ENGLISH COURT FOOLS, FROM THE REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDE. (continued 2)

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 of 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, 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’s 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 might 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 as 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, the 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 her 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 became 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.” 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 Flögel, he stood by her death-bed, and solaced her with music; “Er war auch ein berühmter Musikus, und musste der Königin 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 far 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.

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.

Here is a jester’s definition of

WIT, WILL, AND WISDOM.

And the following is not a bad specimen of the ordinary fool’s mock sermon put into rhyme, with the title of

CERTAIN FOLLIES.

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.

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.

Heywood has a few epigrams touching fools. The following 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.

And again, on a fool whose foolish wit was called wisdom, Heywood said and sang:—

In the same strain is this quatrain:—

OF EARS AND WITS.

The following belongs to the satirist:—

OF THE WIFE’S AND HER HUSBAND’S WAIST.

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.

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 Païs 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 that 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 ‘Athenæ 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, tight 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 indeed 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 his 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 engaged 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 the “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 has 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 true 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 dissuades 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 of 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 ‘Reliquiæ Hearnianæ:’—“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, 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 and 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 be 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-named 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, slowly 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 be 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 story 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-doors 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; which 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 whose 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

We do not suppose, however, that the Queen’s jester fell sick 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 end 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!”

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. 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

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 passed 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. 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 the 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). The 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 “begged 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 his 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 of 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.

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:—