"After this Scogin went from the court, and put off his foole's garments, and came to the court like an honest man, and brought his son to the court with him, and within the court he drew his sonne up and downe by the heeles. The boy cried out, and Scogin drew the boy in every corner. At last every body had pity on the boy, and said, Sir, what doe you meane, to draw the boy about the court? Masters, said Scogin, he is my sonne, and I doe it for this cause. Every man doth say, that man or child which is drawne up in the court shall be the better as long as hee lives; and therefore I will every day once draw him up and downe the court, after that hee may come to preferment in the end." The appreciation of a good joke cannot at this time have been very great or very general, for Scogin's jests were wonderfully popular during at least a century, from the first half of the sixteenth century. They passed through many editions, and are frequently alluded to by the writers of the Elizabethan age. The next individual whose name appears at the head of a collection of his jests, was the well-known wit, Richard Tarlton, who may be fairly considered as court fool to Queen Elizabeth. His jests belong to the same class as those of Skelton and Scogin, and if possible, they present a still greater amount of dulness. Tarlton's jests were soon followed by the "merrie conceited jests" of George Peele, the dramatist, who is described in the title as "gentleman, sometimes student in Oxford;" and it is added that in these jests "is shewed the course of his life, how he lived; a man very well knowne in the city of London and elsewhere." In fact, Peele's jests are chiefly curious for the striking picture they give us of the wilder shades of town life under the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.