1697. The Lord Mayor issued an Ordinance “for the suppression of vicious practices in Bartholomew fair, as obscene, lascivious and scandalous plays, comedies, and farces, unlawful games and interludes, drunkenness, &c., strictly charging all constables and other officers to use the utmost diligence in prosecuting the same.” _Vide_ “Postman” of this date. Political allusions were very freely made in the amusements of the Fair; and sometimes these brought speedy retaliation. Thus, in the present year William Philips, a Zany or Jack Pudding, was arrested and publicly whipped for perpetrating in the fair a jest on the repressive tendencies of the Government, which the poet Prior has condensed and preserved for us. The said clown made his appearance on the exterior stage of the show with a tongue in his left hand, and a black pudding in his right. Professing to have learned an important secret, by which he hoped to profit, he communicated it to the mountebank, in words recorded by Prior thus:— Be of your patron’s mind whate’er he says; Sleep very much, think little, and talk less: Mind neither good nor bad, nor right nor wrong; But eat your pudding, slave, and hold your tongue. This same W. Philips is suspected to have an important history of his own—indeed, to have been something besides a clown. He is believed to have been the author of the “Revengeful Queen,” published in 1698; also of “Alcamenes and Menelippa,” and of a farce called “Britons, Strike Home,” which was acted in a booth in Bartholomew Fair. Relating to him is also supposed to have been a book published in 1688, of which nothing but the title-page is now known to exist. This is preserved in the Harleian collection, viz., “The Comical History of the famous Merry Andrew, W. Phill., Giving an account of his Pleasant Humours, Various Adventures, Cheats, Frolicks, and Cunning Designs, both in City and Country.” A copy of this would now command a large price. Another of the great show characters of this period was Joseph Clark, the “Posturer.” He is the “whimsical fellow” mentioned by Addison in the “Guardian,” No. 102. He was the son of a distiller in Shoe Lane, and was intended for the medical profession. This did not suit his views, nor did the trade of a mercer, to which he was next put. He probably became buffoon in the Court of the Duke of Buckingham. Finally he appeared in the Fair. His performance chiefly consisted in the imitation of every kind of human deformity; and he is said to have imposed so completely upon Molins, the famous surgeon, as to be dismissed by him as an incurable cripple! There is a notice of him in the “Philosophical Transactions,” where it is related that he “had such an absolute command of all his muscles and joints that he could disjoint almost his whole body.” A portrait in Tempest’s collection represents him in the act of shouldering his leg, an antic which is imitated by a monkey. Frost’s “Old showman,” p. 59.