Chapter 13

“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 wrongin 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, willshow:—

“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;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.

“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 ‘Phœnix 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.

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 receiveOf 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, “multâ dives tellure.”

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, andthatan 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!

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.

“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 ‘Verändertes 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 dwarfissued 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 theCatholic 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.”

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 aretaken:—

“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;Securëd in as high extremeAs if the world had none but them.To him, the fairest nymphs do showLike moving mountains topp’d with snow;And every man a PolyphemeDoes 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 descriptionof 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.

“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 commandWhat 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 seenBy 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 authorityMay see the seal and patent here lie by.The dish with lugs [ears] which I do carry hereShows 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, bothWill 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 bePerform’d by them, as they have promised me.”

This rhapsodic testament has “Thomas SkeltonXhis 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 countrygenerally, 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 theRevels 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;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 characterof 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 thelicense 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 hatand 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, thathewould 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 Hagueincognita, 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.”

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 expireeither 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 twoadmirals 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 firstventured 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.

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 since1738. 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 wereWyndham, 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 Staël, 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 hissuccessor. He was celebrated for his treatment of the insane; and is thus described in the ‘Battiad,’ a poem of which he was the hero.

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