Supposing Pepys’s informant to have stated the actual truth, Tom Killigrew had, not a patent, but a warrant under the King’s sign manual, addressed to the officers of the Wardrobe, directing them to pay to Killigrew, “our fool or jester,” a certain amount per annum to enable him to provide the customary official indication of a cap and bells. Such warrants had nothing in them of the character of Letters Patent. An entry of the warrant should have been made in some book kept in the Wardrobe; the warrant or sign manual may have been preserved, and probably also a docket, or short minute of it, may have been made and kept by some Master of Requests or other officer who laid the warrant before the King for his signature. If such a warrant did actually exist, it ought to be found in some wardrobe book, or collection of signed bills or warrants, or dockets.
The most careful research has failed to be rewarded by the discovery of any document confirmatory of the report conveyed to Pepys. All that I could find in conjunction with Mr. Bruce, or, I should rather say, all that his antiquarian zeal, patience, curiosity, and unwearied good-nature could find for me, consisted of several entries which show that Killigrew was in the receipt of various payments made by the Crown; but none of these show him to have been an official court jester. The only approach to a proof is, that he is styled “one of the Grooms of the Chamber,” a style by which Tarleton was designated when he was jester to Elizabeth.
On the Issue Roll, 1 March, 1665–6, there is notice of a payment of £100, being a quarter’s annuity granted to Killigrew and Cecilie, his wife. In 1666, the same Roll contains notices of payments on account of two annuities, one of £400 per annum, which he held jointly with his wife; and one of the annual value of £500. These annuities are duly ordered to be paid, at later dates, and from various sources. Sometimes there were no effects in the treasury, and then the Queen’s purse seems to have been tapped for the payment. In the Pells Enrolments, 1675, Killigrew receives £200, to be expended by him in support of his office as Master of the Revels; and, later, we come upon an entry of £1050, to be paid to him for getting up certain plays during the preceding nine years. I may add, that in a succeeding year, the 18th of August, 1678, there was another appointment of greater interest than the above, and which shows how different, now at least, was the court poet from the court fool. I allude to the appointment of Dryden as poet laureate. The letters patent making this appointment are entered on the Pells Book of Enrolments of the date above mentioned. In this document, Dryden’s predecessors, Gower and Chaucer, are spoken of as knights; the salary is fixed at £200 per annum; and directions are given that the butt of canary, or sack, shall be taken out of the King’s cellars at Whitehall, “yearly, and once a year.” At the above date, Killigrew was Master of the Revels; and if he were jester also, it may be said that the court of England had never seen so accomplished a “fool,” nor so eminent a laureate, as now figured on the household roll of Charles II.
The position of Tom Killigrew at Court was, however, so closely allied to that of the official jester, as to forbid its being passed over without some brief notice. Killigrew was the son of a baronet; and his earliest vocation and amusement, was that of lingering about the doors of the theatre till he was invited in to play some imp, or any other character that a boy could enact. In this way he commenced a career which ended in his being, with Buckingham and others, one of the “merry villains” in the household of Charles II.
Killigrew’s first appearance at Court was in the character of page of honour to Charles I., a part which he seems to have filled creditably. When the Commonwealth was established, Tom went into the service of Charles II., then on the Continent; and he is very strongly suspected of having betrayed his master’s secrets to the republican Government. This suspicion rests upon a passage in a letter (dated October 1658) from Downing, Cromwell’s Resident at the Hague, to Thurloe, referring to a secret visit paid by Charles to the Dutch court. “As for Charles Stuart,” says the writer, “I had an account from one Killigrew, of his bed-chamber, of every place where he was, and the time, with his stay and company, of which also I gave you an account in mine of the last post. He vowed that it was a journey of pleasure, and that none of the States General, nor any person of note of Amsterdam, came to him.” These communications, however, may have been made by Killigrew in good faith, as explanations, in order to screen his royal master from molestation.
Of that royal master he was the not unfitting representative at Venice, whither Killigrew repaired to borrow money, and where he remained long enough to write some half-dozen verbose and witless plays. He remained too long for the patience of the Venetians, who, dissolute as they were themselves, were more disgusted at the profligacy, than charmed by the accomplishments, of the English envoy; and the Doge, Francis Erizzo, very unceremoniously ejected him from the Venetian territory. In the fourth volume of ‘Evelyn’s Diary and Correspondence’ will be found a letter from Hyde, mildly complaining that Charles was not permitted to withdraw his ambassador.
Killigrew, at the Restoration, brought back with him an improved taste in theatrical matters generally; and he introduced the first Italian opera singers ever heard in this country. He was for a time the most conspicuous man at court, where he certainly exercised with impunity all the license of the court fool, which office Oldys and Pepys ascribe to him. The samples of this license are well known, but some will bear being reproduced.
On one occasion, this “merry villain” was seated at a window of the King’s dressing-room, reading one of his licentious plays, while Charles was engaged at his toilette. The monarch must have been under the influence of some decency of spirit that morning, for he asked Killigrew what he would be able to say in the next world, in defence of the “idle words” of his comedies. Tom replied, that he would be able to make a better defence for his “idle words” than the King could do for his idle promises, which were made only to be broken, and which had caused more ruin than any of the aforesaid idle words in any of his own comedies.
Of similar boldness, and with more of truth in it, was his satirical hint to Charles, conveyed publicly to the King, at a moment of great national distress. Killigrew remarked that the affairs of the kingdom were in a very ill state; but that nevertheless they were not without remedy. “There is a good, honest, able man that I could name,” said he, “that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would be soon mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it.”
The jester, turned Mentor, was ever more ready with precept than example; and his own practice of selling places that did not exist, and taking money from honest and ambitious citizens for creating them “King’s physic-tasters,” or “royal curtain-drawers,” was thought an excellent court jest, and was laughed at accordingly.