King Maker (The), Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who fell in the battle of Barnet (1420-1471). So called, because when he espoused the Yorkists, Edward IV. was set up king; and when he espoused the Lancastrian side, Henry VI. was restored.
Thus fortune to his end the mighty Warwick brings,
This puissant setter-up and plucker-down of kings.
Drayton, Polyolbion, xxii. (1622).
King Pétaud, a king whose subjects are all his equals. The court of King Pétaud is a board where no one pays any attention to the chairman; a meeting of all talkers and no hearers. The king of the beggars is called King Pétaud, from the Latin, peto, “I beg.”
King Stork, a tyrant who devours his subjects and makes them submissive from fear. The allusion is to Æsop’s fable of the Frogs asking for a King. Jupiter first sent them a log, but they despised the passive thing; he then sent them a stork, who devoured them.
King and the Locusts. A king made a proclamation that, if any man would tell him a story which should last forever, he would make him his heir and son-in-law; but if anyone undertook to do so and failed, he should lose his head. After many failures, came one, and said: “A certain king seized all the corn of his kingdom, and stored it in a huge granary; but a swarm of locusts came, and a small cranny was descried, through which one locust could contrive to creep. So one locust went in, and carried off one grain of corn; and then another locust went in, and carried off another grain of corn; and then another locust went in,” etc.; and so the man went on, day after day, and week after week, “and so another locust went in, and carried off another grain of corn.” A month passed; a year passed. In six months more, the king said, “How much longer will the locusts be?” “Oh, your majesty,” said the story-teller, “they have cleared at present only a cubit, and there are many thousand cubits in the granary.” “Man, man!” cried the king; “you will drive me mad. Take my daughter, take my kingdom, take everything I have: only let me hear no more of these intolerable locusts!”—Letters from an Officer in India (edited by the Rev. S. A. Pears).
King and the Beggar. It is said that King Copethua or Cophetua of Africa fell in love with a beggar-girl, and married her. The girl’s name was Penel´ophon; called by Shakespeare Zenel´ophon (Love’s Labor’s Lost, act iv. sc. 1, 1594).
King and the Cobbler. The interview between Henry VIII. and a merry London cobbler, is the subject of one of the many popular tales in which Bluff Hal is represented as visiting an humble subject in disguise.
King of Bark, Christopher III. of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. So called because, in a time of scarcity, he had the bark of birchwood mixed with meal for food (died 1448).