enterprise against the enormities yet in the Queen’s closet retained (although without the Queen’s express commandment these toys were laid aside, till now a-late), I shall, with my hearty commendations, commit you and us all to the mighty protection of the living God.” A gentleman who could so boldly write of the “enormities in the Queen’s closet,” may well have ventured to employ a licensed jester to remove them. The editors of the Parker correspondence, John Bruce, Esq., and the Rev. T. Perowne, suggest that the word “patesing” refers to the _Pates_, Bishop of Worcester, in Mary’s time. This indeed is probable enough; but if it be true that, in 1559, Knollys employed Pace to disfigure the Queen’s closet, the term _may_ have reference to the act committed by her Majesty’s fool. Pass we on now from Pace, and the question connected with him, to one of those fools who were rather hangers-on about court, than actually, exclusively and officially, engaged in the Royal service. Such a one seems to have been that Charles Chester, who resembled those official French jesters who found more delight in annoying the courtiers by his sarcasms, than amusing them, or his Sovereign, by his wit. Chester was especially severe in addressing coarse strictures on Raleigh and Lord Knollys, in their own hearing. Sir Walter resolved to be revenged; and to accomplish it, they invited Chester to supper. The buffoon accepted the invitation without any suspicion, and the two noble gentlemen made him exceedingly drunk at a repast at which he had eaten like Gargantua. Taking him in this condition, with the help of several servants, they fastened him up in a corner of a court-yard, and then some masons, engaged for the occasion, built a brick wall close round his person, and right up to his chin. They kept him there many hours, under a threat of building him in altogether. The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror.