It was the characteristic of our English kings, to be liberal to their buffoons,—more liberal, indeed, than they were to more valuable servants,—as I shall more especially show, presently. Edward was so well satisfied with Scogan, that he conferred upon him a town-house in Cheapside, and, still greater mark of the Royal consideration, a country mansion at Bury. At the latter place, he and the princely Abbot were on the most intimate terms, and those of a very joyous complexion:—
“They’d haunch and ham; they’d cheek and chine;
They’d cream and custard, peach and pine.
And they gurgled their throats with right good wine,
Till the Abbot his nose grew red.
No De Profundis there they sang,
But a roystering catch to the rafters rang;
And the bell for matins, it went ‘ting tang,’
Ere the last of them rolled to bed.”
Scogan, it would seem, was married at this period; and it would also appear that his wife was a fine lady in her way, who, among other matters connected with the fine-ladyism of her times, was very desirous of having a page who might precede her, as she went humbly, in state, to church. In fact, she intimated that it would be impossible for her to find her way to church, without a page. “Poor lass!” said the jester, one Saturday night, “you shall have a guide to church, before the bells ring tomorrow morning.” Accordingly, on the Sunday morning, Scogan arose early, and chalked the road which lay between his house and the church-door; he either strewed the chalk, or drew lines with it. When church-time came, he led his wife to the thresh-hold of their dwelling, to see her new page. When the extremely fastidious lady beheld the practical trick played her by her husband, she waxed so wroth that all his wit could hardly pacify her.
Among the practical jokes of this court fool I recognize many that really belong to a much earlier period, and which must have been current as “stories” at the time they are narrated as having been performed by Scogan himself. The following, however, is said to be properly assigned to him. He had borrowed a large sum of money of the King. Some stories say the Queen, and Flögel even names Queen Elizabeth as the patroness of this jester! The sum is set down at £500, which is extremely doubtful. Be this as it may, a day for payment had been named; and when that day had arrived, Scogan was not prepared to pay the debt. After ranch thought upon the matter, he fell sick and died, and requested his friends to bury him in such a way that the Sovereign should encounter the funeral. They entered into the joke with great alacrity, put on the trappings of mitigated affliction, and in due time carried Scogan forth on a comfortably-arranged bier, when they contrived, as directed, to encounter Edward. When Louis XV. saw the funeral of his old favourite, Madame de Pompadour, he had the bad taste to cut a sorry joke. When Edward met the funeral procession of Scogan, he regretted the loss of his merry follower; and among other kind things to which he gave utterance, remarked, that he freely forgave Scogan and his representatives the sum for which the jester was indebted to him. The buffoon, who had expected this act of release, immediately jumped up, thanked his illustrious creditor, and prudently called all present to bear witness to the Royal act of grace: “It is so revivifying,” said Scogan, “that it has called me to life again.” If this incident be true, we may also believe, as we are requested to do, that great mirth followed thereupon.
Perhaps Scogan presumed upon the liberties allowed him by the King; for we are told that his pranks at court became so boisterously intolerable, that he was at last exiled, and forbidden to return on English soil, upon pain of death. He went to France, thence came back with his shoes full of the soil of Picardy, and he claimed impunity, on the ground that he was not standing on English land. This sort of story is told of so many jesters, that I leave its acceptance or rejection to the decision of my readers. We come again to facts, when we encounter Scogan dwelling for awhile at Jesus College, Cambridge; and there is, probably, foundation for the story which represents him travelling in Normandy.
In the collection of ‘Scogan’s Jests,’ to which I have before alluded, as being collected by merry Andrew Borde, of Pevensey—that learned and mirthful doctor who Latinized his name into “Perforatus,” we are informed,—“How Scogan made the country-people of Normandy offer their money to a dead man’s head.”
“Upon a time when Scogan lacked maintenance, and had gotten the displeasure of his former acquaintance by reason of his crafty dealing and unhappy tricks, he bethought himself in what manner he might get money with a little labour. So, travelling up into Normandy, he got him a priest’s gown, and clothed himself like a scholar, and afterwards went into a certain churchyard, where he found the skull of a dead man’s head, the which he took up and made very clean, and after bore it to a goldsmith, and hired him to set it in a stud of silver. Which being done, he departed to a village there by, and came to the parson of the church, and saluted him, and then told him, that he had a relic, and desired him to do so much for him as to show it unto the parish, that they might offer to it; and withal promised the parson that he should have one-half of the offerings. The parson, moved with covetousness, granted his request, and so, upon the Sunday following, told his parishioners thereof, saying, that there was a certain religious scholar come to the town, that had brought with him a precious relic; and that he that would offer thereunto should have a general pardon for all his forepassed sins; and that the scholar was there present himself, to show it to them. With that, Scogan went up into the pulpit, and showed them the relic that he had; and said to them that the head spoke to him, and bade him that he should build a church over it; and that the money that the church should be builded withal should be well-gotten. But when the people came to offer unto it, Scogan said unto them, ‘All you women who have been faithless to your husbands, I pray you sit still, and come not to offer, for the head bade me that I should not receive your offerings.’ Whereupon, the poor men and their wives came thick and threefold to this offering; and there was not a woman but she offered liberally, because that he had said so; and he gave them the blessing with the head. And there were some that had no money, that offered their rings; and some of them that offered twice or thrice, because they would be seen. Thus received he the offerings both of the good and the bad, and by this practice got a great sum of money.”
That he subsequently came again to England, may be gathered from stories of a later date. One legend tells us of the King condemning him to be hanged, but allowing him the privilege of choosing a tree from which he was to be suspended. Scogan avoided the penalty by being unable to fix on a tree exactly to his mind. The story, however, is related of earlier jesters than Scogan, and seems to have originally belonged to the buffoon of Alboin, King of the Lombards.
There is nothing more left worth telling, though there is much more that might be told, of Scogan, the gentleman-buffoon of Edward IV. His last expressed desire was characteristic of his vocation and his humour:—“Bury me,” said he, “under one of the water-spouts of Westminster Abbey; for I have ever loved good drink, all the days of my life.” It was a fool’s wish; but for the grave of him who made it, no less an author than Cardinal Pole composed in his younger days, an epitaph which may be worthy the jester, but is certainly less worth citing than that composed by Swift for one of the last of our household fools, and which will be found in a subsequent page of this volume.
The stupid book, edited by Borde of Pevensey, and known to many an antiquary whose patience is not stout enough to hold out to the end of the dirt, dullness, and dreariness which mark what is called ‘Scoggin’s Jests,’ reminds me of a saying of Balzac, with reference to two of the wittiest Frenchmen of the great revolutionary era,—Chamfort and Rivarol. “Those good fellows,” remarks Balzac, “put a whole volume into one of their witty sayings; but now-a-days, it is difficult to find one witty saying in a whole volume.” The last part of this remark is most applicable to collections of jests to which the name of some court fool was appended in order to give them currency and an air of authenticity. Even if Scogan’s so-called “Jests” were authentic, they would not be worth citing. They offend in every possible way, and it is impossible to read them and believe them to be genuine, without feeling surprise at an Oxford student becoming such a buffoon, and at such a buffoon as their hero being so liberally recompensed as he was, by the royal Edward.