At this time, "the little clown's" full-dress was embroidered coat and breeches, silk stockings, paste buckles, and cocked-hat; and a guinea in his pocket, which he one day gave to a distressed woman, for which act his father gave him a caning (though not till five months after), which he remembered as long as he lived. Old Grimaldi died in 1788, leaving 1,500_l._, but the executor becoming bankrupt, the two sons lost the whole of their fortune. Joe stuck to the stage, and at Drury Lane Mr. Sheridan raised his salary, unasked, to 1_l._ a-week. His leisure was now passed in breeding pigeons and collecting insects; of the latter he had a cabinet of 4,000 specimens. He now removed with his mother to Pentonville, where the house is to this day pointed out in Penton Place. About this time, early one morning, Joe found near the Tower of London a purse of gold coin and a bundle of Bank-notes, which, on his way home, he sat down to count upon the spot where now stands the Eagle Tavern, in the City Road. There were 380 guineas and 200_l._ in notes, making in the whole 599_l._ Grimaldi repeatedly advertised in the daily newspapers the finding of the money, but he never heard a syllable regarding the treasure he had so singularly acquired. His maternal grandfather, it appears, once left a purse of gold, nearly 400_l._, upon a post near the Royal Exchange, and found it there untouched after the lapse of nearly an hour. Joe Grimaldi appeared, as usual, at Sadler's Wells in 1788, but at this time his salary of fifteen shillings a-week was reduced to three, on which pittance he remained for three years, making himself generally useful: in 1794, he had grown so popular at Sadler's Wells, that his salary had risen from three shillings to four pounds. In 1800, Joe married Miss Maria Hughes, eldest daughter of a proprietor and the resident manager of Sadler's Wells: she died in the same year, and was interred in the grave-yard of St. James's, Clerkenwell, where the following was inscribed on a tablet at her request:-- "Earth walks on earth like glittering gold; Earth says to earth we are but mould; Earth builds on earth castles and towers; Earth says to earth all shall be ours."