honour, but to the King’s sister. Patch, in this piece, is not the
King’s fool, but Wolsey’s. “All the fools follow you, my lord,” he
says to the Cardinal, when the latter observes the two fools near him:
“I come to bid my cousin Patch welcome to court; and when I come to
York House, he’ll do as much for me.” To which Patch, who seems here a
natural rather then an artificial fool, replies, “Yes, cousin; hey, da,
darry, diddel, day, day.” Will’s attempts to make the King merry are
sometimes roughly recompensed. “He gave me such a box on the ear,” says
the fool, “that strake me clean through three chambers, down four pair
of stairs. I fell over five barrels in the bottom of the cellar, and
if I had not well liquored myself there, I had never lived after it.”
Patch, too, declares that the King had almost killed him “_with his
countenance_.” This sort of fool’s flattery has been very acceptable,
it may be observed, to all despotic princes, from Augustus down to
the Czar Nicholas. The most amusing of Roman historians tells us that
Augustus was always well pleased with those persons who, in addressing
him, looked upon the ground, as though there were a divine splendour
in his eyes, too dazzling for them to gaze upon. “Gaudiebatque,” says
Suetonius, “si quis sibi acrius contuenti, quasi ad fulgorem solis,
vultum submitteret.” His eyes nevertheless grew dim as he grew old,
when the lustre of the left one, in particular, went out in a most
ungodlike fashion.
The Czar Nicholas had a similar weakness, and he used his eyes
to frighten or fascinate people. Playing them mildly, he subdued
Lieutenant Royer into ecstatic admiration; and, according to Mr.
Turnerelli, Nicholas once, with one of his terrible glances, terrified
a Swedish Admiral into the Russian service. On another occasion,
happening to encounter a poor fellow who had strolled into a private
part of the Imperial park, the Czar gazed at him with such lightning
in his glance, that the intruder was stricken with brain fever;--an
amount of flattery which even Patch never piled up as tribute to the
withering power of the terrible looks of Henry VIII. Patch indeed had
cause to be afraid of Henry, for his rude essay to make the melancholy
Monarch merry, is rewarded by a kicking; for which, however, the
King makes compensation. Patch gets an angel, to buy him points; but
Will, who contrived that his cousin fool should incur the punishment,
obtains a new cap and suit for his pains; for, sayeth he, “so long as
the King lives, the Cardinal’s fool must give way to the King’s fool.”
But in the latter there is some sound sense, as, for instance, when he
exclaims: “Dost hear, old Harry, I am sure the true faith is able to
defend itself, without thee!” For some such remark, Wolsey styles him
“a shrewd fool.” Will is ready to do anything but flatter, which is
against his vocation; and get drunk, which is against his health; but
he no sooner declines to follow Patch to the cellar, when he foregoes
his resolution, and foolishly drinks away his wit, but sleeps it back
again.
Its awakening is first tried on the new Queen Catherine; and it
is in the accomplished jester’s vein. “Look to thy husband, Kate,
lest he cozen thee; provide civil oranges enough, or he’ll have a
lemon, shortly.” This play upon the word _leman_, or “mistress,” was
subsequently employed by Heywood, the “King’s Jester,” to point a jest
made in the hearing of Queen Mary. Will, however, is much more addicted
to uttering bitter sentences against Wolsey, than jokes on the King,
Queen, or little Prince Edward. He is especially severe on the “Smoake
pence,” a most unpopular tax levied by the priest, and turned, as Will
implies, to the Cardinal’s especial profit. The jester proposes to
the King, that Wolsey shall be permitted to take the chimneys, since
there were bricks enough in the land, or materials for them, to build
others. But he protests against the coin of the realm being carried
away, seeing, as he says, that there is no mint whence new money can be
issued. Indeed nothing can exceed the boldness of Will’s jokes against
the Cardinal, except the nastiness of those levelled at the ladies.
Both are doubtless traditional, and we may believe that they were
uttered with impunity, from the stereotyped speech of the King, “Well,
William, your tongue is privileged.”
Sommers was also brought upon the stage by Nash, in his ‘Summers’ Last
Will and Testament.’ This piece was written in 1593, and printed some
years later. There were then persons living who may have remembered
Will, as having seen him in their youth; and what is said of him
personally in this piece, may be accepted, I think, as having some
foundation in fact. The incidents spoken of connected with his life
at court, may also rest upon a basis of truth, and are therefore
worth noticing. Nash’s play is more like a masque than a comedy, and
Rowley’s chronicle-drama abounds in anachronisms. The probable facts,
however, are only mistimed, and both dramatists agree, in the main, in
the character of Will, “who,” says Mr. Thoms, in the reprint of the
‘Nest of Ninnies,’ “in all probability owes his reputation rather to
the uniform kindness with which he used his influence over bluff Harry,
than to his wit or folly.”
In the dramatic portrait, then, of this once famous court fool, as
limned by Nash, we find Will describing himself as “used to go without
money, without garters, without girdle, without a hatband, without
points to my hose, and without a knife to my dinner.” As in Rowley, so
here, Will quotes Latin; he is also apt at old proverbs, and verbose
with old classical stories and tales, in which there are more words,
however, than wit. His Latin, indeed, is not always to the point,
for he translates _memento mori_, “Remember to rise betimes in the
morning;” nor are his classical stories true to historical tradition,
nor his tales remarkable for delicacy of illustration. He has a
simpleton’s philosophy, and talks little matters of science very much
after the fashion of ‘Conversations at Home.’ He has, too, a fool’s
contempt for learning, as may be seen in the following passage, which
contains some allusions to his early life:--
“Who would be a scholar? not I, I promise you! My mind always gave me
this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me hate it so as
I did. When I should have been at school construing _Batte mi fili,
mi fili mi Batte_, I was close under a hedge, or under a barn wall,
playing at span-counter or Jack-in-a-box. My master beat me, my father
beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this would not
make me a squitter-book. It was my destiny. I thank her as a most
courteous goddess, that she hath not cast me away upon gibberish;” and
so on, with a diatribe against the divisions of grammar, and parts of
speech generally, as forming a portion of “the devil’s Pater-noster.”
And yet, out of the accidence, he coins almost his only fragment of wit
throughout a play in which he enacts the character of “Chorus.” “Verba
dandi et reddendi,” says Will, “go together in the grammar rule; there
is no giving but with condition of restoring.” Altogether we obtain
fewer ideas of what Will may have been, from Nash, than from Rowley.
The former makes him less attractive, and when the jester closes
the piece with a “_Valete spectatores_, pay for this sport with a
_Plaudite_, and the next time the wind blows from this corner, we will
make you ten times as merry,”--we are glad to rejoin, _vale et tu_,
and to get away without paying the price asked for sport which, had it
been ten times as merry as is vouched for the next play, would not have
sinned with excess of mirthfulness.
It only remains for me to add, that Will survived to hold office under
Edward VI. How he sustained his reputation during a portion of the six
years’ reign of that young monarch, I am unable to inform my readers.
The only trace I have found of him is in a paper by Bray, in the
eighteenth volume of the ‘Archæologia,’ from which we learn, according
to a citation from the household expenses, that the sum of twelvepence
was paid “for painting Will Somers’ garments.”
Before proceeding to the next reign, I will take this opportunity to
narrate an anecdote of the learned and skilful diplomatist, Pace,--not
because he was the namesake of Pace, the “bitter fool” of Queen
Elizabeth’s days, but because the anecdote itself has reference to
subjects from which Henry could draw amusement, and that there is an
illustration in it, in connection with the court jesters.
Pace, we are told, in the collection of letters to and from Erasmus
(Basle, 1558), was once in the church at Woodstock, with the King and
court, when the Franciscan monk who preached, confined himself in his
sermon to denouncing the Greek language, and devoting to destruction
all who studied it. The choice of such a subject, and the manner in
which it was treated, were the more remarkable, as, a short time
previously, a Franciscan monk had been silenced for preaching in the
same sense. The Oxford students had hooted him in his cell, and the
authorities had to interfere. The King had written to the heads of
colleges in favour of the study of Greek; and his amazement was all the
more unbounded at the audacity of the new monk, who went even further
in his wrath against Greek than the Jewish Rabbis, who were wont to
solemnly pronounce accursed the man who allowed his children to learn
that language. If the King was enraged, the grave and learned Pace,
who sat near him, was delighted. He did not dare exhibit his ecstasy;
but he was so overcome with a propensity to burst out laughing, that
he was compelled to bury his face in both hands, to conceal his strong
and risible emotion. He was rather bolder when Henry subsequently
ordered the monk to attend him in his closet, where the king pelted
him with questions and menaces, and nearly frightened him out of his
senses. The poor preacher had been abusing Erasmus without having read
his works. He had, however, as he tremblingly remarked, “cast his eye
over some pages of the ‘Eulogy of Folly.’” “Ah,” said Pace, “I really
believe that the work was especially written with a view to your
reverence.” The monk meekly smiled. He had not heart enough to confront
the scholar, but he had sense enough to creep out of the difficulty
into which he had fallen. He confessed himself to be reconciled with
Greek from the sudden conviction which had descended upon him, that
it was derived from the Hebrew. King and courtiers present burst into
loud laughter at this sapient observation, under shelter of which the
speaker was allowed to withdraw in safety. Pace declared that the monk
had wit enough to make the fortune of a court jester; for if it did
not save him from getting into a scrape, it certainly was strong enough
to draw him out of one.
Having mentioned the faithful fool of Cardinal Wolsey,--Patch,--I
cannot pass over the simpleton, or Morio, Patteson, retained in the
household of Wolsey’s successor in the Chancellorship, Sir Thomas
More. All persons who are familiar with the biography of the latter
eminent individual, will remember how heartily Sir Thomas, from his
youth upwards, was addicted to jesting. When he was a page, being then
fifteen years of age, in the family of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of
Canterbury, he kept the octogenarian prelate and all his guests in
roars of laughter, as he waited on them at table. Morton was delighted
with the frolicsome boy, who, especially at Christmas and other joyous
seasons, was worth any number of ordinary household fools, seeing that
his improvised jests were superior to anything done or uttered by the
professional joker. More’s manner on these occasions was, however,
quite after the fashion of “cousin Motley.” Thus, when the players were
representing some comic drama, for the entertainment of their reverend
patron, “young More,” as Roper relates in his Life, “would suddenly
step up among the players, and, never studying before upon the matter,
make often a part of his own invention which was so witty, and so full
of jests, that he alone made more sport than all the players besides;
for which, his towardliness, the Cardinal much delighted in him, and
would often say of him to divers of the nobility who at sundry times
dined with him, ‘This child here, waiting at the table, whosoever shall
live to see it, will prove a marvellous rare man.’” As More, in his
youth, gratified Cardinal Morton by his wit, so, in his manhood, by
his wit as well as his wisdom, he afforded amusement to his capricious
Sovereign. When Henry had had enough of the outpouring of knowledge
from More (who was yet but Under-Sheriff 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.