Let us pass, then, from Scogan and from a King who, with all his patronage of the fool, could least of all the Kings of England bear a political joke, to one who had scant time to listen to jesting. But I will here remind the reader that out of Edward IV.’s barbarity, in executing a merry tradesman in Cheapside, merely for saying that he would make his son heir to the Crown,—meaning his house of business, distinguished by that sign,—Fuller, in his ‘Holy State,’ draws an argument against profane jesting which might have profited all, court fools as well as others, could they only have heard the arguer. Fuller upheld harmless mirth as a cordial for restoring wasted spirits; and he only pronounced jesting unlawful when it trespassed in quantity, quality, or season. When speaking against jesting with God’s word, he asks, “Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice?” With earthly monarchs, fools may have their privilege; but then Fuller remembers the poor mercer’s joke which so angered Edward IV., and he exclaims, “More dangerous still is it to wit-wanton it with the majesty of God.” Finally, he gives these rules against profane jesting,—rules which, when he wrote, while fools were yet in remembrance, if not in favour at court, he knew had been daily transgressed. “If,” he says, “without thy will, and by chance-medley, thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray God to forgive thee. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to mend. Oh! ’tis cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither scorn any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. He that relates another man’s wicked jest, adopts it for his own. He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserveth to die a beggar by the bargain. We read that all those who were born in England the year after the beginning of the great mortality, in 1349, wanted their four cheek-teeth. Such let thy jests be,” adds the humorous commentator, “that they may not grind the credit of thy friend; and make not jests so long till thou becomest one.” Such was the comment of a moralist on jesting, suggested by the consequence of non-professional joking on royalty.
From the young King Edward V., no jester had opportunity to draw a smile, except at the banquet at Hornsey Park, the only festival which young Edward held between his accession and his death. His uncle Richard lacked leisure to be “i’ the vein” for these follies; but his wife, Lady Anne, and the young Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen of Henry VII.) kept, for a brief season, such joyous court at Greenwich, such minstreling, and dancing, and witnessing or playing jests, that the oppressed and impoverished people looked on grimly, and murmured rather above their breath. Henry VII., again, was too mean or too wise to lavish money on any mere court gauds, though he was not ungenerous in other respects. He was, at all events, the first English King who lived within his income; and he was better pleased by lending money to fit out the first European expedition that ever reached the American continent than he could have been by any jest, good, bad, or indifferent, that he might have to pay for. Nevertheless, in the days of the Tudors, court fools abounded, and indeed, till the fall of the monarchy under the Stuarts, the nest of ninnies was filled with a chirruping brood.
Among these was Patch, who is said to have been jester to Henry VIII. By some, this name is supposed to stand for “fool” generally. Others, with better reason, believe that Patch was the cant-name of Williams and Saxton, fools of Cardinal Wolsey. However this may be, we may be sure that a jester alone could have dared to make such a King as Henry VIII. look ridiculous, as a fool called by this name, “Patch,” is said to have done when he besought the King to grant him a warrant authorizing him to exact an egg from every husband who had serious reasons to be dissatisfied with the conduct of his wife. The King thought it a fair joke, and the warrant being drawn up in sportiveness, he signed the document in full gaiety of spirit. The ink was scarcely dry when the jester, bowing with mock gravity, demanded the first egg from the King. “Your Grace,” said he, “belongs to the class of husbands on whom I am entitled to make levy.” The joke was not very well relished, and the warrant was cancelled.
John Heywood, himself a “King’s Jester” and a poet, has made Cardinal Wolsey’s fool the subject of an epigram, which serves, with its title, to show both the real and the nick-name of the merry retainer. The former, according to Heywood, was Sexton and not Saxton. The epigram is entitled, ‘A Saying of Patch, my Lord Cardinal’s Fool,’ and runs thus:—
Master Sexton, a person of unknowen wit,
As he at my Lord Cardinal’s board did sit,
Greedily caught at a goblet of wine.
“Drink none!” said my lord, “for that sore leg of thine.”
“I warrant, your Grace,” quoth Sexton, “I provide
For my leg; for I drinke on the tother side.”
That Patch was the name of a fool retained by the Cardinal, we have further evidence in the touching biography of Wolsey by Cavendish, his “gentleman-usher.” And that Patch had merit of a superior quality, may also be seen in the same little work. When the fallen statesman was proceeding up the hill near Putney, on his way to Esher, having been just before compelled to retire from York House, he was overtaken by Norris, a gentleman of the Royal bed-chamber, who brought with him a gold ring and a letter from the King, with assurances of his own that the Cardinal would soon recover both favour and power. Wolsey, in sudden ecstasy, slipped from his mule; went on his knees in the mud; poured forth very unheroic phrases, ringing of gratitude, but the key-note of which was struck by self-gratulation. The Cardinal was for giving anything he possessed to the bearer of such good news; but then he had so little left to bestow! At length, he rewarded Norris with a gold chain, to the end of which was attached a relic of the True Cross, “which,” said Wolsey, “when I was in prosperity, I would not have parted with for a thousand pounds.” Norris having been thus rewarded, the downfallen but hopeful dignitary looked around for a fitting messenger to convey the expressions of his thankfulness to Henry,—“To that good master whom I have loved more than myself, and whom I have well served. And to say that I have no one now to convey to him the expression of my gratitude!” At this moment, his eye fell upon poor faithful Motley, and the Cardinal immediately exclaimed, “But Patch, my fool, who is with me, will be my interpreter to his Majesty, with you, my good Norris. I give him to his Majesty: Patch is worth a thousand pounds.”
The jester, who was thus set at as high a value as a relic of the True Cross, had no inclination at all to become a court fool. Cavendish describes the unwillingness of Patch in an almost pathetic manner. The jester refused to leave his old master, but six stout men bound him to a horse, not without great difficulty, according to Mr. Tytler; but having accomplished the task, the steed was set off at full gallop, and Patch was thus promoted to a court jestership, in spite of himself.
Patch seems to have been bold enough, when he got used to his new service, if the anecdote I have told of him and the King be well founded; but the best known of the jesters who fooled courtiers to the very top of their bent, at the court of Henry VIII., and did not spare the King himself, was Will Sommers, whose alleged portrait at Hampton Court is familiar to all who have resorted to that most pleasant locality. Armin, in his ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ has given another portraiture of Will,—one that may be relied on, for Armin gave it when many persons were alive, well able to judge of its correctness; and this portrait I proceed to place before my readers.
“Will Sommers, born in Shropshire, as some say,
Was brought to Greenwich, on a holiday,—
Presented to the King;—which fool disdain’d
To shake him by the hand, or was ashamed.
Howe’er it was; as ancient people say,
With much ado was won to it that day.
Lean he was, hollow-eyed, as all report,
And stoop he did too; yet in all the court,
Few men were more beloved than was this fool,
Whose merry prate kept with the King much rule.
When he was sad the King with him would rhyme;
Thus Will exilëd sadness many a time.
I could describe him, as I did the rest,
But in my mind, I do not think it best;
My reason this, howe’er I do descry him,
So many knew him, that I may belie him;
Therefore, to please all people, one by one,
I hold it best to let that pains alone;
Only this much:—He was a poor man’s friend,
And help’d the widow often in her end.
The King would ever grant what he did crave,
For well he knew Will no exacting knave;
But wish’d the King to do good deeds great store,
Which caused the court to love him more and more.”
Will seems to have been contemporary with Saxton, or Sexton, a fool of some notoriety at the Tudor’s Court, from the circumstance of his being the first jester who wore a wig. There is an entry from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chambers, quoted in the Archæologia, to the following effect:—“Paid for Saxton, the King’s fool, for a wig, 20s.” Is it not possible that this jester may have assumed this mode in order to ridicule the new fashion of the ladies, who had now, for the first time in England, adopted the wig—which English lords had begun to wear as early as the reign of Stephen? However this may be, the above is all we know of Saxton in his capacity of fool to Henry. How Sommers looked at Court, the following entry will sufficiently show:—“For making a doublet of worsted, lined with canvass and cotton, for William Som’ers, our fool. Item, for making of a coat and a cap of green cloth, fringed with red crape and lined with frieze, for our said fool. Item, for making of a doublet of fustian, lined with cotton and canvass, for our said fool. For making of a coat of green cloth, with hood to the same, fringed with white and lined with frieze and buckram, for our fool aforesaid.”