of a letter which contains such a graphic sketching of the author’s
wrongs, of his attempts to redress them, his feelings at his own
condition, and his own anxiety for the safety of his wife and only
daughter. Charles will “speak to his dogs,” but will not vouchsafe a
word to the old servant of his mother, and of his uncle, Ulric of
Holstein. The King provides liberally for his mother’s jester, Tom
Derry, and more than liberally, it would seem, for his father’s jester
and his own, Archibald Armstrong. When poor Belou is about to open
the touching Jeremiad of his afflictions, it is the contrast between
the happy positions of the two court fools and his own desolate and
destitute situation, which first strikes him. The fools are better off
than ever they were, whereas the old attendant of nearly forty years’
standing cannot obtain a penny of his due, though he spend three in the
seeking of it.
But the day for the fall of Archie Armstrong came too. The fool had not
always jested with impunity when he had princes for his subject; and
he now fared worse by venturing to tilt against an archbishop. That
Archie hated Laud, is sufficiently apparent. It is even said that he
once volunteered a _grace_ at a dinner where the prelate was present,
and that the court fool, trusting in his privilege of speech, gave it
forth in the shape of “Great praise be to God, and little _laud_ to the
Devil!” The Archbishop had good ground for offence; but Archie thrusted
at him more sharply than this. What he had told Mr. Belou was no
exaggeration; he grew rich at court, but his arrogance brought him low.
“Archie, by kings and princes graced of late,
Jested himself into a fair estate;”--
and joked himself out of his enviable position. The attempt to force
the English Liturgy upon the Scottish congregations was food for his
saucy wit; and when he heard of the orthodox Lizzie, who had flung a
stool at the head of the liturgical Dean, in St. Giles’s, Edinburgh,
he called it “the stool of repentance.” The dissensions in the North
began to assume a very serious aspect; and much uneasiness, with a
corresponding amount of obstinacy, was experienced at court. Laud was,
right or wrong in intention, the cause of all, and as Archie one day
met the Archbishop, on his way to the Council Chamber, he could not
forbear wagging his rude tongue with the query, “Wha’s fool noo?”
For this offence the jester was immediately taken before the King in
Council, where the prelate named his grounds of offence, and the fool
pleaded the privilege of his coat. He pleaded in vain, as the following
order, dated Whitehall, 11th March, 1637, will show:--
“It is this day ordered by his Majesty, with the advice of the board,
that Archibald Armstrong, the King’s fool, for certain scandalous
words of a high nature, spoken by him against the Lord Archbishop
of Canterbury, his Grace, and proved to be uttered by him, by two
witnesses, shall have his coat pulled over his head, and be discharged
of the King’s service, and banished the court, for which the Lord
Chamberlain of the King’s household is prayed and required to give
order to be executed. And immediately the same was put in execution.”
The provocation had been long, and had often driven Laud into fits
of unseemly passion, which, indeed, drove the prelate to an attempt
to bring the wretched jester before that dreaded tribunal, the Star
Chamber. On this quarrel and Laud’s vindictiveness, Osborn has a
striking passage.
“I shall instance as a blot in the greatest rochet that did in my time
appear in the court of England, or indeed any I ever heard of since
the Reformation, who managed a quarrel with Archy the King’s fool, and
by endeavouring to explode him the court, rendered him, at last, so
considerable, by calling the Prelate’s enemies (which were not a few)
to his rescue, as the fellow was not only able to continue the dispute
for divers years, but received such encouragement from standers-by as
he hath oft, in my hearing, belched in his face such miscarriages as
he was really guilty of, and might, but for this foul-mouthed Scot,
have been forgotten; 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 receive
Of all his labours than the fool shall have.
For the politick Hum must yield to swelling Humber,
As well as the least of his inferior number,
_And Archie, that rich fool, when he least dreams.
For purchased lands must be possessed of streams._”
It is tolerably clear, from this, that Armstrong, like Osric, that
combination of fool and lord in Hamlet, was of those enviable and
respectable people who may be described, as Osric is, in the same
tragedy, as being “spacious in the possession of dirt;” or, as the
Latin author said it long before, “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, and _that_ an important, entry,
containing a notice of our once lively friend of the cap and bells,
is the duly-registered circumstance of his death. The date of his
burial alone is given, and that ceremony took place, characteristically
enough, (in the year above-mentioned) on April 1, All-fools’ day!
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, 10_l._
10_s._ 6_d._
“One pair of crimson silk hose, and one pair of gaiters and roses for
Muckle John, 61_s._
“For a pair of silk and silver garters, and roses and gloves suitable
for Muckle John, 110_s._
“For a hat covered with scarlet, and a band suitable; and for two rich
feathers, one red, the other white, for Muckle John, 50_s._
“Stags’-leather gloves, fringed with gold and silver.
“A hat-band for Muckle John.
“One pair of perfumed gloves, lined with sables, 5_s._”
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 dwarf issued to dance a minuet, procured for the giver
of the entertainment the utmost applause from the sovereign.
The custom, then, was known on the Continent both before and after
the period of Jeffrey Hudson. That the position of the latter in the
household of his royal mistress was not unlike that of a jester, may
be gathered from various sources. Davenant says that he was made to
fight with a turkey-cock, and Walter Scott notices how he was compelled
to endure the teazing of the domestics and courtiers, and the many
squabbles he had with the King’s gigantic porter.
But where Jeffrey Hudson is best seen in his character of jester to
Henrietta Maria, is in the despatches written in 1636, by Panzani
and Corneo, agents of the Romish Church, in London, and addressed to
Cardinal Mazarin. These despatches are quoted by Mrs. Everett Green, in
her ‘Letters of Henrietta Maria,’ and it is there I find a notice of
our little friend, Jeffrey. In the despatch in which mention is made
of Hudson, the writer, Corneo, describes an interview he had with the
Queen at Holmby Palace, near Northampton. He narrates the compliments
exchanged by the principal personages, and proceeds to tell in much
detail, how he presented to Henrietta Maria, as a Papal gift, a shrine
for relics, and how gratefully it was received. Corneo then says,
“that he exhibited to her Majesty a portrait of St. Catherine, with an
intimation that as soon as he had procured a frame for it, he would
offer it for the Queen’s acceptance.” The Queen was too impatient to
wait, and therefore took the picture as it was, and had it fastened to
the curtains of her bed. Nor was this all. On the following day there
were more gifts for presentation, and at this ceremony we find Jeffrey
in waiting, and exercising his licensed vocation. “I presented to her
Majesty,” says the agent, “your Eminence’s rosary of olive wood, with
another of agate, and one of buffalo horn, curiously worked with cameo
medallions. I also took others to the Catholic ladies and maidens,
which were distributed by Father Philip, in her Majesty’s presence; and
the Queen’s dwarf, who is less and better made than that of Criqui,
being present, when all was nearly finished, began to call out, “Madam,
show the father that I also am a Catholic,” with a manner and gesture
that made all laugh. This was evidently the manner and gesture of a
court buffoon; and what would have been resented from a noble as an
impertinence, was laughed at, in the Queen’s dwarf, as a good joke.
Eight years subsequently to the above scene, when Jeffrey (after
cleverly aiding the Queen’s escape from Exeter) was with Henrietta
Maria, in France, occurred his remarkable duel with Will Croft, brother
of the Queen’s favourite, and master of the horse. Will Croft had
bantered the valiant little man, who held a commission as a cavalry
captain; and Jeffrey not only challenged him, but fought Will on
horseback, in the park at Nevers. Croft had brought with him only a
squirt, which he discharged at the enraged dwarf; but Hudson, “running
his horse in full career, shot his antagonist in the head, and left
him dead on the spot.” This affair caused some sensation in the French
court, and it produced from Henrietta Maria a very characteristic note
to Mazarin, whom she honours with a complimentary title. “Cousin,”
she writes from Nevers, in October, 1644, “I wrote to the Queen, my
sister, about a misfortune which has happened to my house, of Geoffrey,
who has killed Croft’s brother. I have written the whole affair to
the commander, in order that you may hear of it. What I wish is, that
as they are both English, and my servants, the Queen, my sister, will
give me authority to dispose of them as I please, in dispensing either
justice or favour, which I was unwilling to do without writing to
you, and asking you to assist me therein, as I shall always do in all
that concerns me, since I profess to be, as I am, Cousin, your very
affectionate cousin, Henrietta Maria, R.”
The Queen’s letter, as given by Mrs. Green, differs from that given by
Miss Strickland in this lady’s life of Henrietta Maria. With regard
to the consequences of the affair noticed in it, there only remains
to be said, that poor Jeffrey lost his post in the Queen’s household.
He recovered some favour at the court of Charles II.; but he fell
under suspicion of treason, and the dwarf, who had been the faithful
messenger of his patroness, had served her well in serious affairs
of business, and made her and her court laugh by his small jests,
ultimately died, a prisoner, in the Gate House, at Westminster.
Poor Jeffrey was less fortunate than two other dwarfs, patronized
by Henrietta previous to her flight to France. They were a male and
female. The former, Richard Gibson, had been in the service of a lady
at Mortlake. She had observed in him a talent for drawing, and she
kindly placed him with De Cleyn, director of the Mortlake tapestry
works. Gibson acquired great reputation as a copier of Sir Peter
Lely’s portraits, whose collection his nephew, William Gibson, was
rich enough to purchase at Lely’s death. The dwarf artist was ever
welcome at court; and when he espoused the dwarf young lady there, the
nuptials of the little couple were honoured by the presence of Charles
I. and Henrietta Maria. No less a bard than Edmund Waller sang their
Epithalamium, or at least verses in commemoration of an event which
made the court hilarious, and from which verses the following lines are
taken:--
“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 extreme
As if the world had none but them.
To him, the fairest nymphs do show
Like moving mountains topp’d with snow;
And every man a Polypheme
Does to his Galatea seem....”
Thus, although this couple did not belong to the fraternity of official
jesters, the sovereigns and their court contrived to extract amusement
from the neat little wedded pair, each of whom measured exactly three
feet two. Richard Gibson was the King’s page, and his wife served the
Queen. When King and Queen had passed away, the dwarf artist found
in his pencil a better property than Charles had found, or lost, in
his sceptre. He had painted his Royal master’s portrait; and when
Oliver Cromwell was in power, he painted the Protector. He was the
drawing-master of the Princesses Mary and Anne, and it may be remarked
that, about the same period, the Muscovite court fool and dwarf, Sotof,
was holding the additional office of writing-master to Peter the Great.
The old page of Charles I. was however a superior man. He died at the
age of seventy-five, A.D. 1690. His little wife lived till 1709, when
she died, in her ninetieth year, at which time the four of their nine
children who had attained to the ordinary stature of mankind survived,
the issue of a marriage which had been honoured by the presence of
royalty and commemorated as a court jest by the banter of Waller.
It is not to be expected that the grave system of the Commonwealth
admitted of such an official as a jester. The house or town fool,
however, did not go out with his brother at court. A portrait of one
of those worthies may be seen at Muncaster Castle, Cumberland. His
name was Thomas Skelton; he appears to have resided at the castle
during the period of the civil wars, as house fool. Jefferson, in his
‘History of Allerdale Ward, above Derwent,’ says, that “of Skelton’s
sayings there are many traditional stories;” but unfortunately he
cites none. From his description of the portrait on the staircase at
the castle, we obtain a good idea of the fool of this period. Skelton
is there represented “in a check gown, blue, yellow, and white; under
his arm is an earthen dish, with ears; in his right hand a white wand;
in his left, a white hat, bound with pink ribbon, and with blue bows;
in front, a paper, on which is written, ‘Mrs. Dorothy Copeland.’” The
picture contains an inscription, headed “Thomas Skelton, late fool of
Muncaster’s last will and testament.” I cite it, not for its poetical
merit, but because it shows that these house and town fools were
sometimes invested with mock offices of a certain dignity.