“The Yorkshire Post,” 26th August 1912.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] She was confined in 11th March 1579, also 23rd November 1579. See Reg. Privy Council of date, and at other later times.
XXVI
JANE, THE QUEEN’S FOOL
The only woman in this country clearly recorded to have filled the peculiarly masculine office of the Royal Fool was a person named Jane, whose paternal name is as yet only a matter of inference. It is not insignificant that she flourished in the time of our first Queen Regnant, 1537-1558, coming to the Household while Mary was Princess, and sharing the days of her adversity, as well as of her prosperity. It is possible that Mary, with her modest nature, considered that it would be more decorous that her quiet household should be amused by a humourist of her own sex, than by such jesters as awakened by their broad witticisms roars of laughter in her father’s Court. But it is more than likely that, from some kind motive at first, she had extended her protection to Jane as a young girl left under some peculiar need of help, and, after fitting her for it, appointed her to the office. No book of Jane’s witticisms has come down to us, nor any allusions to them, as in the case of her predecessor Scogan, and her contemporary Will Somers, so that it is probable that her sayings were neither very brilliant nor very broad, and that she was one who rather warmed and illumined life by a genial humour, than one who flashed upon it startling coruscations of wit. Dr. Doran, in his “History of Court Fools,” does not allude to her, though he might have done so had he studied Sir Frederick Madden’s published transcript of the household expenses of the Princess Mary, as Miss Strickland has done to advantage.
Little is known of her except through the accounts of her garments, and yet through the language of clothes we find in this case a good deal of information regarding Court customs and expenditure, and of the Queen who determined both. In many ways Mary showed herself liberal by nature, but nowhere more markedly than in the clothing of her Court Fools. Besides the Girl-Fool of her youth, the Queen, on coming to the throne, “entertained” her father’s fool, William Somers, doubtless on account of his well-known kindly and charitable disposition. Armin, in his “Nest of Ninnies,” says of him:
He was a poor man’s friend
And helped the widow often to her end;
The King would ever grant what he did craue,
For well he knew Will no exacting Knave,