displeasure of his former acquaintance by reason of his crafty dealing
and unhappy tricks, he bethought himself in what manner he might
get money with a little labour. So, travelling up into Normandy, he
got him a priest’s gown, and clothed himself like a scholar, and
afterwards went into a certain churchyard, where he found the skull
of a dead man’s head, the which he took up and made very clean, and
after bore it to a goldsmith, and hired him to set it in a stud of
silver. Which being done, he departed to a village there by, and came
to the parson of the church, and saluted him, and then told him, that
he had a relic, and desired him to do so much for him as to show it
unto the parish, that they might offer to it; and withal promised the
parson that he should have one-half of the offerings. The parson,
moved with covetousness, granted his request, and so, upon the Sunday
following, told his parishioners thereof, saying, that there was a
certain religious scholar come to the town, that had brought with him
a precious relic; and that he that would offer thereunto should have a
general pardon for all his forepassed sins; and that the scholar was
there present himself, to show it to them. With that, Scogan went up
into the pulpit, and showed them the relic that he had; and said to
them that the head spoke to him, and bade him that he should build a
church over it; and that the money that the church should be builded
withal should be well-gotten. But when the people came to offer unto
it, Scogan said unto them, ‘All you women who have been faithless to
your husbands, I pray you sit still, and come not to offer, for the
head bade me that I should not receive your offerings.’ Whereupon, the
poor men and their wives came thick and threefold to this offering;
and there was not a woman but she offered liberally, because that he
had said so; and he gave them the blessing with the head. And there
were some that had no money, that offered their rings; and some of them
that offered twice or thrice, because they would be seen. Thus received
he the offerings both of the good and the bad, and by this practice got
a great sum of money.”
That he subsequently came again to England, may be gathered from
stories of a later date. One legend tells us of the King condemning
him to be hanged, but allowing him the privilege of choosing a tree
from which he was to be suspended. Scogan avoided the penalty by being
unable to fix on a tree exactly to his mind. The story, however, is
related of earlier jesters than Scogan, and seems to have originally
belonged to the buffoon of Alboin, King of the Lombards.
There is nothing more left worth telling, though there is much more
that might be told, of Scogan, the gentleman-buffoon of Edward IV.
His last expressed desire was characteristic of his vocation and
his humour:--“Bury me,” said he, “under one of the water-spouts of
Westminster Abbey; for I have ever loved good drink, all the days of
my life.” It was a fool’s wish; but for the grave of him who made it,
no less an author than Cardinal Pole composed in his younger days, an
epitaph which may be worthy the jester, but is certainly less worth
citing than that composed by Swift for one of the last of our household
fools, and which will be found in a subsequent page of this volume.
The stupid book, edited by Borde of Pevensey, and known to many an
antiquary whose patience is not stout enough to hold out to the end of
the dirt, dullness, and dreariness which mark what is called ‘Scoggin’s
Jests,’ reminds me of a saying of Balzac, with reference to two of
the wittiest Frenchmen of the great revolutionary era,--Chamfort and
Rivarol. “Those good fellows,” remarks Balzac, “put a whole volume
into one of their witty sayings; but now-a-days, it is difficult to
find one witty saying in a whole volume.” The last part of this remark
is most applicable to collections of jests to which the name of some
court fool was appended in order to give them currency and an air of
authenticity. Even if Scogan’s so-called “Jests” were authentic, they
would not be worth citing. They offend in every possible way, and it is
impossible to read them and believe them to be genuine, without feeling
surprise at an Oxford student becoming such a buffoon, and at such a
buffoon as their hero being so liberally recompensed as he was, by the
royal Edward.
Let us pass, then, from Scogan and from a King who, with all his
patronage of the fool, could least of all the Kings of England bear a
political joke, to one who had scant time to listen to jesting. But
I will here remind the reader that out of Edward IV.’s barbarity, in
executing a merry tradesman in Cheapside, merely for saying that he
would make his son heir to the _Crown_,--meaning his house of business,
distinguished by that sign,--Fuller, in his ‘Holy State,’ draws an
argument against profane jesting which might have profited all, court
fools as well as others, could they only have heard the arguer. Fuller
upheld harmless mirth as a cordial for restoring wasted spirits; and
he only pronounced jesting unlawful when it trespassed in quantity,
quality, or season. When speaking against jesting with God’s word,
he asks, “Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the
font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice?” With earthly
monarchs, fools may have their privilege; but then Fuller remembers
the poor mercer’s joke which so angered Edward IV., and he exclaims,
“More dangerous still is it to wit-wanton it with the majesty of God.”
Finally, he gives these rules against profane jesting,--rules which,
when he wrote, while fools were yet in remembrance, if not in favour at
court, he knew had been daily transgressed. “If,” he says, “without
thy will, and by chance-medley, thou hittest Scripture in ordinary
discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray God to forgive thee.
Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to
mend. Oh! ’tis cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither
scorn any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. He
that relates another man’s wicked jest, adopts it for his own. He
that will lose his friend for a jest, deserveth to die a beggar by
the bargain. We read that all those who were born in England the year
after the beginning of the great mortality, in 1349, wanted their four
cheek-teeth. Such let thy jests be,” adds the humorous commentator,
“that they may not grind the credit of thy friend; and make not jests
so long till thou becomest one.” Such was the comment of a moralist on
jesting, suggested by the consequence of non-professional joking on
royalty.
From the young King Edward V., no jester had opportunity to draw a
smile, except at the banquet at Hornsey Park, the only festival which
young Edward held between his accession and his death. His uncle
Richard lacked leisure to be “i’ the vein” for these follies; but his
wife, Lady Anne, and the young Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen of
Henry VII.) kept, for a brief season, such joyous court at Greenwich,
such minstreling, and dancing, and witnessing or playing jests, that
the oppressed and impoverished people looked on grimly, and murmured
rather above their breath. Henry VII., again, was too mean or too wise
to lavish money on any mere court gauds, though he was not ungenerous
in other respects. He was, at all events, the first English King
who lived within his income; and he was better pleased by lending
money to fit out the first European expedition that ever reached the
American continent than he could have been by any jest, good, bad, or
indifferent, that he might have to pay for. Nevertheless, in the days
of the Tudors, court fools abounded, and indeed, till the fall of
the monarchy under the Stuarts, the nest of ninnies was filled with a
chirruping brood.
Among these was Patch, who is said to have been jester to Henry VIII.
By some, this name is supposed to stand for “fool” generally. Others,
with better reason, believe that Patch was the cant-name of Williams
and Saxton, fools of Cardinal Wolsey. However this may be, we may
be sure that a jester alone could have dared to make such a King as
Henry VIII. look ridiculous, as a fool called by this name, “Patch,”
is said to have done when he besought the King to grant him a warrant
authorizing him to exact an egg from every husband who had serious
reasons to be dissatisfied with the conduct of his wife. The King
thought it a fair joke, and the warrant being drawn up in sportiveness,
he signed the document in full gaiety of spirit. The ink was scarcely
dry when the jester, bowing with mock gravity, demanded the first egg
from the King. “Your Grace,” said he, “belongs to the class of husbands
on whom I am entitled to make levy.” The joke was not very well
relished, and the warrant was cancelled.
John Heywood, himself a “King’s Jester” and a poet, has made Cardinal
Wolsey’s fool the subject of an epigram, which serves, with its title,
to show both the real and the nick-name of the merry retainer. The
former, according to Heywood, was Sexton and not _Saxton_. The epigram
is entitled, ‘A Saying of Patch, my Lord Cardinal’s Fool,’ and runs
thus:--
Master Sexton, a person of unknowen wit,
As he at my Lord Cardinal’s board did sit,
Greedily caught at a goblet of wine.
“Drink none!” said my lord, “for that sore leg of thine.”
“I warrant, your Grace,” quoth Sexton, “I provide
For my leg; for I drinke on the tother side.”
That Patch was the name of a fool retained by the Cardinal, we have
further evidence in the touching biography of Wolsey by Cavendish,
his “gentleman-usher.” And that Patch had merit of a superior quality,
may also be seen in the same little work. When the fallen statesman
was proceeding up the hill near Putney, on his way to Esher, having
been just before compelled to retire from York House, he was overtaken
by Norris, a gentleman of the Royal bed-chamber, who brought with him
a gold ring and a letter from the King, with assurances of his own
that the Cardinal would soon recover both favour and power. Wolsey,
in sudden ecstasy, slipped from his mule; went on his knees in the
mud; poured forth very unheroic phrases, ringing of gratitude, but the
key-note of which was struck by self-gratulation. The Cardinal was for
giving anything he possessed to the bearer of such good news; but then
he had so little left to bestow! At length, he rewarded Norris with a
gold chain, to the end of which was attached a relic of the True Cross,
“which,” said Wolsey, “when I was in prosperity, I would not have
parted with for a thousand pounds.” Norris having been thus rewarded,
the downfallen but hopeful dignitary looked around for a fitting
messenger to convey the expressions of his thankfulness to Henry,--“To
that good master whom I have loved more than myself, and whom I have
well served. And to say that I have no one now to convey to him the
expression of my gratitude!” At this moment, his eye fell upon poor
faithful Motley, and the Cardinal immediately exclaimed, “But Patch, my
fool, who is with me, will be my interpreter to his Majesty, with you,
my good Norris. I give him to his Majesty: Patch is _worth a thousand
pounds_.”
The jester, who was thus set at as high a value as a relic of the True
Cross, had no inclination at all to become a _court_ fool. Cavendish
describes the unwillingness of Patch in an almost pathetic manner. The
jester refused to leave his old master, but six stout men bound him to
a horse, not without great difficulty, according to Mr. Tytler; but
having accomplished the task, the steed was set off at full gallop, and
Patch was thus promoted to a court jestership, in spite of himself.
Patch seems to have been bold enough, when he got used to his new
service, if the anecdote I have told of him and the King be well
founded; but the best known of the jesters who fooled courtiers to
the very top of their bent, at the court of Henry VIII., and did not
spare the King himself, was Will Sommers, whose alleged portrait
at Hampton Court is familiar to all who have resorted to that most
pleasant locality. Armin, in his ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ has given another
portraiture of Will,--one that may be relied on, for Armin gave it when
many persons were alive, well able to judge of its correctness; and
this portrait I proceed to place before my readers.
“Will Sommers, born in Shropshire, as some say,
Was brought to Greenwich, on a holiday,--
Presented to the King;--which fool disdain’d
To shake him by the hand, or was ashamed.
Howe’er it was; as ancient people say,
With much ado was won to it that day.
Lean he was, hollow-eyed, as all report,
And stoop he did too; yet in all the court,
Few men were more beloved than was this fool,
Whose merry prate kept with the King much rule.
When he was sad the King with him would rhyme;
Thus Will exilëd sadness many a time.
I could describe him, as I did the rest,
But in my mind, I do not think it best;
My reason this, howe’er I do descry him,
So many knew him, that I may belie him;
Therefore, to please all people, one by one,
I hold it best to let that pains alone;
Only this much:--He was a poor man’s friend,
And help’d the widow often in her end.
The King would ever grant what he did crave,
For well he knew Will no exacting knave;
But wish’d the King to do good deeds great store,
Which caused the court to love him more and more.”
Will seems to have been contemporary with Saxton, or Sexton, a fool
of some notoriety at the Tudor’s Court, from the circumstance of his
being the first jester who wore a wig. There is an entry from the
accounts of the Treasurer of the Chambers, quoted in the Archæologia,
to the following effect:--“Paid for Saxton, the King’s fool, for a wig,
20_s._” Is it not possible that this jester may have assumed this mode
in order to ridicule the new fashion of the ladies, who had now, for
the first time in England, adopted the wig--which English lords had
begun to wear as early as the reign of Stephen? However this may be,
the above is all we know of Saxton in his capacity of fool to Henry.
How Sommers looked at Court, the following entry will sufficiently
show:--“For making a doublet of worsted, lined with canvass and cotton,
for William Som’ers, our fool. Item, for making of a coat and a cap of
green cloth, fringed with red crape and lined with frieze, for our said
fool. Item, for making of a doublet of fustian, lined with cotton and
canvass, for our said fool. For making of a coat of green cloth, with
hood to the same, fringed with white and lined with frieze and buckram,
for our fool aforesaid.”
In this suit and office, Will’s reputation so stirred Shropshire, that
his old uncle trudged up to town to visit him at court. The uncle
was no ill man to look at, for when the “kinde old man,” as Armin
calls him, entered Greenwich, and on asking the way to the palace,
was laughed at by saucy pages, who directed him across the water to
Blackwall, others pitied his simplicity, and had respect for a man
“with a buttoned cap, a lockram falling band (coarse but clean), a
russet coat, a white belt of a horse-hide (right horse-collar, white
leather), a close round breech of russet sheep’s-wool, with a long
stock of white kersey, a high shoe with yellow buckles, all white
with dust,--for that day, the good old man had come three-and-twenty
miles on foot.” Lusty old yeoman! How much more respectable than
the flaunting “gard and gentlewomen in their windows,” who “had
much sport” to see him pass on his way. But the old man thought his
nephew as good as any of them, and, with dignified self-possession,
inquires,--“if there be not a gentleman in the court dwelling, called
by the name of Master Will Sommers.” This was giving Will a high
position, but it was recognized; and the old uncle was led to Will,
who was taking an afternoon sleep in the park, with his head on a
cushion supplied by a woman whose son, addicted to the gentle pursuit
of piracy, Will saved from the hangman and the gallows at Blackwall.
After a little fooling and much hearty greeting, Will took his uncle
by the hand: “Come,” says he, “thou shalt see Harry, Cockle,--the only
Harry in England;” so he led him to the chamber of presence, and ever
and anon cries out, “Awere! room for me and my uncle! and, knaves, bid
him welcome!” This was done, perhaps, with a little mock gravity, but
Armin tells us that “the old man thought himself no earthly man, they
honoured him so much.”
Will, however, paused awhile, for he saw his uncle’s country suit,
pronounced it unfit for the King’s presence, and, telling the old
man that he must first don a full court-dress, Will takes him to his
chamber, and attires him in his best fool’s suit, cap and all. The
simple old man simply wore the costume, and when the two stood before
the King, Harry laughed at the ridiculous spectacle. The old man, and
Will too, seem to have had some purpose in the whole affair, for when
the King encouraged them to talk, the uncle bade Will tell him all
about Tirrell’s Frith,--a common, of the use of which the Shropshire
poor had been deprived by Master Tirrell, who had enclosed it. The King
was so interested that he gave orders that the common should be thrown
open again; and thereby the sturdy old uncle had not his long walk for
nothing, seeing also that, when he returned to his native county, “he,
while he lived, for that deed was allowed bayly of the common, which
place was worth twenty pound a year.”
Of Will’s power to please the King in his moody moments, we have
specimens in certain questions put, and indeed answered, by the fool.
He put them, as the fool of the play does, “with an anticke look, to
please the beholders;” for example, “What is it, that the lesser it is,
the more it is to be feared?”--which proves to be, “a little bridge
over a deep river,” at which the King “_smiled_.” At more foolish
riddles, the King “_laught_;” and at others, which cannot possibly
be set down here, we are told that “the King laught _heartily, and
was exceeding merry_.” For being made so merry, Harry promised Will
any favour he might ask; Will undertook to apply when he had grace to
petition. “One day I _shall_,” said he, “for every man sees his latter
end, but knows not his beginning.” And with this jester’s quip, Will
took his leave and went away, “and laid him down among the spaniels to
sleep.”
Will was but scantily in favour with Cardinal Wolsey, whom he once
mulcted of ten pounds. He had entered the King’s private apartment
when the Sovereign and the Cardinal were together; and Will apologized
for the intrusion by saying, that some of his Eminence’s creditors
were at the door, and wanted to be paid their due. Wolsey declared he
would forfeit his head if he owed a man a penny; but he gave Will ten
pounds, on his promise to pay it where it was due. When Will returned,
he exclaimed, “To whom dost thou owe thy soul, Cardinal?” “To God,” was
the reply. “And thy wealth?” “To the poor.” At which, Will declared the
Cardinal’s head forfeit to the King. “For,” said he, “to the poor at
the gate I paid the debt, which he yields is due.” The King laughed,
and the Cardinal feigned to be merry, “but it grieved him to give away
ten pounds so; yet worse tricks than this Will Sommers served him
after, for indeed he (the Cardinal) could never abide him.”
Will was not above human infirmities; he was jealous, like greater
men at court, and especially when a rival fool vied with him to gain
smiles and moidores from the King. We have an instance in the case
when “a jester, a big man, of a great voice, long black locks, and a
very big round beard,” was juggling and jesting before the King. Armin
tells us, that “lightly one fool cannot endure the sight of another;”
and Will, angry at his huge rival, sought to recover his supremacy by
dashing a bowl of bread and milk over the head, eyes, and beard of his
titanic rival. “This lusty jester, forgetting himself in fury, draws
his dagger, and begins to protest. ‘Nay,’ says the King, ‘are ye so
hot?’ claps him fast; and though he draws his dagger here, makes him
put it up in another place. The poor abused jester was jested out of
countenance, and lay in durance a great while, till Will Sommers was
fain (after he broke his head, to give him a plaister,) to get him out
again. But never after came my juggler in the Court more so near the
King, being such a man to draw in the presence of the King;” who (after
all) could not have been mortally stricken, seeing that jesters carried
only daggers of lath; but probably the act itself was considered a bad
example and a serious offence.
Of the generous feeling of Will, there is a well-known instance recited
in Grainger; according to which it would appear, that in early life
Will had been a servant in the family of a Northamptonshire gentleman
named Richard Farmor or Fermor. This gentleman was of a compassionate
spirit, and hearing of a destitute priest incarcerated in the gaol
at Buckingham for denying the King’s supremacy, the kind gentleman
sent him a couple of shirts and eightpence. This small but acceptable
and praiseworthy charity entirely ruined the donor. It laid him open
to a charge of _præmunire_; and for giving a change of linen and
the price of a meal to a captive Papist, the King confiscated this
Fermor’s estates, and reduced him to beggary and starvation. Will found
opportunity to serve his old master, but not till death was pressing
hard upon the King, and making his heart also something less tough and
obdurate than it was wont to be. The fool improved his opportunity, and
leaving to others to bid the sick monarch repent of his sins, hinted
that it would be a better joke if he were to make reparation for them.
The fool’s divinity was not so contemptible, for it worked on the dying
King, “who,” says Mr. Thoms, in a note to Mr. Collier’s reprint of the
‘Nest of Ninnies,’ “caused the remains of Fermor’s estate, which had
been dismembered, to be restored to him.”
The tracts and plays of succeeding years found purchasers or spectators
because they reproduced Sommers in his jests, gait, dress, and manners.
Rowland has him in his ‘Good and Bad News;’ Rowley, in his chronicle
play, ‘When you see me you know me;’ and Nash, in his ‘Summers’ Last
Will and Testament.’ From these sources, no indifferent idea may
be gained of the once famous Will. The incidents of Rowland’s poem
are to be found in Rowley’s play. The latter, printed in 1605, is a
chronicle play, including the years 1537–1546, the last year being
the one before Henry’s death. It abounds with anachronisms, but also
with illustrations of the manner in which Sommers lived at court, how
he joked with the King, capped rhymes with their Majesties, and was
sometimes anything but decent in his jokes. At his first appearance,
Will enters the presence “at Whitehall,” booted and spurred, upon which
the following dialogue takes place:--
“_K._ Why, where hast thou been?
_W._ Marry, I rise early, and ride post to London, to know what news
was here at Court.
_K._ Was that your nearest way, William?
_W._ Oh, ay, the very foot-path, but yet I rid the horse-way to hear
it. I warrant there is ne’er a Cundid-head keeper in London, but knows
what is done in all the courts in Christendom.
_Wols._ And what is the best news there, William?
_W._ Good news for you, my Lord Cardinal, for one of the old women
water-bearers told me for certain, that last Friday, all the bells
in Rome rang backward; there was a thousand dirges sung; six hundred
Ave-Marias said; every man washed his face in holy water; the people
crossing and blessing themselves to send them a new Pope, for the old
is gone to purgatory.... The news,” adds Will, “after leaving Rome last
Friday, was at Billingsgate by Saturday morning; ’twas a full moon, and
came up in a spring-tide.”
Queen Jane is represented as looking “bigger” upon the jester; “But I
care not,” says Will to the King, “an she bring thee a young prince,
Will Sommers mayhaps be his fool when you two are both dead and
rotten.” “Do you hear, wenches?” he subsequently says to the maids of
honour, likely to be anxious to announce the issue of the event alluded
to. “She that brings the first tidings, however it fall out, let her be
sure to say that the child’s like the father, or else she shall have no
reward.”