The History of Court Fools by Dr. (John) Doran

Author:Dr. (John) Doran [Doran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780838306567
Google: grByzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Haskell House
Published: 1969-06-15T02:43:34+00:00

and joked himself out of his enviable position. The attempt to force the English Liturgy upon the Scottish congregations was food for his saucy wit; and when he heard of the orthodox Lizzie, who had flung a stool at the head of the liturgical Dean, in St. Giles’s, Edinburgh, he called it “the stool of repentance.” The dissensions in the North began to assume a very serious aspect; and much uneasiness, with a corresponding amount of obstinacy, was experienced at court. Laud was, right or wrong in intention, the cause of all, and as Archie one day met the Archbishop, on his way to the Council Chamber, he could not forbear wagging his rude tongue with the query, “Wha’s fool noo?”

For this offence the jester was immediately taken before the King in Council, where the prelate named his grounds of offence, and the fool pleaded the privilege of his coat. He pleaded in vain, as the following order, dated Whitehall, 11th March, 1637, will show:—

“It is this day 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 of 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.”

The provocation had been long, and had often driven Laud into fits of unseemly passion, which, indeed, drove the prelate to an attempt to bring the wretched jester before that dreaded tribunal, the Star Chamber. On this quarrel and Laud’s vindictiveness, Osborn has a striking passage.

“I shall instance as a blot in the greatest rochet that did in my time appear in the court of England, or indeed any I ever heard of since the Reformation, who managed a quarrel with Archy the King’s fool, and by endeavouring to explode him the court, rendered him, at last, so considerable, by calling the Prelate’s enemies (which were not a few) to his rescue, as the fellow was not only able to continue the dispute for divers years, but received such encouragement from standers-by as he hath oft, in my hearing, belched in his face such miscarriages as he was really guilty of, and might, but for this foul-mouthed Scot, have been forgotten; adding such other reproaches of his own as the dignity of his calling and greatness of his parts could not in reason or manners admit; though so far hoodwinked with passion as not to discern that all the fool did was but a symptom, of the strong and inveterate distemper raised long before in the hearts of his countrymen against the calling of bishops, out of whose former ruins, the major part of the Scottish nobility had feathered, if not built, their nests.

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