Having mentioned the faithful fool of Cardinal Wolsey,--Patch,--I cannot pass over the simpleton, or Morio, Patteson, retained in the household of Wolsey’s successor in the Chancellorship, Sir Thomas More. All persons who are familiar with the biography of the latter eminent individual, will remember how heartily Sir Thomas, from his youth upwards, was addicted to jesting. When he was a page, being then fifteen years of age, in the family of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, he kept the octogenarian prelate and all his guests in roars of laughter, as he waited on them at table. Morton was delighted with the frolicsome boy, who, especially at Christmas and other joyous seasons, was worth any number of ordinary household fools, seeing that his improvised jests were superior to anything done or uttered by the professional joker. More’s manner on these occasions was, however, quite after the fashion of “cousin Motley.” Thus, when the players were representing some comic drama, for the entertainment of their reverend patron, “young More,” as Roper relates in his Life, “would suddenly step up among the players, and, never studying before upon the matter, make often a part of his own invention which was so witty, and so full of jests, that he alone made more sport than all the players besides; for which, his towardliness, the Cardinal much delighted in him, and would often say of him to divers of the nobility who at sundry times dined with him, ‘This child here, waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous rare man.’” As More, in his youth, gratified Cardinal Morton by his wit, so, in his manhood, by his wit as well as his wisdom, he afforded amusement to his capricious Sovereign. When Henry had had enough of the outpouring of knowledge from More (who was yet but Under-Sheriff of London _and_ Master of the Requests) on astronomy, geometry, and divinity; then, “because,” says his biographer, “he was of a very pleasant disposition, it pleased His Majesty and the Queen, after the Council had supped, commonly to call for him to hear his pleasant jests.” These latter must have been of a very different quality from those which the King had been wont to make merry with from the lips of Will Sommers, and we cannot be surprised at their exciting such admiration in the Sovereign that he detained the illustrious jester whole weeks at Court, away from his home and domestic enjoyments. Sir Thomas beheld himself in great peril of descending to the vocation of joker in ordinary, and he devised a witty remedy in order to escape the uncoveted distinction. “When Sir Thomas perceived his pleasant conceits so much to delight them that he could scarce once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and children, and that he could not be two days absent from the Court, but he must be sent for again; he, much misliking this restraint of his liberty, began therefore to dissemble his mirth, and so, little by little, to