* In the Loyal Protestant, Sept. 8, 1682, is an
advertisement forbidding all keepers of shows, &e. to make
use of drums, trumpets, &e. without license from the
Serjeant and Comptroller of His Majesty's trumpets. And
there is a notice in the London Gazette, Dee. 7, 1685,
commanding all “Rope Dancers, Prize Players, Strollers, and
other persons shewing motions and other sights,” to have
licenses from Charles Killigrew, Esq. Master of the Revels.
** “An Account of the Life, Conversation, Birth, Education,
Pranks, Projects, Exploits, and Merry Conceits of the
Famously Notorious Mat. Coppinger, once a Player in
Bartholomew Fair, and since turned bully of the town; who,
receiving sentence of death at the Old Bailey on the 23rd of
February, was executed at Tyburn on the 27th, 1695. London,
Printed for T. Hobs, 1695.”
His famous part was the cook-maid in “Whittington,” Bartholomew Fair droll. The last September of his life he acted a Judge there, little dreaming that in the ensuing February he should be brought before one, (for stealing a watch and seven pounds in money,) and sent on a pilgrimage to Tyburn-tree! He was a poet, and wrote a volume * of adulatory verses, calculated for the meridian of the times in which he lived. The following is the comical trick he put upon a countryman in Bartholomew Fair.
The company (i. e. strolling players) finding the country too warm for them, came with our spark to town, in expectation of recruiting their finances by the folly of such as should resort to Bartholomew Fair.
* Poems, Songs, and Love-Verses upon several subjects. By
Matthew Coppinger, Gent. 1682. Dedicated to the Duchess of
Portsmouth; of whom, amongst an hundred extravagant things,
he says,
“You are the darling of my King, his pleasure,
His Indies of incomparable treasure!”
Upon the credit of which they took a lodging in Smithfield, and made shift to get up a small booth to shew juggling tricks in, the art of hocus pocus, and pouder-le-pimp. The score being deep on all hands, the people clamouring for money, and customers coming but slowly in, they consulted how to rub off, and give their creditors the bag to hold. To this Coppinger dissented, saying he would find out the way to mend this dulness of trading; and he soon effected it by a lucky chance. A country fellow, on his return from Newgate-market on horseback, resolving to have a gape at Jack Pudding, sat gazing, with his mouth at half-cock; and, so intent was he, that his senses seemed to be gone wool-gathering. Coppinger, whispering some of his companions, they stept to “Tom Noddies” horse, one of them ungirthing him, and taking off the bridle, the reins of which the fellow held in his hand, they bore him on the pack-saddle on each side, and led the horse sheer from under him; whilst another with counterfeit horns, and a vizard, put his head out of the head-stall, and kept nodding forwards, so that “Ninny” verily supposed, by the tugging of the reins, that he was still on “cock-horse!” The signal being given, they let him squash to the ground, pack-saddle and all; when, terrified at the sight of the supposed devil he had got in a string, and concluding Hocus Pocus had conjured his horse into that antic figure, he scrambled up, and betaking him to his heels back into the country, frightened his neighbours with dismal stories that Dr. Faustus and Friar Bacon were alive again, and transforming horses into devils in Bartholomew Fair! The tale, gathering as it spread, caused the booth to be thronged; which piece of good-luck was solely attributable to Coppinger's ingenuity.
[Original]
Plain Joe Haynes, * the learned Doctor Haynes, or the dignified Count Haynes,—for by these several titles he was honourably distinguished,—was the hero of a variety of vagabondical adventures both at home and abroad.
* Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. p. 976. “Joseph Haynes, or Heynes,
matriculated as a servitor of Queen's College, 3d May, 1689.
Mr. Ja. Tirrel saith he is a great actor and maker of plays;
but I find him not either in Langbaine or Term Cat/' Old
Anthony, like “good old Homer,” sometimes nods. Haynes had
been upon the stage many years before, and was too
profligate to be admitted of the university at that period.
In the memoir of Joe Haynes, in the Lives of the Gamesters,
he is said to have died in the beginning of the year 1700,
aged 53. This is a mistake.
He was married, as appears from the following lines in the
Prologue to “The Injured Lovers.”
“Joe Haynes's fate is now become my share,
For I'm a poet, marrÿd, and a player.”
Downes says he was one of those “who came not into the
company until after they had begun in Drury Lane.” Drury
Lane first opened on 8th April, 1663.
He wrote and spoke a variety of prologues and epilogues,
particularly the epilogue to the “Unhappy Kindness, or
Fruitless Revenge,” in the habit of a horse-offieer, mounted
on an ass, in 1697. In after times his example was imitated
by Shuter, Liston, and Wilkinson (not Tate).
His principal characters were, Syringe, in the Relapse;
Roger, in Æsop; Sparkish, in the Country Wife; Lord
Plausible, in the Plain Dealer; Pamphlet and Rigadoon, in
Love and a Bottle; Tom Errand, in the Constant Couple; Mad
Parson, in the Pilgrim; Benito, in the Assignation; Noll
Bluff, in the Old Bachelor; Rumour, in A Plot and No Plot,
(to which, in 1697, he spoke the prologue); and Jamy, in
Sawney the Scot.