Part 11

The specimens we have of Scogan’s poetry do not warrant the praise above given; and we know, from some of his rhymes, that he held the University graduates in very absolute contempt. What he said of the M.A.’s, is not to be repeated. The substance was, that they were mere dolts, beyond the schools; and Scogan did not rank the B.A.’s much higher, as may be seen in the succeeding couplet, which says,--

“A B.A. is not worth a straw, Except he be among fools.”

The joyous Suffolk student--for Scogan, it is believed, came from Bury--became, in time, a very merry and not very scrupulous tutor. Every sage has his maxim, and Scogan’s was, that “A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.” With such a lecturer, the pupils must have conferred on Oriel a reputation something resembling that which Merton once derived from its students; of which college an old warden used to say, that there could be little doubt of the learning it possessed, seeing that every pupil brought a little with him, and took none away. But even Oriel, in Scogan’s time, had its solemn seasons; and when the plague of 1471 broke out at Oxford, which ultimately caused more devastation in England than the fifteen years of war through which the country had recently passed, Scogan followed the University fugitives who took refuge, and found safety, in the rural hospital of St. Bartholomew.

If the season of trial rendered other men serious, it had no such effect upon Scogan. His irregularities were numerous, and not the least offensive of them was the irreligious spirit, combined with avarice, which induced him to help an unworthy candidate into the priesthood, for the bribe of a horse, presented to him by the candidate’s father. Even Oxford grew at last weary of Scogan’s want of decorum; and under compulsion, or following his inclination, the merry Suffolk Punch withdrew from the University, but did not long lack employment. He presented himself to Sir William Neville, a country gentleman, and requested to be engaged by him as his household fool. This negotiation was happily carried out; and some time after, Sir William introduced Scogan to Edward IV. The knight took his jester to court, probably out of vanity; for it was not every household fool that had the wit, talent, and education of this gentleman-joculator. The King was so pleased with his gossip that there was nothing left for the loyal knight, but to offer to make over his joyous retainer to a royal patron. Henceforward, Scogan became the court buffoon of Edward; but, as far as I can judge from the sorry or dirty five dozen of “jests” of which Andrew Borde makes him the hero, he assumed the office of buffoon and dropped that of wit. The choicest story told of him, is that wherein he is described as standing, for a long period, beneath a water-spout, under heavy rain, for a reward, (or for a wager, by which he may not have profited in the same degree,) of twenty pounds,--a large sum in those days, but not too large for the fool who thus risked his life.

It was the characteristic of our English kings, to be liberal to their buffoons,--more liberal, indeed, than they were to more valuable servants,--as I shall more especially show, presently. Edward was so well satisfied with Scogan, that he conferred upon him a town-house in Cheapside, and, still greater mark of the Royal consideration, a country mansion at Bury. At the latter place, he and the princely Abbot were on the most intimate terms, and those of a very joyous complexion:--

“They’d haunch and ham; they’d cheek and chine; They’d cream and custard, peach and pine. And they gurgled their throats with right good wine, Till the Abbot his nose grew red. No _De Profundis_ there they sang, But a roystering catch to the rafters rang; And the bell for matins, it went ‘ting tang,’ Ere the last of them rolled to bed.”

Scogan, it would seem, was married at this period; and it would also appear that his wife was a fine lady in her way, who, among other matters connected with the fine-ladyism of her times, was very desirous of having a page who might precede her, as she went humbly, in state, to church. In fact, she intimated that it would be impossible for her to find her way to church, without a page. “Poor lass!” said the jester, one Saturday night, “you shall have a guide to church, before the bells ring tomorrow morning.” Accordingly, on the Sunday morning, Scogan arose early, and chalked the road which lay between his house and the church-door; he either strewed the chalk, or drew lines with it. When church-time came, he led his wife to the thresh-hold of their dwelling, to see her new page. When the extremely fastidious lady beheld the practical trick played her by her husband, she waxed so wroth that all his wit could hardly pacify her.

Among the practical jokes of this court fool I recognize many that really belong to a much earlier period, and which must have been current as “stories” at the time they are narrated as having been performed by Scogan himself. The following, however, is said to be properly assigned to him. He had borrowed a large sum of money of the King. Some stories say the Queen, and Flögel even names _Queen Elizabeth_ as the patroness of this jester! The sum is set down at £500, which is extremely doubtful. Be this as it may, a day for payment had been named; and when that day had arrived, Scogan was not prepared to pay the debt. After ranch thought upon the matter, he fell sick and died, and requested his friends to bury him in such a way that the Sovereign should encounter the funeral. They entered into the joke with great alacrity, put on the trappings of mitigated affliction, and in due time carried Scogan forth on a comfortably-arranged bier, when they contrived, as directed, to encounter Edward. When Louis XV. saw the funeral of his old favourite, Madame de Pompadour, he had the bad taste to cut a sorry joke. When Edward met the funeral procession of Scogan, he regretted the loss of his merry follower; and among other kind things to which he gave utterance, remarked, that he freely forgave Scogan and his representatives the sum for which the jester was indebted to him. The buffoon, who had expected this act of release, immediately jumped up, thanked his illustrious creditor, and prudently called all present to bear witness to the Royal act of grace: “It is so revivifying,” said Scogan, “that it has called me to life again.” If this incident be true, we may also believe, as we are requested to do, that great mirth followed thereupon.

Perhaps Scogan presumed upon the liberties allowed him by the King; for we are told that his pranks at court became so boisterously intolerable, that he was at last exiled, and forbidden to return on English soil, upon pain of death. He went to France, thence came back with his shoes full of the soil of Picardy, and he claimed impunity, on the ground that he was not standing on English land. This sort of story is told of so many jesters, that I leave its acceptance or rejection to the decision of my readers. We come again to facts, when we encounter Scogan dwelling for awhile at Jesus College, Cambridge; and there is, probably, foundation for the story which represents him travelling in Normandy.

In the collection of ‘Scogan’s Jests,’ to which I have before alluded, as being collected by merry Andrew Borde, of Pevensey--that learned and mirthful doctor who Latinized his name into “Perforatus,” we are informed,--“How Scogan made the country-people of Normandy offer their money to a dead man’s head.”

“Upon a time when Scogan lacked maintenance, and had gotten the displeasure of his former acquaintance by reason of his crafty dealing and unhappy tricks, he bethought himself in what manner he might get money with a little labour. So, travelling up into Normandy, he got him a priest’s gown, and clothed himself like a scholar, and afterwards went into a certain churchyard, where he found the skull of a dead man’s head, the which he took up and made very clean, and after bore it to a goldsmith, and hired him to set it in a stud of silver. Which being done, he departed to a village there by, and came to the parson of the church, and saluted him, and then told him, that he had a relic, and desired him to do so much for him as to show it unto the parish, that they might offer to it; and withal promised the parson that he should have one-half of the offerings. The parson, moved with covetousness, granted his request, and so, upon the Sunday following, told his parishioners thereof, saying, that there was a certain religious scholar come to the town, that had brought with him a precious relic; and that he that would offer thereunto should have a general pardon for all his forepassed sins; and that the scholar was there present himself, to show it to them. With that, Scogan went up into the pulpit, and showed them the relic that he had; and said to them that the head spoke to him, and bade him that he should build a church over it; and that the money that the church should be builded withal should be well-gotten. But when the people came to offer unto it, Scogan said unto them, ‘All you women who have been faithless to your husbands, I pray you sit still, and come not to offer, for the head bade me that I should not receive your offerings.’ Whereupon, the poor men and their wives came thick and threefold to this offering; and there was not a woman but she offered liberally, because that he had said so; and he gave them the blessing with the head. And there were some that had no money, that offered their rings; and some of them that offered twice or thrice, because they would be seen. Thus received he the offerings both of the good and the bad, and by this practice got a great sum of money.”

That he subsequently came again to England, may be gathered from stories of a later date. One legend tells us of the King condemning him to be hanged, but allowing him the privilege of choosing a tree from which he was to be suspended. Scogan avoided the penalty by being unable to fix on a tree exactly to his mind. The story, however, is related of earlier jesters than Scogan, and seems to have originally belonged to the buffoon of Alboin, King of the Lombards.

There is nothing more left worth telling, though there is much more that might be told, of Scogan, the gentleman-buffoon of Edward IV. His last expressed desire was characteristic of his vocation and his humour:--“Bury me,” said he, “under one of the water-spouts of Westminster Abbey; for I have ever loved good drink, all the days of my life.” It was a fool’s wish; but for the grave of him who made it, no less an author than Cardinal Pole composed in his younger days, an epitaph which may be worthy the jester, but is certainly less worth citing than that composed by Swift for one of the last of our household fools, and which will be found in a subsequent page of this volume.

The stupid book, edited by Borde of Pevensey, and known to many an antiquary whose patience is not stout enough to hold out to the end of the dirt, dullness, and dreariness which mark what is called ‘Scoggin’s Jests,’ reminds me of a saying of Balzac, with reference to two of the wittiest Frenchmen of the great revolutionary era,--Chamfort and Rivarol. “Those good fellows,” remarks Balzac, “put a whole volume into one of their witty sayings; but now-a-days, it is difficult to find one witty saying in a whole volume.” The last part of this remark is most applicable to collections of jests to which the name of some court fool was appended in order to give them currency and an air of authenticity. Even if Scogan’s so-called “Jests” were authentic, they would not be worth citing. They offend in every possible way, and it is impossible to read them and believe them to be genuine, without feeling surprise at an Oxford student becoming such a buffoon, and at such a buffoon as their hero being so liberally recompensed as he was, by the royal Edward.

Let us pass, then, from Scogan and from a King who, with all his patronage of the fool, could least of all the Kings of England bear a political joke, to one who had scant time to listen to jesting. But I will here remind the reader that out of Edward IV.’s barbarity, in executing a merry tradesman in Cheapside, merely for saying that he would make his son heir to the _Crown_,--meaning his house of business, distinguished by that sign,--Fuller, in his ‘Holy State,’ draws an argument against profane jesting which might have profited all, court fools as well as others, could they only have heard the arguer. Fuller upheld harmless mirth as a cordial for restoring wasted spirits; and he only pronounced jesting unlawful when it trespassed in quantity, quality, or season. When speaking against jesting with God’s word, he asks, “Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in, but the font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice?” With earthly monarchs, fools may have their privilege; but then Fuller remembers the poor mercer’s joke which so angered Edward IV., and he exclaims, “More dangerous still is it to wit-wanton it with the majesty of God.” Finally, he gives these rules against profane jesting,--rules which, when he wrote, while fools were yet in remembrance, if not in favour at court, he knew had been daily transgressed. “If,” he says, “without thy will, and by chance-medley, thou hittest Scripture in ordinary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray God to forgive thee. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to mend. Oh! ’tis cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither scorn any for his profession, if honest, though poor and painful. He that relates another man’s wicked jest, adopts it for his own. He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserveth to die a beggar by the bargain. We read that all those who were born in England the year after the beginning of the great mortality, in 1349, wanted their four cheek-teeth. Such let thy jests be,” adds the humorous commentator, “that they may not grind the credit of thy friend; and make not jests so long till thou becomest one.” Such was the comment of a moralist on jesting, suggested by the consequence of non-professional joking on royalty.

From the young King Edward V., no jester had opportunity to draw a smile, except at the banquet at Hornsey Park, the only festival which young Edward held between his accession and his death. His uncle Richard lacked leisure to be “i’ the vein” for these follies; but his wife, Lady Anne, and the young Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen of Henry VII.) kept, for a brief season, such joyous court at Greenwich, such minstreling, and dancing, and witnessing or playing jests, that the oppressed and impoverished people looked on grimly, and murmured rather above their breath. Henry VII., again, was too mean or too wise to lavish money on any mere court gauds, though he was not ungenerous in other respects. He was, at all events, the first English King who lived within his income; and he was better pleased by lending money to fit out the first European expedition that ever reached the American continent than he could have been by any jest, good, bad, or indifferent, that he might have to pay for. Nevertheless, in the days of the Tudors, court fools abounded, and indeed, till the fall of the monarchy under the Stuarts, the nest of ninnies was filled with a chirruping brood.

Among these was Patch, who is said to have been jester to Henry VIII. By some, this name is supposed to stand for “fool” generally. Others, with better reason, believe that Patch was the cant-name of Williams and Saxton, fools of Cardinal Wolsey. However this may be, we may be sure that a jester alone could have dared to make such a King as Henry VIII. look ridiculous, as a fool called by this name, “Patch,” is said to have done when he besought the King to grant him a warrant authorizing him to exact an egg from every husband who had serious reasons to be dissatisfied with the conduct of his wife. The King thought it a fair joke, and the warrant being drawn up in sportiveness, he signed the document in full gaiety of spirit. The ink was scarcely dry when the jester, bowing with mock gravity, demanded the first egg from the King. “Your Grace,” said he, “belongs to the class of husbands on whom I am entitled to make levy.” The joke was not very well relished, and the warrant was cancelled.

John Heywood, himself a “King’s Jester” and a poet, has made Cardinal Wolsey’s fool the subject of an epigram, which serves, with its title, to show both the real and the nick-name of the merry retainer. The former, according to Heywood, was Sexton and not _Saxton_. The epigram is entitled, ‘A Saying of Patch, my Lord Cardinal’s Fool,’ and runs thus:--

Master Sexton, a person of unknowen wit, As he at my Lord Cardinal’s board did sit, Greedily caught at a goblet of wine. “Drink none!” said my lord, “for that sore leg of thine.” “I warrant, your Grace,” quoth Sexton, “I provide For my leg; for I drinke on the tother side.”

That Patch was the name of a fool retained by the Cardinal, we have further evidence in the touching biography of Wolsey by Cavendish, his “gentleman-usher.” And that Patch had merit of a superior quality, may also be seen in the same little work. When the fallen statesman was proceeding up the hill near Putney, on his way to Esher, having been just before compelled to retire from York House, he was overtaken by Norris, a gentleman of the Royal bed-chamber, who brought with him a gold ring and a letter from the King, with assurances of his own that the Cardinal would soon recover both favour and power. Wolsey, in sudden ecstasy, slipped from his mule; went on his knees in the mud; poured forth very unheroic phrases, ringing of gratitude, but the key-note of which was struck by self-gratulation. The Cardinal was for giving anything he possessed to the bearer of such good news; but then he had so little left to bestow! At length, he rewarded Norris with a gold chain, to the end of which was attached a relic of the True Cross, “which,” said Wolsey, “when I was in prosperity, I would not have parted with for a thousand pounds.” Norris having been thus rewarded, the downfallen but hopeful dignitary looked around for a fitting messenger to convey the expressions of his thankfulness to Henry,--“To that good master whom I have loved more than myself, and whom I have well served. And to say that I have no one now to convey to him the expression of my gratitude!” At this moment, his eye fell upon poor faithful Motley, and the Cardinal immediately exclaimed, “But Patch, my fool, who is with me, will be my interpreter to his Majesty, with you, my good Norris. I give him to his Majesty: Patch is _worth a thousand pounds_.”

The jester, who was thus set at as high a value as a relic of the True Cross, had no inclination at all to become a _court_ fool. Cavendish describes the unwillingness of Patch in an almost pathetic manner. The jester refused to leave his old master, but six stout men bound him to a horse, not without great difficulty, according to Mr. Tytler; but having accomplished the task, the steed was set off at full gallop, and Patch was thus promoted to a court jestership, in spite of himself.

Patch seems to have been bold enough, when he got used to his new service, if the anecdote I have told of him and the King be well founded; but the best known of the jesters who fooled courtiers to the very top of their bent, at the court of Henry VIII., and did not spare the King himself, was Will Sommers, whose alleged portrait at Hampton Court is familiar to all who have resorted to that most pleasant locality. Armin, in his ‘Nest of Ninnies,’ has given another portraiture of Will,--one that may be relied on, for Armin gave it when many persons were alive, well able to judge of its correctness; and this portrait I proceed to place before my readers.

“Will Sommers, born in Shropshire, as some say, Was brought to Greenwich, on a holiday,-- Presented to the King;--which fool disdain’d To shake him by the hand, or was ashamed. Howe’er it was; as ancient people say, With much ado was won to it that day. Lean he was, hollow-eyed, as all report, And stoop he did too; yet in all the court, Few men were more beloved than was this fool, Whose merry prate kept with the King much rule. When he was sad the King with him would rhyme; Thus Will exilëd sadness many a time. I could describe him, as I did the rest, But in my mind, I do not think it best; My reason this, howe’er I do descry him, So many knew him, that I may belie him; Therefore, to please all people, one by one, I hold it best to let that pains alone; Only this much:--He was a poor man’s friend, And help’d the widow often in her end. The King would ever grant what he did crave, For well he knew Will no exacting knave; But wish’d the King to do good deeds great store, Which caused the court to love him more and more.”

Will seems to have been contemporary with Saxton, or Sexton, a fool of some notoriety at the Tudor’s Court, from the circumstance of his being the first jester who wore a wig. There is an entry from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chambers, quoted in the Archæologia, to the following effect:--“Paid for Saxton, the King’s fool, for a wig, 20_s._” Is it not possible that this jester may have assumed this mode in order to ridicule the new fashion of the ladies, who had now, for the first time in England, adopted the wig--which English lords had begun to wear as early as the reign of Stephen? However this may be, the above is all we know of Saxton in his capacity of fool to Henry. How Sommers looked at Court, the following entry will sufficiently show:--“For making a doublet of worsted, lined with canvass and cotton, for William Som’ers, our fool. Item, for making of a coat and a cap of green cloth, fringed with red crape and lined with frieze, for our said fool. Item, for making of a doublet of fustian, lined with cotton and canvass, for our said fool. For making of a coat of green cloth, with hood to the same, fringed with white and lined with frieze and buckram, for our fool aforesaid.”