LOVE, THE KING'S FOOL OF THAT NAME.
In Rawlinson's Manuscripts in the Bodleian (c. 258.), which I take to have been written either in, or very soon after, the reign of Henry VIII., there is a poem thus entitled:—
"THE EPITAPHE OF LOVE, THE KYNGE'S FOOLE."
Can any of your readers furnish me with information regarding him? He was clearly a man worthy of notice, but although I have looked through as many volumes of that period, and afterwards, as I could procure, I do not recollect meeting with any other mention of him. Skelton, who must have been his contemporary, is silent regarding him; and John Heywood, who was also living at the same time, makes no allusion to him that I have been able to discover. Heywood wrote the "Play of Love," but it has nothing to do with the "King's fool."
The epitaph in question is much in Heywood's humorous and satirical style: it is written in the English ballad-metre, and consists of seven seven-line stanzas, each stanza, as was not unusual with Heywood, ending with the same, or nearly the same, line. It commences thus:
"O Love, Love! on thy sowle God have mercye;
For as Peter is princeps Apostolorum,
So to the[e] may be sayd clerlye,
Of all foolys that ever was stultus stultorum.
Sure thy sowle is in regna polorum,
By reason of reason thou haddest none;
Yet all foolys be nott dead, though thou be gone."
In the next stanza we are told, that Love often made the King and Queen merry with "many good pastimes;" and in the third, that he was "shaped and borne of very nature" for a fool. The fourth stanza, which mentions Erasmus and Luther, is the following:—
"Thou wast nother Erasmus nor Luter;
Thou dyds medle no forther than thy potte;
Agaynst hye matters thou wast no disputer,
Amonge the Innocentes electe was thy lotte:
Glad mayst thou be thou haddyst that knotte,
For many foolys by the[e] thynke them selfe none,
Yet all be nott dead, though thou be gone."
The next stanza speaks of "Dye Apguylamys," who is told to prepare the obsequy for Love, and of "Lady Apylton," who had offered a "mass-penny," and the epitaph ends with these stanzas:
"Now, Love, Love! God have mercy on thy mery nowle;
And Love! God have mercye on thy foolysche face,
And Love! God have mercye on thy innocent sowle,
Which amonges innocentes, I am sure, hath a place,
Or ellys thy sowle ys yn a hevy case;
Ye, ye, and moo foolys many [a] one,
For foolys be alyve, Love, though thou be gone.
"Now, God have mercye on us all,
For wyse and folysche all dyethe,
Lett us truly to our myndes call;
And to say we be wyse owr dedes denyethe,
Wherefore the ende my reason thys aplyethe:
God amend all foolys that thynke them selfe none,
For many be alyve, thoughe Love be gone."
It is very possible that I have overlooked some common source of information to which I may be referred; and it is very possible also, that this epitaph has been reprinted in comparatively modern times, and I may not know of it. This is one of the points I wish to ascertain.
J. PAYNE COLLIER.
[Was there no such person as Love, and does the writer mean merely to pun upon the word? Cupid certainly played the fool in the court of Henry VIII. as much as any body.]