exceedingly barbarous and vulgar, that they would disgrace the most despicable Jack-pudding that ever exhibited at Bartholomew Fair: and even when he was more perfectly equipped in his party-coloured coat and hood, and completely decorated with bells,' his improvements are of such a nature as seem to add but little to his respectability, much less qualify him as a companion for kings and noblemen. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the fool, or more properly the jester, was a man of some ability; and, if his character has been strictly drawn by Shakespeare and other dramatic writers, the entertainment he afforded consisted in witty retorts and sarcastical reflections; and his licence seems, upon such occasions, to have been very extensive. Sometimes, however, these gentlemen overpassed the appointed limits, and they were, therefore, corrected or discharged. The latter misfortune happened to Archibald Armstrong, jester to King Charles the First. The wag happened to pass a severe jest upon Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, which so highly offended the supercilious prelate, that he procured an order from the King in council for his discharge." probably moved them as the animal altered its cry. The other is riding on a stick with a bell, having a blown bladder attached to it." 1 "This figure," referred to by Strutt, "has a stick surmounted with a bladder, if I mistake not, which is in lieu of a bauble, which we frequently see representing a fool's head, with hood and bells, and a cock's comb upon the hood, very handsomely carved." William Summers, jester to Henry the Eighth, was habited "in a motley jerkin, with motley hosen." -History of Jack of Newbury. 2 The order for Archy's discharge was as follows: "It is, this day, (March 11, 1637,) ordered by his Majesty, with the advice of the board, that Archibald Armstrong, the King's Fool, for certain scandalous words, of a high nature, spoken by him against the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, his Grace, and proved to be uttered by him by two witnesses, shall have his coat pulled over his head, and be discharged the king's service, and banished the court; for which the Lord Chamberlain of the King's household is prayed and required to give order to be executed." And immediately the same was put in execution.-Rushworth's Collections, part 2, vol. i. p. 471. The same authority, p. 470, says, "It 'so happened that, on the 11th of the said March, that Archibald, the King's Fool, said to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he was going to the council-table, 'Whea's feule now? Doth not your Grace hear the news from Striveling about the Liturgy?' with other words of reflection. This was presently complained of to the council, which produced the ensuing order." SCARLET, STOKESLEY, AND LITTLE JOHN. These appear to have been Robin Hood's companions, from the following old ballad :: Among the extracts given by Lysons, from the Churchwardens and Chamberlains' Accounts of Kingston-uponThames, an entry has been already quoted" for Little John's cote." Douce says, Little John "is first mentioned, together with Robin Hood, by Fordun, the Scottish historian, who wrote in the fourteenth century (Scotichron. ii. 104), and who speaks of the celebration of the story of these persons in the theatrical performances of his time, and of the minstrels' songs relating to them, which he says the common people preferred to all other romances." TOM THE PIPER, WITH TABOUR AND PIPE. Among the extracts already quoted in a note from Lysons's Environs of London, there is one entry which shows that the Piper was sent (probably to make collections) round the country. Tollett, in the description of his window, says, to prove No. 9 to be Tom the Piper, Steevens has very happily quoted these lines from Drayton's third Eclogue :- "Myself above Tom Piper to advance, Who so bestirs him in the Morris-dance, His tabour, tabour-stick, and pipe attest his profession; the feather in his cap, his sword, and silver-tinctured shield1 may denote him to be a squire-minstrel, or a minstrel of the superior order. Chaucer, 1721, p. 181, says: "Minstrels 1 Douce says: "What Mr. Tollett has termed his silver shield seems a mistake for the lower part, or flap, of his stomacher."—Illustr. of Shaksp ii. 463. used a red hat." Tom Piper's bonnet is red, faced of turned up with yellow, his doublet blue, the sleeves blue, turned up with yellow, something like red muffetees at his wrists; over his doublet is a red garment, like a short cloak with arm-holes, and with a yellow cape; his hose red, and garnished across and perpendicularly on the thighs with a narrow yellow lace. His shoes are brown. THE HOBBY-HORSE. Tollett, in his description of the Morris-dancers in his window, is induced to think the famous Hobby-horse to be the King of the May, though he now appears as a juggler and a buffoon, from the crimson foot-cloth, fretted with gold, the golden bit, the purple bridle, with a golden tassel, and studded with gold, the man's purple mantle with a golden border, which is latticed with purple, his golden crown, purple cap, with a red feather and with a golden knop. "Our Hobby, he adds, "is a spirited horse of pasteboard, in which the master dances and displays tricks of legerdemain, such as the threading of the needle, the mimicking of the whigh-hie, and the daggers in the nose, &c., as Ben Jonson acquaints us, and thereby explains the swords in the man's cheeks. What is stuck in the horse's mouth I apprehend to be a ladle, ornamented with a ribbon. Its use was to receive the spectators' pecuniary donations. The colour of the Hobby-horse is reddish-white, like the beautiful blossom of the peach-tree. The man's coat, or doublet, is the only one upon the window that has buttons upon it; and the right side of it is yellow, and the left red." In the old play of the Vow-Breaker, or the Fayre Maid of Clifton, 1636, by William Sampson, is the following dialogue between Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, and Ball, which throws great light upon this now obsolete character : -- 1 The foot-cloth, however, was used by the fool. In Braithwaite's Strappado for the Divell, we read: "Erect our aged fortunes, make them shine, Not like Foole in's foot-cloath, but like Time "Ball. But who shall play the Hobby-horse? Major? Master "Miles. I hope I looke as like a Hobby-horse as Master Major. I have not liv'd to these yeares, but a man woo'd thinke I should be old enough and wise enough to play the Hobby-horse as well as ever a Major on 'em all. Let the Major play the Hobby-horse among his brethren, an he will; I hope our towne ladds cannot want a Hobby-horse. Have I practic'd my reines, my carree'res, my pranckers, my ambles, my false trotts, my smooth ambles, and Canterbury paces, and shall Master Major put me besides the Hobby-horse? Have I borrowed the fore horse-bells, his plumes, and braveries, nay, had his mane new shorne and frizl'd, and shall the Major put me besides the Hobby-horse? Let him hobby-horse at home, and he will. Am I not going to buy ribbons and toyes of sweet Ursula for the Marian, and shall I not play the Hobby-horse? "Ball. What shall Joshua doe? "Miles. Not know of it, by any meanes; hee'l keepe more stir with the Hobby-horse then he did with the Pipers at Tedbury Bull-running: provide thou for the Dragon, and leave me for a Hobby-horse. "Ball. Feare not, I'le be a fiery Dragon." And afterwards, when Boote askes him: "Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, gentleman and souldier, what make you here?" "Miles. Alas, sir, to borrow a few ribbandes, bracelets, eare-rings, wyer-tyers, and silke girdles and hand-kerchers for a Morice, and a show before the Queene. "Boote. Miles, you came to steale my neece. "Miles. Oh Lord! Sir, I came to furnish the Hobby-horse. "Boote. Get into your Hobby-horse gallop, and be gon then, or I'le Moris-dance you-Mistris, waite you on me. [Exit. "Ursula. Farewell, good Hobby-horse.-Weehee." [Exit. Douce informs us, that the earliest vestige now remaining of the Hobby-horse is in the painted window at Betley, already described. The allusions to the omission of the Hobby-horse are frequent in the old plays; and the line, For O, for O, the Hobby-horse is forgot,' is termed by Hamlet an epitaph, which Theobald supposed, with great probability, to have been satirical. [Compare also Ben Jonson, ["But see, the Hobby-horse is forgot. To supply his want with faces, A scene in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleased, act iv., best shows the sentiments of the Puritans on this occasion. [The following lines occur in a poem on London, in MS. Harl. 3910:: "In Fleet strete then I heard a shoote: I putt off my hatt, and I made no staye, For so, God save mee! a Morrys-daunce : To see the Hobby-horse how he did praunce I proffer'd them money for their coats, For my father had no oates, And I must have had the Hobbie-horse."] Whoever," says Douce, "happens to recollect the manner in which Bayes's troops, in the Rehearsal, are exhibited on the stage, will have a tolerably correct notion of a Morris Hobby-horse. Additional remains of the Pyrrhic, or sworddance, are preserved in the daggers stuck in the man's cheeks, which constituted one of the hocus-pocus or legerdemain tricks practised by this character, among which were the threading of a needle, and the transferring of an egg from one hand to the other, called by Ben Jonson, in his Every Man out of his Humour, the travels of the egg. To the horse's mouth was suspended a ladle, for the purpose of gathering money from the spectators. In later times the fool appears to have performed this office, as may be collected from Nashe's play of Summer's last Will and Testament, where this stagedirection occurs: 'Ver goes in and fetcheth out the Hobby |