“Archye,” writes Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford (Strafford Papers, vol. ii.), “is fallen into a great misfortune; a fool he would be, but a foul-mouthed knave he hath proved himself; being at a tavern in Westminster, drunk, as he saith himself, he was speaking of the Scottish business, he fell a railing of my Lord of Canterbury, said he was a monk, a rogue, and a traitor. Of this, his Grace complained at Council, and the King being present, it was ordered he should be carried to the porter’s lodge, his coat pulled over his ears, and kicked out of the Court, never to enter within the gates, and to be called into the Star Chamber. The first part is done, but my Lord of Canterbury hath interceded for the King that there it should end.”
Laud would have had more vengeance, if he could, but, says the author of the ‘Scout’s Discovery,’—“albeit Archie found favour in his lash, he lost both his coat and his place.” Laud ruined the jester; but he could not subdue his spirit, nor curb his tongue. Archie assumed a suit of sables, and hung about the dead Kings in Westminster Abbey, since he no longer held office in the palace of a living sovereign. “I met Archie,” says a writer in Morgan’s ‘Phœnix Britannicus,’ referring to a week or two after the dismissal,—“I met Archie at the Abbey, all in black. Alas! poor fool, thought I, he mourns for his country. I asked him about his (fool’s) coat. ‘Oh,’ quoth he, ‘my Lord of Canterbury hath taken it from me, because either he or some of the Scots bishops may have the use of it themselves. But he hath given me a black coat for it; and now I may speak what I please, so it be not against the prelates, for this coat hath a greater privilege than the other had.’” The hint that he could exercise the privilege of a jester’s liberty under the clerical black more freely than he could beneath his motley jerkin, was a Parthian dart thrown by a practised though a retreating soldier. It is certainly not the worst saying ever uttered by Archibald Armstrong.
It will be seen, too, that Archie, whether in or out of office, had the wit to thrive. Dr. Octavius Gilchrist, in the ‘London Magazine’ for August and September, 1824, at the conclusion of a review of the old jest book which bore Armstrong’s name on the title-page; but with which the “fool” had no other connection, states that Archie derived considerable wealth from the new year’s gifts presented him by the courtiers. It even seems that the ex-jester became a landed proprietor. “To prove,” says Dr. Gilchrist, “that he saved money and laid it out in the purchase of landed property, we have met with a contemporary authority, in an uncommonly rare tract, printed in 12mo, 1636, and entitled ‘The Fatal Nuptials, or Mournful Marriage.’ This is a metrical account of a lamentable accident that occurred in the preceding year, on Windermere Water, when forty-seven persons (among them a young married couple, with their friends and relations going to keep their wedding) were drowned. The anonymous poet (a very bad one, by the way), meaning to enforce the uncertainty of life, and the liability of all ranks to a similar disaster, introduces Archie, who was probably well known in the neighbourhood of the accident.
“Is’t so, that we in hourly danger stand,
Whether we sail by sea, or go by land?
That we to this world but one entrance have,
But thousand means of passage to the grave?
And that the wise shall no more fruit receive
Of all his labours than the fool shall have.
For the politick Hum must yield to swelling Humber,
As well as the least of his inferior number,
And Archie, that rich fool, when he least dreams.
For purchased lands must be possessed of streams.”
It is tolerably clear, from this, that Armstrong, like Osric, that combination of fool and lord in Hamlet, was of those enviable and respectable people who may be described, as Osric is, in the same tragedy, as being “spacious in the possession of dirt;” or, as the Latin author said it long before, “multâ dives tellure.”
In short, Archie, saving his disgrace, did not fare so ill. He was in the happy financial condition of the gentleman in Horace, who, let the world rail at him as it might, could point to his money-box, and hug himself complacently on his destiny. He had noble companionship, too, in his retirement. Armstrong repaired to Arthuret, his native place, in Cumberland, and thither also retired, after the cause of Archie’s royal ex-master had become desperate, that Dick Graham who had been master of the horse to Buckingham, and who had accompanied his patron in that expedition to the Spanish Court where the Jester had played as prominent a part as any of his betters. Had the ex-jester been of the quality of mind of illogical persons who see in every disaster that befalls those with whom they are in antagonism, a divine justice descending on the head of their enemy, Archie might have solemnly declared that the monarchy fell because it had ceased to respect the privileges of fools.
But it was not Armstrong’s disposition to be solemn. While institutions decayed, he survived. The Monarchy went down, and the Commonwealth went over it, and went down too, and Archie still found himself upon his legs. The church-register of Arthuret, as quoted by Lysons, in his Magna Britannia, shows that the jester could find damsels too ready to be fooled by him. But let us hope that the joculator of old turned honest man at last. One thing is certain, that in 1646 he made an honest woman, as the old phrase goes, of confiding Sibella Bell. The church-register makes record of the marriage of this pair; but neither in that nor any other register is record made of the lives led by this wedded couple. The only further, and that an important, entry, containing a notice of our once lively friend of the cap and bells, is the duly-registered circumstance of his death. The date of his burial alone is given, and that ceremony took place, characteristically enough, (in the year above-mentioned) on April 1, All-fools’ day!
To Archie Armstrong succeeded Muckle John, the last, perhaps, of the official court fools in England. In the Strafford Papers (vol. ii. p. 154) there is a letter from Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford, in which the latter is informed, “There is now a fool in his (Archie’s) place, Muckle John, but he will never be so rich, for he cannot abide money.” Love of the precious metals was, indeed, a passion with Armstrong, whose avarice, however, was sometimes disappointed. It was especially so on an occasion when a nobleman placed in Archie’s hand some pieces of money which the jester thought too little for his merits; he expressed his discontent, and the donor, seeming willing to change the silver coin for gold, received it from Archie, but put it into his own pocket. Instead of giving a gold Carolus or two in return, the courtier only bestowed on Armstrong the remark, that whatever wit he might possess as fool, he certainly had not the wit to know how to keep money when it was given to him. Muckle John was of a different quality, inasmuch that he cared nothing at all for money; of which, nevertheless, considerable sums were spent upon him, to make him look like a fool of quality. For the following items of expenses in this respect, extracted from an account-book of the period, I am indebted to Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose ready kindness enables me to show Muckle John equipped from head to foot.
“A long coat and suit of scarlet-colour serge for Muckle John, 10l. 10s. 6d.
“One pair of crimson silk hose, and one pair of gaiters and roses for Muckle John, 61s.