Sir Kenelm Digby records that the animal ‘would restore a glove to the due owner after the master had whispered the man’s name in his ear; and would tell the just number of pence in any piece of silver coin newly showed him by his master.’ De Melleray, in a note to his translation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, says that he witnessed the performance of this animal in the Rue St Jacques, in Paris, to which city Banks proceeded in or before 1608; and he states that Morocco could not only tell the number of francs in a crown, but knew that the crown was depreciated at that time, and also the exact amount of the depreciation.
The fame which Banks and his horse acquired in France, brought the former under the imputation of being a sorcerer, and he probably had a narrow escape of being burned at a stake in that character. Bishop Morton tells the story as follows:—
‘Which bringeth into my remembrance a story which Banks told me at Frankfort, from his own experience in France among the Capuchins, by whom he was brought into suspicion of magic, because of the strange feats which his horse Morocco played (as I take it) at Orleans, where he, to redeem his credit, promised to manifest to the world, that his horse was nothing less than a devil. To this end he commanded his horse to seek out one in the press of the people who had a crucifix on his hat; which done, he bade him kneel down unto it, and not this only, but also to rise up again and to kiss it. And now, gentlemen (quoth he), I think my horse hath acquitted both me and himself; and so his adversaries rested satisfied; conceiving (as it might seem) that the devil had no power to come near the cross.’
That Banks travelled with his learned horse from Paris to Orleans, and thence to Frankfort, is shown by this extract; but his further wanderings are unrecorded. It has been inferred, from the following lines of a burlesque poem by Jonson, that he suffered at last the fate he escaped at Orleans; but the grounds which the poet had for supposing such a dreadful end for the poor horse-charmer are unknown.
‘But ’mongst these Tiberts, who do you think there was?
Old Banks, the juggler, our Pythagoras,
Grave tutor to the learned horse; both which,
Being, beyond sea, burned for one witch,
Their spirits transmigrated to a cat.’
These itinerant performers seem to have divided their time between town and country, as many of them do at the present day. Sir William Davenant, describing the street sights of the metropolis in his curious poem entitled The Long Vacation in London, says—