We hear of no fool of merit at the bachelor and uproarious Court of William Rufus. That King, indeed, hardly needed one, for he was accustomed not only to make his own jokes, but to laugh louder at them than any other person. We know that the fool often combined the office of servant with that of jester, and it is, perhaps, not unreasonable to conclude that the chamberlain of Rufus was also his joculator. He certainly fooled his master. Witness the occasion when Rufus burst into a fit of fury at the chamberlain bringing him a pair of boots that had cost but three shillings. “Son of an ass!” exclaimed the ruby-faced and flaxen-haired monarch, “bring me a pair that costs a silver mark!” The chamberlain obeyed, after a court fool’s fashion. He changed the boots for a pair of inferior value, charged Rufus a higher price, and laughed in his sleeve at seeing the King well pleased, and unconscious that he had been tricked.
There was one other person at this Court who had something of the jester in him;—namely, that well-known priest Ralph, whose wit raised him to an eminence that cost England rather dear. When he was in power, and the King ordered a tribute to be levied, Ralph ordered one of double the amount, and exacted it with stringent severity. At this process Rufus would laugh heartily; and he had little cause to pay a fool, when he possessed a witty follower like Ralph, whose tricks were so much to the taste and so greatly to the profit of this rude but discriminating monarch.
The court of his brother and successor, Henry I., was less riotous, but not less luxurious or licentious, than his own. Henry was naturally prodigal, and in his Queen, Matilda, he possessed a partner who helped him pleasantly on the road to ruin. Matilda cared less for the jester than for the minstrel, and accordingly, she wasted much of her wealth, her husband’s, and that of the public, on melodious clerks, foreign joculators who could chant a merry stave, and “singing scholars,” who crowded to a Court where they found, in return, as good entertainment as they could give.
Among these gay fellows, or minstrels, was an individual of some celebrity, a Picard or Norman, it is not exactly known which, and who is sometimes described as a “barber.” His name was Rahere, and of all court minstrels or jesters he is the one above all others whose memory hundreds of living people have good reason to bless daily. Stow speaks of Rahere as “a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore, in his time, called the King’s Minstrel.” There have been writers who have questioned the correctness of this description, but it is, in a very great measure, supported by the author of a paper in the Cottonian Manuscripts.[D]
According to this valuable record, the writer of which relies on the authority of men who “saw Rahere, heard him, and were present in his works and deeds, of the which,” adds the writer, “some have taken their sleep in Christ, and some of them be yet alive, and witnesseth of that that we shall after say.” According, then, to the manuscripts above-named, “this man, Rahere, springing or born of low lineage, when he attained the flower of youth, he began to haunt the households of noble men and the palaces of princes.” The writer goes on to state that Rahere spared neither tricks, nor flattery, nor pleasant deceits, in order to draw towards him the friendship of those above him. Nor was he content with all this, says the chronicler, “but often haunted the King’s palace, and among the noiseful press of that tumultuous court, enforced himself with polite and carnal suavity, by the which he might draw to him the hearts of many one there; in spectacles, masks, and other courtly mockeries and devilish intendings, he led forth the business of all the day.” Rahere was constantly, we are told, in attendance on the King, or in the suite of noblemen; “proffering service that might please them, he busily so occupied his time that he might obtain the rather the petitions that he might desire of them. Thiswise, to King and great men, gentle and courteous, and knowing and familiar, he was.” In short, according to the manuscript writer, Rahere was an exceedingly joyous and cunning fellow, who, having played the fool at Court for great men’s pleasure and his own profit, was soon after made wise through Grace, by the intervention of Bartholomew the Apostle. He had spent half his days in harping and dancing and jesting, and then, growing weary of it, hurried to Rome, there to repent of his sins and be converted from his fiddling, dancing, drinking, jesting, and philandering ways. And this was so effectually accomplished, that on his road homeward he had a vision “full of dread and of sweetness.” The chief figure therein was the apostolic Bartholomew, who, intimating that Rahere had been taken from the foolery of an earthly to be an agent of a celestial Court, added with great topographic and indeed general lucidity, that he (the Apostle) “had chosen a place in the ‘Subburbs’ of London, at ‘Smythfeld,’ where in my name,” said he to the ex-jester, “thou shalt found a church, and it shall be the house of God, where there shall be the Tabernacle of the Lamb, the Temple of the Holy Ghost.” Rahere woke from his dream, and was inclined at first to take it all for a mere fantasy; but weighing the matter well, he ultimately, after long consideration, resolved to devote his fool’s gains to pious ends; and he founded, not without some little opposition on the part of those who
“Preferred, no doubt,
A rogue with venison, to a saint without,”
and who hoped he had come back rather a merry sinner than a solemn saint, a church and priory, of which he was, as was due to him, appointed the first Prior. Kings of England, in after-time, learned to respect the holy place; but there was a world of trouble before the entire object was carried out. Rahere had adversaries of every sort; but he had not lost his wit for having acquired a sense of piety, and so he bent himself to every humour, still played the fool awhile in various forms, when he could draw help towards the attainment of his end, and had merry words for everybody, in order that everybody might in return lend him ready succour. He, of course, overcame all opposition; holy men assembled around him; he preached sermons of varied character, to suit his audiences; he worked pretty little miracles, wrought wonderful cures, and, if he was occasionally in a difficulty, and seemed for a moment no wiser than an ordinary mortal, St. Bartholomew stepped in and helped him through triumphantly. Nothing at last became too difficult for him to surmount, and a hidden thief or a secret sin could no more escape his bodily or mental eye, than the seat of disease can be concealed from the sight of Mr. Luther Holden, who now demonstrates anatomy on the spot where the ex-court-jester changed his mirth and motley for prayers, cassock, and good works.
The successors of old Rahere in the Priory had much of the spirit of their founder. They were at the head of a high-spirited corporation, full of zeal, cheerfulness, and indomitable independence. They enjoyed separate jurisdiction, and resisted all interference on the part of prying prelates who endeavoured to force-in the wedge of episcopal authority. When this was the case, the brotherhood cried, “Rahere to the rescue!” and defied the whole membership of bishops. One result was that they were let alone, and this immunity they purchased by their gallantry, having successfully resisted an attempt to meddle with their affairs, by sorely thrashing the offending bishop and terribly mauling his body of followers. The time came, however, when the downfall of their house was inevitable. It shared in the general dissolution of religious houses, and Henry VIII. founded it anew, out of the old prior-minstrel’s funds, as an hospital “for the combined relief and help of a hundred sore and diseased.” Much more than this is now effected in the establishment of St. Bartholomew, which has grown out of the pious foundation of Rahere. There is no disease or suffering that medical care can assuage, which is turned away from this great temple of charity. Let the call be made at any hour of the day or night, there is ready answer, and as ready help at hand. The sufferer has but to knock, or those who act for him in his helplessness, and “it is opened to him.” He has no need of a letter of recommendation to entitle him to receive balm for his wounds. There is now accommodation for about 600 in-door patients, of whom there are ten times that annual number, and among them a mortality of about one a day. The out-door patients amount to nearly twenty thousand; the casualty patients to some thousands more. It is a pleasing sight, to see the wards where anguish is soothed, and the mutilated made whole. It is almost a mirthful sight, to witness the busy crowd at the dispensary bar, carrying off their bottles of variously coloured liquids,—the elixir, and not the aqua vitæ, which is to pour strength into their veins and infuse it into their muscles. Let me add that it is a touching, solemn, and instructive sight, which may be looked upon silently and reverently, in that little dead-house, with its cover over it, as if it would be less obtrusive on the eye of idle passers by. There may be seen many a stalwart form that possessed, a few days since, the strength of giants, and which, crushed beyond the reach of science or art to repair, lie there prematurely ready for the inevitable grave.
In speaking of St. Bartholomew’s, it would be ungrateful to pass over the name of Dr. Radcliffe, the most munificent of its modern benefactors. But the establishment itself would probably never have existed, certainly would not have existed here, but for the King’s minstrel, the “pleasant-witted gentleman,” who was the gayest at the gay court of Henry Beauclerc, and whose bones lie in the adjacent church of St. Bartholomew the Great. The tomb is worth visiting, for it covers the dust of a noble man. His effigy, watched by an angel, and prayed for by two canons, lies under a canopy of great richness and elaborate workmanship. It was probably erected by his admirers of much later times than that which immediately followed his decease, for the shields upon it are those of England and France united, a combination that was not known for many years subsequent to the decease of the founder of the old priory. One can hardly stand altogether unmoved in presence of such a memento. There is great temptation, when looking at the effigy, and remembering the self-denial and charity, of the man, to fall into the pleasantest bit of Popery, on turning away, and to pray with all one’s heart that God may have mercy on the soul of the King’s minstrel, Rahere!
The reign of Stephen does not furnish us with the names of any fool of distinguished quality; though Stephen himself, and particularly previous to his accession to the throne, was remarkable for the affability with which he associated with men of every condition. This was more especially the case when he was keeping house with his bride in the Tower-Royal. But neither in court or castle was there much patronage of the jester during the nearly nineteen years of the calamitous reign of Stephen. The court of his successor saw the joyous brotherhood fully restored, and its members seem even, not merely to have practised before him at home, but to have accompanied him abroad. “When King Henry sets out of a morning,” says his secretary, Peter of Blois, “you see multitudes of people running up and down, as if they were distracted; horses rushing against horses, carriages overturning carriages, players, gamesters, cooks, confectioners, morris-dancers, barbers, courtesans, and parasites, making so much noise and, in a word, such an intolerable tumultuous jumble of horse and foot, that you imagine the great abyss hath opened, and that hell hath poured forth all its inhabitants.” The court of Henry’s consort, Eleanor of gay Guienne, was a not less joyous one than her husband’s; but the joy was only empty noise and outward show, and beneath all the glittering were grief and settled gloom.