In this suit and office, Will’s reputation so stirred Shropshire, that his old uncle trudged up to town to visit him at court. The uncle was no ill man to look at, for when the “kinde old man,” as Armin calls him, entered Greenwich, and on asking the way to the palace, was laughed at by saucy pages, who directed him across the water to Blackwall, others pitied his simplicity, and had respect for a man “with a buttoned cap, a lockram falling band (coarse but clean), a russet coat, a white belt of a horse-hide (right horse-collar, white leather), a close round breech of russet sheep’s-wool, with a long stock of white kersey, a high shoe with yellow buckles, all white with dust,--for that day, the good old man had come three-and-twenty miles on foot.” Lusty old yeoman! How much more respectable than the flaunting “gard and gentlewomen in their windows,” who “had much sport” to see him pass on his way. But the old man thought his nephew as good as any of them, and, with dignified self-possession, inquires,--“if there be not a gentleman in the court dwelling, called by the name of Master Will Sommers.” This was giving Will a high position, but it was recognized; and the old uncle was led to Will, who was taking an afternoon sleep in the park, with his head on a cushion supplied by a woman whose son, addicted to the gentle pursuit of piracy, Will saved from the hangman and the gallows at Blackwall. After a little fooling and much hearty greeting, Will took his uncle by the hand: “Come,” says he, “thou shalt see Harry, Cockle,--the only Harry in England;” so he led him to the chamber of presence, and ever and anon cries out, “Awere! room for me and my uncle! and, knaves, bid him welcome!” This was done, perhaps, with a little mock gravity, but Armin tells us that “the old man thought himself no earthly man, they honoured him so much.” Will, however, paused awhile, for he saw his uncle’s country suit, pronounced it unfit for the King’s presence, and, telling the old man that he must first don a full court-dress, Will takes him to his chamber, and attires him in his best fool’s suit, cap and all. The simple old man simply wore the costume, and when the two stood before the King, Harry laughed at the ridiculous spectacle. The old man, and Will too, seem to have had some purpose in the whole affair, for when the King encouraged them to talk, the uncle bade Will tell him all about Tirrell’s Frith,--a common, of the use of which the Shropshire poor had been deprived by Master Tirrell, who had enclosed it. The King was so interested that he gave orders that the common should be thrown open again; and thereby the sturdy old uncle had not his long walk for nothing, seeing also that, when he returned to his native county, “he, while he lived, for that deed was allowed bayly of the common, which place was worth twenty pound a year.”