English Court fools seem in many cases to have had a lively time, besides making themselves occasionally of valuable service in times of emergency. Thus, going back to early times, it is recorded how Gollet aroused William the Conqueror when a conspiracy was formed against his life; and tradition tells how Blondel, “that buffoon of a minstrel,” discovers his captive master, Richard I., by means of a song. King John appears to have recompensed his fool in an unusual and a liberal fashion by giving him a landed estate; and Edward I. kept a joculator in constant attendance upon him, one of whom is said to have slain an assassin at Ptolemais, that wounded his patron with a poisoned knife. A female jester amused the Court of Edward II., and when this monarch was keeping Whitsuntide at Westminster Hall, “this joculatrix rode into the hall on a closely clipped horse, and caracolled round about the tables, to the great amusement of the company.” A noted jester was Scogan, who was attached to the Court of Edward IV.; and, of the many amusing stories told respecting him, it is said that he borrowed a sum of money from the King, which, when he was unable to pay back, he fell sick and died, requesting his friends to take care that the King encountered the funeral. His Majesty did so, and, regretting the loss of his merry follower, he freely forgave Scogan his debt, upon hearing which, to the astonishment of Edward, he jumped up, exclaiming, “It is so revivifying that it has called me to life again.”
Patch, fool to Henry VIII., once besought the King to permit him to exact an egg from every husband who was dissatisfied with his wife. The King granted him a warrant, the ink of which was scarcely dry when the jester, with mock gravity, demanded the first egg from the King, remarking, “Your Grace belongs to the class of husbands on whom I am entitled to make levy.”
Will Sommers, whose alleged portrait at Hampton Court is familiar to most persons, was another jester at the Court of Henry VIII., and Will Saxton, the first Court fool to wear a wig, amused the King up to the last, and held office under Edward VI.
Many laughable anecdotes are told of John Heywood, named by Henry VIII. “King’s Jester,” whose wit and humour moved, writes Warton, Mary’s “rigid muscles” and “her sullen solemnity was not proof against his songs, his rhymes, and his jests.” Once when the Queen remarked that the priests must forego their wives, he replied, “Then your Grace must allow them _lemmans_ (sweethearts), for the clergy cannot live without sauce.” On another occasion, when Mary asked, “What wind has blown you to Court?” he familiarly answered, “One that I might see your Majesty, and the other that your Majesty might see me.” On the death of Mary in 1558 he withdrew to Mechlin, where he passed the closing years of his life.