The first of the household fools named by Armin, “Jack Oates,” carried a small black-jack quart at his girdle, for Jack’s delight was in beer. He was tall, unwieldly, misshapen. He was given to sport, was quite as much given to swear, was conceited, gamesome, gleesome, “apt to joys,”--but “nastie.” He was the servant, or jester, of Sir William Hollis, whom he called “Willy,” and otherwise used with great familiarity. When strange servants came to the house, he was addicted to setting them at loggerheads; and once, when an earl, arriving on a visit, greeted Lady Hollis, at her husband’s side, by a kiss, Jack Oates gave him a box of the ear, for which Sir William gave the jester a whipping. He deserved as much, for his sorry excuse for giving a cuff to the Earl. “He asked the Earl where his hand was. ‘Here,’ quoth he. With that Jack shakes him by it, and says:--‘I mistook it before, not knowing your ear from your hand; being so like one another.’” The compliment was so ill-turned that Oates was scourged for this also. This fool could not bear to be in the hall, like him in Mr. Thornbury’s ballad. “He was a little proud-minded, and was therefore altogether in the great chamber, at my lady’s or Sir William’s elbow. Sir William could arouse him to wrath, if not to wit, by threatening to hire a new jester, and yet he loved the fool above all, and that the household knew.” But the threat would sometimes cause Oates to run a muck through the hall, beating all in his way, and crying “Hang Sir Willy! Hang Sir Willy!” It is difficult to fancy how such nuisances could be tolerated, much less loved; and indeed even Sir William Hollis, who loved his fool above all, seems, or pretended, to have got weary of him. There was at least a feigned hiring of a new jester, and the noble company at dinner, on hearing it, “ting’d with a knife at the bottom of a glass, as tolling the bell for the fool,” whose colour, we are told, came and went, “like a wise man ready to make a good end.” Jack, however, had more of the brute than the sage, and he so fell upon his rival that he nearly killed him, and did actually put out one of the poor fellow’s eyes. We can credit what follows, that “ever after Jack Oates would not endure to hear any talk of any other fool, to be there,” but one can hardly credit what is added, viz.--“that the Knight durst not make such a motion.” The influence of these fellows must have been great, if they were all like Oates, and the subserviency of their masters must have been on a par with their egregious folly.