SOURCE: “Killigrew's Cap and Bells,” in Theatre Notebook, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, 1984, pp. 99-105.

[In the following essay, Walsh assesses the validity of the persistent assertions that Killigrew was literally Charles II's court jester.]

The wit and playwright Thomas Killigrew enjoyed many honours under Charles II. He was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a Chamberlain to the Queen, and Master of the Revels. As patentee of the Theatre Royal, he was one of the founders of the Restoration stage. His long friendship with the King both during the Exile and after the Restoration does not, however, account for the rumour that Killigrew held yet another office close to the person of the King, that of his Fool or Jester.

Pepys mentions Killigrew several times in the Diary. He describes him as a “merry droll”, and in the entry for 13 February 1667/8 offers a biographical detail which has long puzzled students of the Restoration:

I did meet with several people, among others Mr. Brisband, who tells me in discourse that Tom Killigrew hath a fee out of the Wardrobe for cap and bells, under the title of the King's Foole or Jester; and may with privilege revile or jeere any body, the greatest person, without offence, by the privilege of his place.¹

It was by no means uncommon for favourites of a dissolute monarch, such as Charles or his grandfather James I, to be labelled jesters and buffoons. But Pepys is not speaking metaphorically. He specifically refers to a fou à titre d’office complete with the “privilege” of unlimited mockery, an office held in earlier reigns by members of the lower classes, if not by outright half-wits and grotesques.

Pepys's entry, moreover, receives some corroboration from other sources. Anthony a Wood also mentions the office of jester, but gives an altogether softer impression of Killigrew's character:

He was a person in great esteem for his lepid vein of wit in conversation, and therefore beloved of king Charles II, whose jester he was while groom of his bed chamber; and much respected by all for the generosity and good acts he did for several poor cavaliers.²

Richard Flecknoe, in a pamphlet contemporaneous with Pepys's entry, attacked Killigrew for these same jesting activities:

Although he had a better place in Court than he deserv’d, yet, he would needs add the Buffoons place unto it, as more suitable to his humour and disposition, and more priviledge to abuse and raile at every one.³

This closely parallels Pepys but the existence of an actual “Buffoons place” is only implied. Still, the tradition of Killigrew as the King's jester must have been fairly widespread, for it formed the basis of a simile in a political poem, c. 1678, once attributed to Marvell:

As Killigrew buffoons his Master, they [the priests]
Droll on their God but a much duller way.(4)

Needless to say, the terms “droll,” “jester”, and “buffoon” were far from encomiums in the Restoration period. All the above quotations take for granted that Killigrew was acting somewhat beneath his station, indulging in low foolery rather than high wit. The problem remains, however, whether the office of jester was officially recognized and whether a particular costume was involved.

Later commentators have not found it easy to picture a seventeenth-century gentleman in the cap-and-bells of the medieval fool. Francis Douce was one of the first to maintain that the Killigrew jester stories “rest on no sufficient authority” and that Killigrew “had no regular appointment to such an office”. Alfred Harbage in his 1930 biography likewise dismissed Pepys and others since who have taken Brisband's report seriously. Enid Welsford went so far as to assert that “the Wardrobe accounts contain no reference to Killigrew's appointment as court-fool”.⁵ All were apparently unaware of a warrant quoted by Robert W. Lowe:

The Lord Chamberlain's records contain a copy of a warrant, dated July 12, 1661, to “deliver to Mr. Killegrew thirty yards of velvett, three dozen of fringe, and sixteene yards of Damaske for the year 1661”; and this is headed by the blunt statement “Livery for y^e Jester”⁶

The present writer failed to uncover this warrant in the Public Record Office, but found the warrant-book entry for the date bearing exactly the same wording, but without Lowe's “blunt” heading. Indeed, the complete record of Killigrew's “jester” warrants presents a far more complicated picture than had been assumed previously.

It appears from the original warrants and the entries in the warrant-books that Killigrew was issued, in even-numbered years, his livery as “Master of his Ma^jes Comoedians”, that is, as manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This consisted of “Eight yards of Bastard Scarlet & halfayard of velvett” per year, the requisition being similar to that granted the actors themselves as liveried servants of the Crown. But in addition to this livery, Killigrew also received, in odd-numbered years, the 30 yards of velvet, three dozen of fringe and 16 of damask. There is no mention, however, of “livery for y^e Jester” throughout the early 1660s. Indeed, the warrant dated 25 February 1665 indicates that the material is for “Curtaines”. I have been unable to locate the original warrant for the year of Pepys's entry, although the warrant-book repeats the information of previous years. The warrant for 19 July 1669, however, includes a small supplement to the original list of stuffs and for the first time supplies a heading. The warrant is addressed to the Master of the Wardrobe and signed by Manchester, the Lord Chamberlain. It instructs that the following be delivered “unto Mr. Thomas Killegrew”:

Thirty yards of velvett Sixteene yards of Damaske three dozen of Gold and Silver fringe & three dozen of Gold and Silver Galloome for the yeare 1669 being the Livery formerly allowed his Ma^jes Jester every Second yeare.

The above formula is repeated in the warrants of 23 October 1673 and 29 March 1675, but I have not been able to trace it beyond these dates.⁷ The overall picture is clear none the less. The fact that the material is the livery formerly allowed his Majesty's Jester indicates that the office was a sinecure, merely another rubric under which to distribute royal largess.

From these and earlier warrants searched, it was impossible to determine whether this precise list of costly material was ever granted to an earlier court jester. The most likely candidate for this figure is a fool known to both Charles and Killigrew in their youth, the famous Archie Armstrong. Archie, “the dizzard”, had grown rich in the profession of folly. He had received many gifts, and especially gifts of costly apparel, from his two kings, from several English towns, and even from foreign dignitaries.⁸ The engraved portrait of Archie by T. Cecil shows a typical courtier of the period with no hint of a motley coat under the silk and lace.⁹ A jester's “livery” in the early seventeenth century, of course, need not have been the motley coat and cap-and-bells of the medieval fool. Archie himself refers to a “jesting coate”, but what sort of garment this was is impossible to say.¹⁰ It certainly did not comprise a full 30 yards of velvet and 16 of damask, enough for several liveries and obviously an overpayment.

One of Archie Armstrong's royal plums might lie behind the special Killigrew warrants. To speculate further, the jester sinecure might have been offered in the way of compensation for the delay in obtaining for Killigrew the office of Master of the Revels. Evidently Killigrew was promised the lucrative post during the Exile, but there was already an incumbent, Sir Henry Herbert. Legal confusion results when Killigrew was appointed manager of the King's Company, independent of Herbert. Herbert refused to be pushed aside and Killigrew was forced to compromise with him in 1662. He became reversioner to the office and acted as Sir Henry's deputy until the latter's death in 1673. Killigrew's “Jester” appointment might well have had something to do with this complicated history.¹¹

These are only conjectures, but references to the office of jester to the King crop up again some 20 years later. Henry Killigrew, Thomas's only son by his first wife Cecilia, succeeded to many of his father's privileges, although his half-brother Charles continued to dominate the Theatre Royal and to occupy the office of Master of the Revels. On 13 November 1694, Narcissus Luttrell recorded that Henry had received “a warrant to be jester to the king with 300l. per ann. to be settled on him”. A letter from a certain “T.” to Anthony a Wood, also dated 13 November 1694, likewise reports that “Henry Killigrew, esq., is made the king's jester and hath a salary of 300li. per annum allowed him”.¹² Both writers mention Henry's appointment quite matter of factly among legal, military and religious appointments. There is nothing sensational about it. Henry's jester appointment receives no more comment than the commission for licensing hackney coaches also granted him that year.

The Lord Chamberlain's warrant-books corroborate. Henry was granted his father's velvet, damask, fringe and galloon, with these further specifications: the velvet and damask are crimson; the fringe is calculated at 90 ounces, the galloon at 28; “venice” point is included with the fringe; and the total livery is valued at £75 8s. and due on “Lady Day” every second year. The first warrant is dated 1694 for the previous year's livery. In 1697 Henry was again granted this livery together with arrears for the years 1691 and 1695, as well as an advance payment for 1699. There the record seems to end.¹³ Unlike his father's warrants, these do not employ the phrase “formerly allowed his Majes Jester”. Henry is simply given “his Livery as our Jester”. Again, the title could have had but little significance. In 1694 Henry Killigrew was 57 years old, a reformed rake, now a successful courtier and loyal Whig. While one might allow him a modicum of modest repartee at Court, he is unlikely to have appeared in fool's costume, exercising the unlimited privilege to “revile and jeere any body”, and certainly not his taciturn sovereign, William III. “Our Jester” was evidently for William, as for Charles, simply a special designation for one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber.

These seem to be the dry facts of the matter. The Killigrews’ jocular reputations, however, must have been responsible for keeping the court fool on the books so long. “Ill-natur’d” Henry, with whom his father is often confused, was one of the notorious “Ballers”. The elder Killigrew was evidently a more likeable fellow, his wit of a decidedly old-fashioned sort. He was, by all accounts, a lustige Rath, that type of witty counsellor and occasional buffoon exemplified by Skelton and John Heywood in the Tudor period. Several of Killigrew's witty counsels are recorded by Gerard Langbaine. Wood mentions one of his pointed masquerades, that of the pilgrim to hell “to fetch back Oliver Cromwell that he may take some care of the affairs of England”.¹⁴ Wenceslaus Hollar's satirical engraving also smacks of the court fool. It portrays Killigrew deep in thought, his pose duplicated by a monkey in a large lace collar.¹⁵ Finally, we may point to a late anecdote:

A courtier once asked him why he played the fool. “Indeed we both do so for the same reason, for want—you for want of sense, I for want of money”.¹⁶

Although apocryphal, it does reveal something fundamental about Killigrew's position. As a “mad wit” and favourite of the King, Killigrew, like Rochester, would naturally have something of the jester about him. Killigrew, however, was not rich in land or inherited income and he no doubt used his folly to help make ends meet. He was not the sort to refuse the empty title of the King's jester if it meant some extra income.

We can see that the gossip Pepys perpetuated was a rather gross exaggeration of a simply entry in the Wardrobe accounts. The antics of the Charles II's courtiers, to be sure, fascinated lesser mortals like Pepys and Brisband. Hearing of the King's extraordinary leniency towards the mad wits about him, they might well postulate the survival of the quasi-legal privileges of the court fool. “I’ll talk freer than a privileged fool” boasts a character in Killigrew's own Parson's Wedding (II, v). This is a fairly typical example of the survival of the fool in idiomatic speech. Even the most cursory examination of Restoration comic dialogue will show that, metaphorically, the fool was very much alive, complete with his medieval accoutrements of cap-and-bells, coxcomb, fool's coat and bauble. The domestic fool, as an institution, was however practically extinct in Britain. One of the last of the breed, Tom Skelton of Haigh Hall, Lancashire, died in January 1667/8.¹⁷ Archie Armstrong lived on in comfortable retirement until 1672. The cashiering of an old domestic fool figures prominently in the first scene of Shadwell's Woman-Captain (1680). He was decidedly out of fashion. Nevertheless the memory of the fool was still green, especially among those of the older generation. Mr Brisband. whom Pepys characterized as “a good schollar and sober man”, is not to be ridiculed for taking Killigrew's jester appointment literally.¹⁸ It did not require a great leap of imagination to turn that mantle of immunity enjoyed by Charles’ favourites (who wore, in fact, the livery of Gentlemen of the Bedchamber) into a literal coat of motley. The fool's coat was still a pregnant symbol. It occurred to Rochester on his deathbed as he meditated on the “Man of Sorrows” in Isaiah:

The meanness of his appearance and Person has made vain and foolish people disparage Him, because he came not in such a Fool's Coat as they delight in.¹⁹

An even more curious use of the fool's coat is to be found in John Lacy's play Sir Hercules Buffoon or, The Poetical Squire (1682). At the dénouement the antagonist, a corrupt Justice, threatens Sir Hercules with a whipping and a stand in the pillory. The knight, however, has a final trump card to play:

Sir Hercules. I deny your whipping! Pull off my coat. Look you here, sir; I am the court fool, and here's my fool's coat to protect me.

(V, iii)²⁰

This is quite enough to stop the villainous Judge, who fumes, “Death! Had ever lawyer so many tricks put upon him?” Hero and friends thus escape his clutches. Sir Hercules Buffoon is a realistic, contemporary comedy in all other respects, and so we may conclude that the fool's “privilege”, symbolized by his coat and cap-and-bells, remained a tenet of popular belief well into the Restoration. It is interesting to note that Archie Armstrong, the last of the official English court fools, did in fact plead the privilege of his coat when brought to trial by Archbishop Laud for various slanders. Archie lost his case, however. On 11 March 1637, the King and Council ordered that he “have his coat pulled over his head, and be discharged the King's service, and banished the Court”.²¹ Whatever the nature of Archie's “jesting coate”, it is clear that the principle of a fool's “privilege” had little or no effect when serious matters were involved. If Killigrew enjoyed any such special “privilege” to “revile and jeer”, it was not inherent in any of his offices or insignia, but only in his long friendship with the King.

The court fool did not simply cease to exist at any particular moment in English history. His shadowy presence continued in the popular imagination, as the vestiges of his royal grants survived in the warrant-books. It is not surprising therefore to find that Killigrew, like Rochester, and like Skelton before them, soon descended into the Jack-pudding world of the jest-book. Harbage records one eighteenth-century collection supposedly compiled by “Tom Killigrew Junior … Great Grandson to the Famous Killigrew, Jester to King Charles the Second of Merry Memory”. Killigrew also appeared in the original 1739 edition of Joe Miller's Jests or, the Wit's Vade-mecum. Tom there instructs the King's tailor to provide his Majesty's new coat with an extremely large pocket on one side and a very tiny one on the other, the one for “the Addresses of his Majesty's Subjects, the other for the Money they would give him”.²² The jest is thin, but it shows that as long as the people cherished the memory of the Merry Monarch, they were not prepared to deny him his “all licens’d Fool”.

Notes

1. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Henry B. Wheatley, 1896, I, 148; VII, 318.

2. Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. Philip Bliss, IV, 1820, 692-3. The eighteenth-century antiquary, William Oldys, used similar wording in his notes to Langbaine's Dramatic Poets.

3. Richard Flecknoe, The Life of Tomaso the Wanderer: An Attack upon Thomas Killigrew, reprinted from the original of 1667, with prefatory note by G. Thorn-Drury, 1925, 8.

4. First printed in Fourth (and Last) Collection of Poems, Satyrs, Songs, &c. 1689. The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, I, 1927, 203 and n., 325-6.

5. Francis Douce, “On the Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare”, Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners, II, 1807, 309. Alfred Harbage, Thomas Killigrew: Cavalier Dramatist 1612-1683, 1930, 133-4. Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History, 1935, 188.

6. Robert W. Lowe, Thomas Betterton, 1891, 70. Early authorities on the Fool endorse the Pepys story, but without supporting evidence—Karl Freidrich Flogel, Die Geschichte der Hofnarren, 1789, 402-3; John Doran, The History of Court Fools, 1858, 218-24. Leslie Hotson in The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage also accepts the title “Jester”.

7. Public Record Office, LC5/137, 65, 77, 147, 149, 227, 272. Original warrant 19 July 1669 among unnumbered warrants in LC5/118. Also consulted unnumbered warrants in LC5/119. Special thanks to Ms M. M. Condon of the Search Department for her assistance.

8. Archie Armstrong, DNB. T. H. Jamieson in his edition of Archie Armstrong's Banquet of Jests, 1884, supplies a list of extracts from State Papers Domestic relating to Archie. Searching the most likely of these failed to turn up any specifics as to the jester's livery, merely that “Livery or Liveries” enjoyed under James were to continue under Charles.

9. BM Print Room. Cracherode Coll. P.-3-361. This portrait was employed as the frontispiece for early editions of A Banquet of Jests where the verses, “This is no Muckle Iohn, nor Summers Will …” emphasize the fact that Archie is not to be viewed as a medieval fool.

10. Archy's Dream, sometimes Iester to his Maiestie, but exiled the Court by Canterburies malice, 1641, 1.

11. Harbage, p. 116. By coincidence, Killigrew surrendered this patent for reversion on 25 January 1667/8, just a fortnight before Pepys's entry. See Eleanore Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage/ 1660-1702, 1932, 71, n. 4. See also The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams, 1917.

12. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 1857, III, 399. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, of Oxford, 1632-1695, described by Himself, ed. Andrew Clark, V, 1891-1900, 472.

13. Public Record Office, LC5/43, ff. 124, 230v. A curious reminder of the fool's originally humble position occurs immediately above this first entry—an order of “twelve pewter large closestools” for the “necessary woman”.

14. Athenae Oxoniensis, 693 and ff. See also DNB.

15. Political and Personal Satires 1681 (British Museum), reproduced in Flecknoe's Tomaso.

16. Friedrich Nick, Die Hof- und Volk-Narren, 1861, I, 486-7. Author's translation. Substantially the same jest is assigned to “Jack Pudding” in the 1660 edition of A Banquet of Jests.

17. E. W. Ives, “Tom Skelton—A Seventeenth Century Jester”, Shakespeare Survey, 13, 1966, 93.

18. Pepys, V, 33.

19. Quoted by Bishop Gilbert Burnet in Some Passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester, 1680. Rochester: The Critical Heritage, ed. David Farley-Hills, 1972, 82-3.

20. The Dramatic Works of John Lacy, ed. James Maidment and W. H. Logan, 1874, 297. Printed c. May 1682 and first acted c. June 1684 (Harbage and Schoenbaum, Annals of English Drama).

21. Banquet of Jests, xv-xvi and passim for other contemporary references to Archie's coat.

22. Harbage, 135, n. 66. Joe Miller's Jests or, The Wit's Vade-mecum, 1739, 18-19. Killigrew also appears in William Pinkethman's Book of Jests, 1721. Rochester figures in such collections as Rochester's Jests or, The Quintessence of Wit, 1758, and the chap-book Joaks upon Joaks.