That I, Tom Fool, am sheriff of the Hall.
I mean the Hall of Haigh, where I command
What 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 seen
By 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 authority
May see the seal and patent here lie by.
The dish with lugs [_ears_] which I do carry here
Shows 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, both
Will 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 be
Perform’d by them, as they have promised me.”
This rhapsodic testament has “Thomas Skelton X his 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 country generally, 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 the Revels 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 character of 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 the license 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 hat and 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, that _he_ would 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
Hague _incognita_, 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 expire
either 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 two admirals
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 first
ventured 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.