merits; he expressed his discontent, and the donor, seeming willing to change the silver coin for gold, received it from Archie, but put it into his own pocket. Instead of giving a gold Carolus or two in return, the courtier only bestowed on Armstrong the remark, that whatever wit he might possess as fool, he certainly had not the wit to know how to keep money when it was given to him. Muckle John was of a different quality, inasmuch that he cared nothing at all for money; of which, nevertheless, considerable sums were spent upon him, to make him look like a fool of quality. For the following items of expenses in this respect, extracted from an account-book of the period, I am indebted to Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose ready kindness enables me to show Muckle John equipped from head to foot.
“A long coat and suit of scarlet-colour serge for Muckle John, 10l. 10s. 6d.
“One pair of crimson silk hose, and one pair of gaiters and roses for Muckle John, 61s.
“For a pair of silk and silver garters, and roses and gloves suitable for Muckle John, 110s.
“For a hat covered with scarlet, and a band suitable; and for two rich feathers, one red, the other white, for Muckle John, 50s.
“Stags’-leather gloves, fringed with gold and silver.
211 “A hat-band for Muckle John.
“One pair of perfumed gloves, lined with sables, 5s.”
At the court at which Armstrong and Muckle John practised their vocation, there were other personages of some notoriety, who exercised their talents for the mirth or admiration of their royal patron. While the above-named jesters, for instance, were more particularly attached to the King, little Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf, exercised a calling somewhat similar in the household of Henrietta Maria. Jeffrey did this both in England and in France. This little fellow, who, when he entered his teens, was scarcely more than a foot and a half in height, and who did not ultimately grow much over three feet, was in his boyhood protected by the Duke of Buckingham. At a banquet given by the Duke in honour of the Queen, a pie was placed upon the table, the crust of which being raised, the dwarf stepped forth and bowed to Henrietta Maria, to whom he was presented by Buckingham. This mode of presentation was not at all original. It was a common court jest, when a dwarf was in question. Sometimes the hapless little wretch was presented in a gilt cage, as a Milan dwarf was to Francis I. Zeiller, in one of his letters, mentions a dwarf in the household of Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, in the year 1568. At a grand festival in honour of Duke William of Bavaria and the Princess Renata of Lorraine, this dwarf was served up at table, in a pie. When the crust was raised, he leaped out, attired in panoply of gilt, and grasping a banner in his hand, which he waved as he marched round the table, and made merry compliments to the august and delighted guests. Weber, in his ‘Ver?ndertes Russland,’ notices a similar custom as prevailing at the Court of Russia, and continuing as late as the beginning of the last century. No more acceptable joke could be got up for the amusement of the Czars by their favourite nobles. A couple of pies, from which a male and female dwarf212 issued to dance a minuet, procured for the giver of the entertainment the utmost applause from the sovereign.
The custom, then, was known on the Continent both before and after the period of Jeffrey Hudson. That the position of the latter in the household of his royal mistress was not unlike that of a jester, may be gathered from various sources. Davenant says that he was made to fight with a turkey-cock, and Walter Scott notices how he was compelled to endure the teazing of the domestics and courtiers, and the many squabbles he had with the King’s gigantic porter.
But where Jeffrey Hudson is best seen in his character of jester to Henrietta Maria, is in the despatches written in 1636, by Panzani and Corneo, agents of the Romish Church, in London, and addressed to Cardinal Mazarin. These despatches are quoted by Mrs. Everett Green, in her ‘Letters of Henrietta Maria,’ and it is there I find a notice of our little friend, Jeffrey. In the despatch in which mention is made of Hudson, the writer, Corneo, describes an interview he had with the Queen at Holmby Palace, near Northampton. He narrates the compliments exchanged by the principal personages, and proceeds to tell in much detail, how he presented to Henrietta Maria, as a Papal gift, a shrine for relics, and how gratefully it was received. Corneo then says, “that he exhibited to her Majesty a portrait of St. Catherine, with an intimation that as soon as he had procured a frame for it, he would offer it for the Queen’s acceptance.” The Queen was too impatient to wait, and therefore took the picture as it was, and had it fastened to the curtains of her bed. Nor was this all. On the following day there were more gifts for presentation, and at this ceremony we find Jeffrey in waiting, and exercising his licensed vocation. “I presented to her Majesty,” says the agent, “your Eminence’s rosary of olive wood, with another of agate, and one of buffalo horn, curiously worked with cameo medallions. I also took others to the213 Catholic ladies and maidens, which were distributed by Father Philip, in her Majesty’s presence; and the Queen’s dwarf, who is less and better made than that of Criqui, being present, when all was nearly finished, began to call out, “Madam, show the father that I also am a Catholic,” with a manner and gesture that made all laugh. This was evidently the manner and gesture of a court buffoon; and what would have been resented from a noble as an impertinence, was laughed at, in the Queen’s dwarf, as a good joke.
Eight years subsequently to the above scene, when Jeffrey (after cleverly aiding the Queen’s escape from Exeter) was with Henrietta Maria, in France, occurred his remarkable duel with Will Croft, brother of the Queen’s favourite, and master of the horse. Will Croft had bantered the valiant little man, who held a commission as a cavalry captain; and Jeffrey not only challenged him, but fought Will on horseback, in the park at Nevers. Croft had brought with him only a squirt, which he discharged at the enraged dwarf; but Hudson, “running his horse in full career, shot his antagonist in the head, and left him dead on the spot.” This affair caused some sensation in the French court, and it produced from Henrietta Maria a very characteristic note to Mazarin, whom she honours with a complimentary title. “Cousin,” she writes from Nevers, in October, 1644, “I wrote to the Queen, my sister, about a misfortune which has happened to my house, of Geoffrey, who has killed Croft’s brother. I have written the whole affair to the commander, in order that you may hear of it. What I wish is, that as they are both English, and my servants, the Queen, my sister, will give me authority to dispose of them as I please, in dispensing either justice or favour, which I was unwilling to do without writing to you, and asking you to assist me therein, as I shall always do in all that concerns me, since I profess to be, as I am, Cousin, your very affectionate cousin, Henrietta Maria, R.”
214 The Queen’s letter, as given by Mrs. Green, differs from that given by Miss Strickland in this lady’s life of Henrietta Maria. With regard to the consequences of the affair noticed in it, there only remains to be said, that poor Jeffrey lost his post in the Queen’s household. He recovered some favour at the court of Charles II.; but he fell under suspicion of treason, and the dwarf, who had been the faithful messenger of his patroness, had served her well in serious affairs of business, and made her and her court laugh by his small jests, ultimately died, a prisoner, in the Gate House, at Westminster.
Poor Jeffrey was less fortunate than two other dwarfs, patronized by Henrietta previous to her flight to France. They were a male and female. The former, Richard Gibson, had been in the service of a lady at Mortlake. She had observed in him a talent for drawing, and she kindly placed him with De Cleyn, director of the Mortlake tapestry works. Gibson acquired great reputation as a copier of Sir Peter Lely’s portraits, whose collection his nephew, William Gibson, was rich enough to purchase at Lely’s death. The dwarf artist was ever welcome at court; and when he espoused the dwarf young lady there, the nuptials of the little couple were honoured by the presence of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria. No less a bard than Edmund Waller sang their Epithalamium, or at least verses in commemoration of an event which made the court hilarious, and from which verses the following lines are taken:—
215
“Design or chance makes others wive,
But nature did this match contrive....
Thrice happy is that humble pair,
Beneath the level of all care!
Over whose heads those arrows fly,
Of sad distrust and jealousy;
Secur?d in as high extreme
As if the world had none but them.
To him, the fairest nymphs do show
Like moving mountains topp’d with snow;
And every man a Polypheme
Does to his Galatea seem....”
Thus, although this couple did not belong to the fraternity of official jesters, the sovereigns and their court contrived to extract amusement from the neat little wedded pair, each of whom measured exactly three feet two. Richard Gibson was the King’s page, and his wife served the Queen. When King and Queen had passed away, the dwarf artist found in his pencil a better property than Charles had found, or lost, in his sceptre. He had painted his Royal master’s portrait; and when Oliver Cromwell was in power, he painted the Protector. He was the drawing-master of the Princesses Mary and Anne, and it may be remarked that, about the same period, the Muscovite court fool and dwarf, Sotof, was holding the additional office of writing-master to Peter the Great. The old page of Charles I. was however a superior man. He died at the age of seventy-five, A.D. 1690. His little wife lived till 1709, when she died, in her ninetieth year, at which time the four of their nine children who had attained to the ordinary stature of mankind survived, the issue of a marriage which had been honoured by the presence of royalty and commemorated as a court jest by the banter of Waller.
It is not to be expected that the grave system of the Commonwealth admitted of such an official as a jester. The house or town fool, however, did not go out with his brother at court. A portrait of one of those worthies may be seen at Muncaster Castle, Cumberland. His name was Thomas Skelton; he appears to have resided at the castle during the period of the civil wars, as house fool. Jefferson, in his ‘History of Allerdale Ward, above Derwent,’ says, that “of Skelton’s sayings there are many traditional stories;” but unfortunately he cites none. From his description216 of the portrait on the staircase at the castle, we obtain a good idea of the fool of this period. Skelton is there represented “in a check gown, blue, yellow, and white; under his arm is an earthen dish, with ears; in his right hand a white wand; in his left, a white hat, bound with pink ribbon, and with blue bows; in front, a paper, on which is written, ‘Mrs. Dorothy Copeland.’” The picture contains an inscription, headed “Thomas Skelton, late fool of Muncaster’s last will and testament.” I cite it, not for its poetical merit, but because it shows that these house and town fools were sometimes invested with mock offices of a certain dignity.
217
“Be it known to ye, O grave and wise men all,
That I, Tom Fool, am sheriff of the Hall.
I mean the Hall of Haigh, where I command
What neither I nor you do understand.
My under-sheriff is Ralph Wayte, you know;
As wise as I am, and as witty too.
Of Egremond I have borough-serjeant been;
Of Wiggan, bailiff too, as may be seen
By my white staff of office in my hand,
Being carried straight as the badge of my command.
A low high-constable, too, was once my calling,
Which I enjoy’d under King Henry Rawling.
And when the Fates a new sheriff send,
I’m under-sheriff prick’d, world without end.
He who doth question my authority
May see the seal and patent here lie by.
The dish with lugs [ears] which I do carry here
Shows all my living is in good strong beer.
If scurvy lads to me abuses do,
I’ll call ’em scurvy rogues, and rascals too.
Fair Dolly Copeland in my cap is placed;
Monstrous fair is she, and as good as all the rest.
Honest Nick Pennington, honest Tom Turner, both
Will bury me when I this world go forth.
But let me not be carried o’er the brigg,
Lest, falling, I in Duggas river ligg.
Nor let my body by old Charnorth lie,
But by Will Caddy,—for he’ll lie quietly.
And when I’m buried, then my friends may drink;
But each man pay for himself,—that’s best I think.
This is my will; and this I know will be
Perform’d by them, as they have promised me.”
This rhapsodic testament has “Thomas Skelton X his mark” affixed to it, serving to show (as Armstrong’s letter from Madrid does) that this class of jester, if possessed of wit, was not possessed of learning. The lines also intimate that the “fool of Muncaster Castle” was, like most of his profession, fond of drinking. The subscription of his mark is attested by three witnesses; and the rhymed joke had all the forms of a serious document.
After the gravity enforced by the Commonwealth, the silencing of the stage, the suppression of joking, and the introduction of long sermons and loud psalms, there was a sudden reaction, even before the graceless King had got what was facetiously called “his own again.” Monk, who was in some doubt, even as he marched through Gray’s Inn Lane into London, whether he should join hands with the solemn precisians or the gay cavaliers, no sooner felt the direction of the popular wind, than he gave license to jollity. The nearest approach that could be made to the old professional fool, started on to the stage as “The Citizen and Soldier,” “Country Tom and City Dick,” and other “pretty antics,” played in April 1660, before “His Excellency,” when, with the Council of State, he dined at one of the city halls. He dined at nine of them; and after dinner on each occasion, besides satirical plays, were “dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and the like; and all to please his Excellency, the Lord General.”
If it be true that the official fool was not restored with Monarchy, at the accession of Charles II., because the Puritan voice and the religious sentiment of the country218 generally, were against such officials and their foolery, foolery itself did not go out. See what solemn Evelyn says to it, under the date of January 1, 1661–2:—“1st January. I went to London, invited to the solemn foolery of the Prince de la Grange, at Lincoln’s Inn, where came the King, Duke, etc. It began with a grand masque, and a formal pleading before the mock princes, grandees, nobles, and knights of the Sun. He had his Lord Chancellor, Chamberlain, Treasurer, and other royal officers, gloriously clad and attended. It ended in a magnificent banquet. One Mr. Lort was the young spark who maintained the pageantry.”
A little more than six years later, we meet with an entry in ‘Pepys’ Diary’ which seems to introduce us to an official fool, and which is to this effect:—“1667–8. Feb. 13. Mr. Brisband tells me, in discourse, that Tom Killigrew hath a fee out of the Wardrobe for cap and bells, under the title of the King’s Foole or Jester, and may revile or jeere anybody, the greatest person, without offence, by the privilege of his place.”—Pepys, vol. iv. p. 353.
Oldys is quite as explicit. In one of his MS. notes to ‘Langbain’s Memoirs of Dramatic Authors,’ he says, under the head of Killigrew: “He was Master of the Revels, and the King’s jester, while Groom of the Bedchamber.” Various writers, when commenting on these passages, have suggested that Killigrew never held a patent of official fool, and that his actual appointment was to the office of Master of the Revels. According, however, to Chalmers, Tom Killigrew succeeded Herbert as Master of the Revels in 1673, and was followed therein, on his death, in 1682–3, by his brother Charles. The office in question was first instituted in 1546, the last year of Henry VIII. (with a salary of ￡10 per annum), and continued till 1725, when the Lord Chamberlain was empowered to have rule and dominion over the court and public entertainments; and the Master of the219 Revels being entirely ignored in a new Act of Parliament, was snuffed out, and never heard of again.
Supposing Pepys’s informant to have stated the actual truth, Tom Killigrew had, not a patent, but a warrant under the King’s sign manual, addressed to the officers of the Wardrobe, directing them to pay to Killigrew, “our fool or jester,” a certain amount per annum to enable him to provide the customary official indication of a cap and bells. Such warrants had nothing in them of the character of Letters Patent. An entry of the warrant should have been made in some book kept in the Wardrobe; the warrant or sign manual may have been preserved, and probably also a docket, or short minute of it, may have been made and kept by some Master of Requests or other officer who laid the warrant before the King for his signature. If such a warrant did actually exist, it ought to be found in some wardrobe book, or collection of signed bills or warrants, or dockets.
The most careful research has failed to be rewarded by the discovery of any document confirmatory of the report conveyed to Pepys. All that I could find in conjunction with Mr. Bruce, or, I should rather say, all that his antiquarian zeal, patience, curiosity, and unwearied good-nature could find for me, consisted of several entries which show that Killigrew was in the receipt of various payments made by the Crown; but none of these show him to have been an official court jester. The only approach to a proof is, that he is styled “one of the Grooms of the Chamber,” a style by which Tarleton was designated when he was jester to Elizabeth.
On the Issue Roll, 1 March, 1665–6, there is notice of a payment of ￡100, being a quarter’s annuity granted to Killigrew and Cecilie, his wife. In 1666, the same Roll contains notices of payments on account of two annuities, one of ￡400 per annum, which he held jointly with his wife;220 and one of the annual value of ￡500. These annuities are duly ordered to be paid, at later dates, and from various sources. Sometimes there were no effects in the treasury, and then the Queen’s purse seems to have been tapped for the payment. In the Pells Enrolments, 1675, Killigrew receives ￡200, to be expended by him in support of his office as Master of the Revels; and, later, we come upon an entry of ￡1050, to be paid to him for getting up certain plays during the preceding nine years. I may add, that in a succeeding year, the 18th of August, 1678, there was another appointment of greater interest than the above, and which shows how different, now at least, was the court poet from the court fool. I allude to the appointment of Dryden as poet laureate. The letters patent making this appointment are entered on the Pells Book of Enrolments of the date above mentioned. In this document, Dryden’s predecessors, Gower and Chaucer, are spoken of as knights; the salary is fixed at ￡200 per annum; and directions are given that the butt of canary, or sack, shall be taken out of the King’s cellars at Whitehall, “yearly, and once a year.” At the above date, Killigrew was Master of the Revels; and if he were jester also, it may be said that the court of England had never seen so accomplished a “fool,” nor so eminent a laureate, as now figured on the household roll of Charles II.
The position of Tom Killigrew at Court was, however, so closely allied to that of the official jester, as to forbid its being passed over without some brief notice. Killigrew was the son of a baronet; and his earliest vocation and amusement, was that of lingering about the doors of the theatre till he was invited in to play some imp, or any other character that a boy could enact. In this way he commenced a career which ended in his being, with Buckingham and others, one of the “merry villains” in the household of Charles II.
Killigrew’s first appearance at Court was in the character221 of page of honour to Charles I., a part which he seems to have filled creditably. When the Commonwealth was established, Tom went into the service of Charles II., then on the Continent; and he is very strongly suspected of having betrayed his master’s secrets to the republican Government. This suspicion rests upon a passage in a letter (dated October 1658) from Downing, Cromwell’s Resident at the Hague, to Thurloe, referring to a secret visit paid by Charles to the Dutch court. “As for Charles Stuart,” says the writer, “I had an account from one Killigrew, of his bed-chamber, of every place where he was, and the time, with his stay and company, of which also I gave you an account in mine of the last post. He vowed that it was a journey of pleasure, and that none of the States General, nor any person of note of Amsterdam, came to him.” These communications, however, may have been made by Killigrew in good faith, as explanations, in order to screen his royal master from molestation.
Of that royal master he was the not unfitting representative at Venice, whither Killigrew repaired to borrow money, and where he remained long enough to write some half-dozen verbose and witless plays. He remained too long for the patience of the Venetians, who, dissolute as they were themselves, were more disgusted at the profligacy, than charmed by the accomplishments, of the English envoy; and the Doge, Francis Erizzo, very unceremoniously ejected him from the Venetian territory. In the fourth volume of ‘Evelyn’s Diary and Correspondence’ will be found a letter from Hyde, mildly complaining that Charles was not permitted to withdraw his ambassador.
Killigrew, at the Restoration, brought back with him an improved taste in theatrical matters generally; and he introduced the first Italian opera singers ever heard in this country. He was for a time the most conspicuous man at court, where he certainly exercised with impunity all the222 license of the court fool, which office Oldys and Pepys ascribe to him. The samples of this license are well known, but some will bear being reproduced.
On one occasion, this “merry villain” was seated at a window of the King’s dressing-room, reading one of his licentious plays, while Charles was engaged at his toilette. The monarch must have been under the influence of some decency of spirit that morning, for he asked Killigrew what he would be able to say in the next world, in defence of the “idle words” of his comedies. Tom replied, that he would be able to make a better defence for his “idle words” than the King could do for his idle promises, which were made only to be broken, and which had caused more ruin than any of the aforesaid idle words in any of his own comedies.
Of similar boldness, and with more of truth in it, was his satirical hint to Charles, conveyed publicly to the King, at a moment of great national distress. Killigrew remarked that the affairs of the kingdom were in a very ill state; but that nevertheless they were not without remedy. “There is a good, honest, able man that I could name,” said he, “that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would be soon mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it.”
The jester, turned Mentor, was ever more ready with precept than example; and his own practice of selling places that did not exist, and taking money from honest and ambitious citizens for creating them “King’s physic-tasters,” or “royal curtain-drawers,” was thought an excellent court jest, and was laughed at accordingly.
Sometimes, like Will Sommers before Henry VIII., Killigrew would appear in the presence of Charles, in disguise. Once he came before the King in pilgrim’s attire, “cockled hat223 and shoon.” “Whither away?” asked Charles. “I am going to hell,” boldly replied the jester, “to ask the devil to send back Oliver Cromwell to take charge of the affairs of England; for as to his successor, he is always employed in other business.” It will be seen from this, that if Killigrew did not wear the cap and bells, he was in all essentials the bold, witty, and privileged jester of the court of Charles II.
Tom could bring the latter to attend to his affairs when no one else had hope of succeeding. We have an instance of this when a Council had assembled on some highly important matter, but could do nothing for want of the King’s much-desired presence. When Lauderdale had failed to induce the King to leave his pleasures for the public business, Killigrew wagered a hundred pounds with the Duke, that he would bring Charles to the Council in half-an-hour. Tom succeeded too. He simply suggested to the King, that as his Majesty hated Lauderdale, he might now get rid of him for ever. “If I win my wager, the Duke will rather hang himself than pay the money.” “Well then,” said Charles, “if that be the case, I positively will go.” And so merry villain and merry monarch proceeded straight to the Council Chamber.
Pepys calls Killigrew “a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King.” When the immortal diarist was in the Admiralty yacht, off the coast of Holland, in 1660, among the “persons of honour” also there, Killigrew is named. “He told us many merry stories,” says Pepys; “one, how he wrote a letter three or four days ago to the Princess Royal, about a Queen Dowager of Judea and Palestine, that was at the Hague incognita, that made love to the King, which was Mr. Cary (a courtier’s) wife, that had been a nun, who are all married to Jesus.” Two years later, when the clerk met the courtier at the Tower, the former designates the wit of the jester as consisting of “poor and frothy discourse.”
224 In February, 1666–7, Killigrew narrated to Pepys what he had done, since he was a manager, for the improvement of the stage; rendering it “a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3lbs. of tallow. Now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as a bear-garden. Then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes on the ground, and everything else mean; now, all otherwise.” It was in the following year that Killigrew is said to have received his fee for the purchase of his cap and bells. What is more certain is, that in the last year named, he and gentlemen of similar mirthful quality relieved the depression of their spirits at Sir Thomas Teddiman’s funeral, by reading aloud, or listening to, a variety of comic ballads! The respect which Killigrew received at the hands of Rochester, appears to have been exactly that which an over-bold fool might win from a courtier equally proud and dissolute. It was for some fool’s offence given at a banquet at the Dutch Ambassador’s, at which the King himself was present, that Rochester dealt the saucy wit a stinging smack on the face. Tom took it as Tom Derry might have taken a cuff from a Lord; and Rochester lost no favour with the King for having thus assaulted one of his Majesty’s “merry villains.” Killigrew died in March 1682. Evelyn records in his Diary, the execution of Vrats, the murderer, who believed that “God would deal with him like a gentleman;” but he leaves Tom’s departure from the festive scene unhonoured by a word of remark.
Shadwell writes, in his ‘Woman Captain,’ anno 1680:—“It is out of fashion now, for great men to keep fools;” but though princes and nobles began to prefer the society of witty and intellectual gentlemen to the paid-for nonsense of hirelings who were said, by periphrasis, to have been born at Little Witham, the old taste did not entirely expire225 either at court or in private households. Anthony à Wood mentions Dr. John Donne, son of the celebrated Donne, as “an atheistical buffoon, a banterer, and a person of over-free thought; yet valued by Charles the Second.” The court of this monarch assuredly little resembled that of his contemporary sovereign, the King of Siam, touching which, Captain Erwin told Pepys (17th August, 1666), “how the King of Syam seldom goes out without thirty or forty thousand people with him, and not a word spoke, nor a hum or a cough in the whole company to be heard.” In other respects, the difference does not seem to have been remarkable, for the Captain was assured by a native interpreter, that “our (the Siamese) King do not live by meat or drink, but by having great lies told him.” The reign of James II. is barren, as far as it is in connection with the subject I pursue; and it is tolerably certain that throughout the reign of William III., the only official court fool in England was the one who came over in the suite of the Czar Peter. His presence marked the distinction then existing between a civilized and intellectual, and an uncivilized and ignorant court.
I must not omit, however, to relate an incident of this reign in connection with the subject of the license of the fool. If the latter official was not to be found at court, his representatives still lingered in the fairs, and exercised a privilege which the Royal authority, nevertheless, was not slow to oppose. In 1693, the magnificent Smyrna fleet set sail from our shores, under convoy of a squadron of English and Dutch men-of-war, at the head of which were Killigrew, Delaval, and Rooke. The first two abandoned the last admiral; and Rooke, left to encounter the whole maritime force of France in the Bay of Lagos, suffered severe loss, and the rich Smyrna fleet (with some exceptions) was scattered, sunk, burnt, or otherwise destroyed. This catastrophe, the return of the first two226 admirals to Torbay, and the disaster to “the Turkey fleet,” excited mingled indignation and grief. As the fool of the French King Philip made use of the defeat of the French fleet by the navy of Edward, whereon to exercise his wit and rouse the patriotic anger of his master, so now the fools and merry-andrews congregated at Bartholomew fair, in the vicinity of the edifice where Rahere the jester had founded a Priory in honour of the Apostle, made use of the public dishonour and loss, in order to keep alive the popular execration against those wretched and incapable ministers, to whose incapacity and indifference might be traced the fearful loss of life, property, and good name incurred by England on the fatal day in question. On Saturday, September 2, 1693, Narcissus Luttrell writes, in his Diary:—“A merry-andrew in Bartholomew fair is committed for telling the mobb news that our fleet was come into Torbay, being forced in by some French privateers; and other words reflecting on the conduct of great Ministers of State.” Lord Macaulay founds, on a paragraph in L’Hermitage of the same date, a very graphic description of this attempt of the fool at fairs, to wag his tongue as boldly as his predecessors used to do at court. Of all the shows at this period, says the historian, “none proved so attractive as a dramatic performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in execution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortal master-pieces of humour, in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachus to derision. Two strollers personated Killigrew and Delaval. The admirals were represented as flying with their whole fleet before a few French privateers, and taking shelter under the guns of the Tower. The office of Chorus was performed by a Jack Pudding, who expressed very freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flocked to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were great; and the mountebanks, who had at first227 ventured to attack only the unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now emboldened by impunity and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much higher station than their own, began to cast reflections on other departments of the Government. This attempt to revive the license of the Attic stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strong body of constables, who carried off the actors to prison.”
Thus was suppressed an attempt, less to revive than to continue the license of the jester. Government had become less tolerant in this respect than Kings had been to their own fools. A dozen years before, an essay to joke down the administrative foibles of the day, by a pamphleteering jester, “Heraclitus Ridens,” was very summarily and stringently punished. Bartholomew fair, however, struggled hard to maintain its supposed privileges. It is very possible that if persons of high station employed the merry-andrews of 1693, to spout their fun against elevated Ministers of State, that they were also present to hear how their agents acquitted themselves of the office. Nothing was more common than the presence of the nobility at the Saturnalia in Smithfield, except the presence of the “mobile,” with whom the former frequently came in sanguinary contact. In September, 1690, Luttrell writes:—“The first instant was a great disorder at Bartholomew fair, where the mobile got ahead, and quarrelled with some gentlemen, upon which, swords were drawn, where some were wounded, and one or two killed.” Even as late as the reign of George II., the fair was patronized by an august presence. Frederick, Prince of Wales, used to go there by night, attended by a merry suit of courtiers of either sex. The theatres were then closed, and “their Majesties’ servants” played in booths. Princes now went to see the “drolls;” whereas, in former times the clowns waited on the princes.
228 Before this last period, Queen Anne may be said to have had some of the old leaven in her; for she made a Knight of William Read, a mountebank. Her Majesty, also, offered to knight Beau Nash, a buffoon too, according to the fashion of the times; but the Beau had declined the honour at the hands of the great Nassau, and he would not take it from Anne. His reply was in the bad court-jester style: “I will have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom your Majesty has knighted,—I shall be very happy to call him Brother.” At which fool’s sally, “the solemn Anna smiled.”
But if the official fool had gone out, foolish officers still exercised a silly vocation at court. Perhaps the most silly of these was the King’s cock-crower, who was still loud and lusty, at the opening of the Georgian era. This personage crowed at each hour of the night. On the first Ash-Wednesday which occurred after the accession of the Hanoverian family, the Prince of Wales (subsequently George II.) supped at court. Just as ten o’clock struck, his Majesty’s cock-crower, who happened to be behind the Prince, set up such a chanticleering, that the Prince started up in indignation at what he deemed a fool’s insult. The courtiers had some difficulty in assuring him that the crowing and crower formed part of the ordinary court etiquette. The Prince would not tolerate such a nuisance, and another fool’s office was annihilated when he came to the throne.
There were still some wits, however, in whom the popular voice hailed an arch-jester. I may notice one, whose very grave is likely soon to be forgotten. In the old cemetery (belonging to St. Clement’s Danes), in Portugal-street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in a grave, the head-stone of which was during many summers, until recently, regularly embowered and concealed by sun-flowers, lie the remains of the witty jester, Joe Miller. There they have been since229 1738. The year following, John Mottley, the author of ‘Peter the Great,’ published a collection of jests as honest Joe’s, but they were really a collection of witty things which in his time he had either heard or read, and to which Mottley appended Miller’s name. The latter died at the age of fifty-four, the exact age at which departed so recently from among us, he who held the “consulship of wit,” in England,—Douglas Jerrold. That Miller was “facetious,” we learn from the inscription above his grave; that he was witty also, his jest not merely turning on a pun, but on a chain of ideas, the following will testify. He was once sitting in the parlour of the Sun Tavern, in Clare-street, or the Black Jack, in Portsmouth-street, his favourite houses, when a fishwoman passed by, crying “Buy my soles! buy my maids!”—“Ah, you wicked old creature!” said Joe to her, “are you not contented to sell your own soul, but you must sell your maid’s too?”
In the reigns of George II. and his successor, among the men who seem to have united with other offices, something like the vocation of court fool, was the son of a Carlisle apothecary, named Bubb, who succeeded to the estates and adopted the name of his uncle, Doddington; and who is better known by their conjoined names, than by his subsequent title of Lord Melcombe. A disappointment in obtaining a peerage, took him from the ranks of Sir Robert Walpole and George II., to those of Frederick, Prince of Wales. In the household of the Prince, Bubb, who lacked neither good qualities nor ability, descended to play the fool. Horace Walpole tells us that “he submitted to the Prince’s childish horse-play, being once rolled up in a blanket and trundled down stairs.” He changed sides more than once; lent and lost money to the Prince; was laughed at, to his very face, by the King; slept in a bed canopied with peacocks’ feathers; and kept fools, “a tame booby or two,” of his own. These were230 Wyndham, his heir; Sir William Bruton, keeper of George II.’s privy purse; and Dr. Thompson—“a misanthrope, a courtier, and a quack,” as Cumberland names them. Thompson appears to have been the most ignoble of the “monks” who sojourned at “La Trappe,”—so Doddington called his company and mansion at Hammersmith. Thompson was ostensibly his medical adviser; but he practised his profession like a fool, and was treated by his patron as patrons were wont to treat fools of more audacity than wit. On one occasion, the Doctor observed Doddington, at breakfast, about to help himself to muffins. He denounced them as indigestible, and loudly bade the servant, “Take away those muffins!” “No, no!” said Doddington, pointing to the Doctor, “take away that ragamuffin!” In this way were “tame boobies” treated by their patrons, who, themselves, were princes’ fools.
At an earlier period, that, namely, of Louis XIV., we find instances of noble persons assembling in their houses people of a very inferior rank, for the purpose of drawing from them something more than amusement. The Duchess de la Ferté was one of these. This exalted personage was in the habit of inviting all her tradespeople to her house. She entertained herself with their peculiarities at table, and then set them down to play with her at lansquenet, or some similar game. Madame de Sta?l, who tells the story in her Memoirs, adds, “The Duchess would sometimes whisper to me, ‘I am cheating the fellows, but Lord! serve them right! Don’t I know how they rob me daily?’” So that the Duchess made her fools pay their expenses, and her own.
In the reign of George III., although the fool did not exist as a professional man, we have an instance of a professional man enacting the fool, with good intent and profitable purpose. The person alluded to is the learned and laughter-loving Dr. William Battie, who was a well-reputed London physician in portions of the reigns of George II. and his231 successor. He was celebrated for his treatment of the insane; and is thus described in the ‘Battiad,’ a poem of which he was the hero.
“First Battas came, deep read in worldly art,
Whose tongue ne’er knew the secrets of his heart.
In mischief mighty, though but mean of size,
And, like the Tempter, ever in disguise.
See him with aspect grave and gentle tread,
By slow degrees approach the sickly bed;
Then, at his club, behold him alter’d soon,
The solemn doctor turns a low buffoon.”
But Battie could play the fool, even to better purpose by the sick bed, than the buffoon at his club. It is told of him that he had a young male patient whom obstinate quinsy threatened with almost instant suffocation. Battie had tried every remedy but his foolery, and at last he had recourse to that. Setting his wig wrong side before, twisting his face into a compound comic expression, and darting his head suddenly within the curtains, he cut such antics, poured forth such delicious folly, and was altogether so irresistible, that his patient, after gazing at him for a moment in stupefaction, burst into a fit of laughter which broke the imposthume, and rescued the sufferer from impending death.
The above, however, is only a sample of how a professional man could apply folly to a wise end. We have something more resembling the professional fool or dwarf, in the case of a retainer of the Duke of Ancaster who died in 1779. Walpole mentions him in a letter to Lady Ossory. “I hear the Duke of Ancaster has left a legacy to a very small man that was always his companion, and whom, when he was drunk, he used to fling at the heads of the company, as others fling a bottle.”
Although, professionally, the vocation had gone, it is still worth observing, that other patent places which had originated in feudal times, had not gone with that of the jester. “If my memory does not deceive me,” says Burke in his232 speech on the royal household, in 1780, “a person of no slight consideration held the office of patent hereditary cook to an Earl of Warwick.” The orator rightly conjectured that the Earl’s soups “were not the better for the dignity of his kitchen;” and he adds his belief that “an Earl of Gloucester officiated as steward of the household to the Archbishops of Canterbury.” The orator found a curious relic of those old times when these practices were common, in the household of George III. He did not meet with any witty fellow there patented as fool, but he discovered something akin to it; namely, that the turnspit in the King’s kitchen was a Member of Parliament!
The annals of succeeding reigns bear the names of several courtiers whose office it was to amuse and gratify their Royal patron. How George III. himself could play the court jester with effect, I will tell in a chapter devoted to sovereigns who occasionally were their own fools. How Colonel Haager and others of more recent periods have played first cousins to the more ancient jokers, it is unnecessary here to enumerate. I will rather conclude my long, and I fear imperfect, chapter, by showing also the conclusion of the actual line of hired fools in noble English households. It is not so very long since the last of this class died and left no successor. Mr. Douce, in his pleasant Essay on clowns and fools, gives the names of the last of them who practised professionally in this country. The household fool survived the court fool; and after Muckle John closed the line of the latter, there was still bread to be earned by the profession of the former. According to Mr. Douce, the favourite Lord Chancellor of George I., the eminent Lord Talbot, kept a fool, probably at his country-house, if at all. Mr. Douce tells us that his name was Rees Pengelding, and that he was a shrewd fellow who rented a farm under his patron. It happened that Rees was a little backward with his rent, and he was harshly menaced by the steward, who wound up his233 objurgations by exclaiming, “I’ll fit you! I’ll fit you!” Now it happened that the steward, in his earlier days, had been a tailor, the remembrance of which caused Rees to call out in return, “Fit me! will you? Well, it will be the first time in your life you ever did such a thing!”
I feel bound to add, that Lord Campbell, in his life of Chancellor Talbot, makes no mention of this fool, Pengelding. May not the latter have been simply favoured, because of the sharpness of his wit? It is difficult to conceive that the profound scholar in Roman civil law; the friend and equal of Philip Yorke, the enlightened statesman; the only Chancellor who had ever sat on the Woolsack without making an accuser, a detractor, or an enemy; a man, in short, in whom was “joined the utmost freedom of dispute with the highest good breeding, and the vivacity of mirth with primitive simplicity of manners,”—it would be difficult to conceive that such a man, the friend of Butler the divine, and patron of Thompson, could take delight in a mere household fool, were we not reminded that even more intellectual Chancellors than he, in earlier, but not in less refined days, could find relaxation in listening to the professional joker. In connection with my subject, I shall be excused if I notice that when Talbot was appointed Chancellor, a grand “Revel” was given in his honour by the Inner Temple (1734), and that this was the last festivity of the sort at which royalty attended at an Inn of Court. There has been a royal entertainment in our own days, at Lincoln’s Inn, but Talbot’s “Revel” was the last of its class.
Mr. Douce also names a certain Robin Rush as being fool, in the last century, to Lord Bussy Mansel; and Mr. Douce adds, that in 1807 there were people living who remembered him. Sir Edward Stradling, of St. Dorret’s Castle, Glamorganshire, was another of the lords of land who kept a fool in his house at the same period;—a fool of sharp and ready wit. We have still more satisfactory proof of the234 existence of a household fool in the last century, in the person of Dicky Pearce, “fool to Lord Suffolk,” for which fool, being dead, Dean Swift did what Ronsard failed to do for a more witty jester at the court of France,—namely, write his epitaph. Dicky Pearce lies in Berkeley churchyard, Gloucestershire, and these are the lines the Dean has placed above his grave:—
“Here lies the Earl of Suffolk’s fool,
Men called him Dicky Pearce;
His folly served to make folks laugh.
When wit and mirth were scarce.
“Poor Dick, alas! is dead and gone;
What signifies to cry?
Dickeys enough are still behind
To laugh at by and by.”
The last recorded instance of a domestic fool being kept in an English family, is that of the jester retained at Hilton Castle, Durham, by John Hilton, the descendant of the old barons of that name, who died 1746. Surtees, in his ‘History of Durham,’ notices this fact, and adds one touch of the wit of this anonymous fool, who seems to have borrowed a traditionary joke of his great predecessor, Archie Armstrong. His master, we are told, on one occasion of his returning to his northern seat from London, left his carriage at the ferry near the castle, and proceeded towards that building over a foot-bridge, at the end of which the fool was awaiting his patron. The latter was attired in a gaily gold-embroidered dress, according to the fashion of the times, and made in the south, by a fashionable tailor. The fool gazed on his master with mingled astonishment and vexation, and, in place of greeting his return with a welcome, boldly looked him in the face, and inquired, “Who’s the fool now?” This is the last recorded joke of the last recorded jester; and the long line could not have gone out with a milder, though it might have done so with a less impertinent, jest. Hilton’s fool235 may, I think, fairly rank as the ultimus stultorum (he was remembered by aged Cumberland people, as late as 1812), though in point of fact the honour may be disputed by the nameless individual who figured, though it was only for the nonce, at the Eglinton tournament, in 1839, where knights tilted in spectacles, and the spectators looked on at the solemn fun, under rain and from beneath umbrellas.
Thus the fool went out in a rather gorgeous fashion. There was a grand tableau as the curtain descended which had been up in England for so many centuries. I am bound to add that the Eglinton fool may find a rival as to the honour of closing the merry line, in Shemus Anderson, the fool of Murthley Castle, Perthshire, who died in the year 1833. He had grown tolerably rich in his vocation; had suffered losses, like Dogberry; but left behind him some comfortable hundreds of pounds to his heirs. Shemus, however, never wore the cap and bells, or nursed the bauble, or whirled the bladder and peas, or shook the clappers, or carried motley. He was a fool in undress; but in respect of fulness of character and costume, of circus jokes, and all the accessories of the part, excepting its indecencies, the Eglinton fool was the last of the race. He flickered up for a moment, as did the padded knights and the Queen of Beauty, to afford some idea to the times present of the aspect of the times past, as far as the latter could be exhibited in one of its gorgeous follies. The blaze of splendour was great, and the fool’s fire of conundrums burnt bravely, but the rain extinguished it all; the umbrellas gave an air of ridicule to the scene; the thing was felt to be, after all, only a splendid sham; and accordingly the fool and the pseudo-feudal lords and ladies disappeared for ever. All that remains of the old reality are rags and shreds and fragments in the mansions of our nobles and gentles. At Glamis Castle a motley jacket still hangs, or did recently hang, on a peg in the wall, and at Stourhead is still preserved236 a jester’s baldric, which may be devoutly kissed as a relic by the worshippers of Folly.
Some resemblance may be certainly traced between the conditions of the English court fool and the ancient parasite, and between the English household fool and the old Roman slave. With all, there was laughter excited by liberty of speech, which must have occasionally fallen like refreshing dew upon the ear of despot or noble, unaccustomed to listen to aught from others save his own exceeding glorification. The despot still retained the power of punishing the fool; and in this particular, the household jester, who was often a menial servant, the drudge of the family, very closely resembled the Roman slave, with whom his master would graciously exchange jokes one day, and whom he would scourge the next. The two, capricious master and servile yet audacious wit, agreed very well with despotism, and coarse times and manners; but with liberty and refinement, both expired, or underwent such modifications, or took such new forms, as to be no longer recognizable. The fool was for a season, but eccentricity of character, which was his great merit, naturally survived him.
It has been objected to many of the ancient traits of court jesters, that they were inventions of writers of fiction, and that they only illustrated a rude state of society. Thus, the incident of Scogan chalking the path to be taken by his wife to church, has been pronounced too farcical to be true. But the degree of humour which moved King Edward’s jester to this act, has influenced many persons of later and more refined times than those in which Scogan uttered very questionable jokes for the amusement of his royal and princely patrons. We all know how Lord Hardwicke, when he was an attorney’s clerk, and was ordered by his mistress to purchase a cauliflower, executed this commission, but sent the vegetable home in a sedan-chair at the lady’s cost. An instance more striking and closer to the point, is given us in237 the person of the wealthy Margaret Wharton, whom Foote introduced in one of his pieces, as “Peg Pennyworth,” a name which the lady had acquired when a visitor at Scarborough, by sending every night for a pennyworth of strawberries and cream, for her supper. In this dramatic piece, Mrs. Wharton afforded mirth to princes, courtiers, and citizens, with whom the farce was a great favourite. Ord, in his ‘History of Cleveland,’ narrates several anecdotes of her humour, of which I select one that may contrast with that of Scogan. “In one of her visits to Scarborough,” we are told, “she, with her usual economy, had a family pie for dinner, which she directed the footman to convey to the bakehouse. This he declined, as not belonging to his place, or rather derogatory to his consequence. She then moved the question to the coachman, but found a still stronger objection. To save the pride of both, she resolved to take it herself, and ordered one to harness, and bring out the carriage, and the other to mount behind, and they took the pie, with all honour and ceremony, to the bakehouse. When baked, coachee was ordered to put to a second time, and the footman to mount behind; and the pie returned in the same dignified state. ‘Now,’ says she to the coachman, ‘you have kept your place, which is to drive; and yours,’ to the footman, ‘which is to wait; and I mine, which was to have my pie for dinner.’” It was just this sort of eccentricity of character which gave value to the old counterfeit fools, as we shall see further in subsequent pages.
Meanwhile I take leave of the English portion of my subject with the comment of Stillingfleet, who says:—
238
“Leave to low buffoons by custom bred,
And form’d by nature to be kicked and fed,
The vulgar and unenvied task to hit
All persons, right or wrong, with random wit.
Our wise forefathers, born in sober days,
Resigned to fools the tart and witty phrase;
The motley coat gave warning for the jest,
Excused the wound and sanctified the pest.
But we from high to low all strive to sneer,
Will all be wits, and not the livery wear.”
If my readers have but patience to go forward, they will soon find themselves in company with the Fous du Roi, at the Court of France, where, for a long period, it was not possible for a fool to appear without his livery; but to which now the following lines are not less applicable than they are to other localities:—
“Why, pray, of late do Europe’s kings
No jester in their courts admit?
They’ve grown such stately solemn things;
To bear a joke, they think not fit.
But though each court a jester lacks,
To laugh at monarchs to their face,
All mankind do behind their backs,
Supply the honest jester’s place.”