“Lord North held old Bladwell in his custody as a lunatic, and carried the poor fellow about with him. His lordship was desirous of having and holding Bladwell as his fool, but the obstacle was, not that Bladwell wanted wit, but that he could not be proved to be a fool at all. He had some spirit of mischief in him, of the fool’s quality; as, for instance, when Lord North, taking Bladwell with him to a gentleman’s house, left his lunatic companion in the dining-room, while lord and gentleman conferred together in another room. Bladwell, left alone, amused himself with looking at the figures on the tapestry, and happening to espy that of a jester among them, he quickly cut the figure from the costly arras, and laid it flat on the ground. When the gentlemen returned to the dining room, the owner of the house, observing the damage done to his tapestry, was very indignant; but Bladwell sought to appease his wrath by remarking, “Pray be content, Sir, I have saved your property, and not injured it; for if my lord there had seen the fool, he would have wanted to have and hold him in his own household; and you would have lost that which you may now keep. I have done you a service, Sir.” During the reign of James I., Sir Christopher Paston was pronounced by a jury, to be in the same condition as “old Bladwell” (who was a wealthy Norfolk gentleman). The knight’s family seem to have had charge of their kinsman, whose infirmity was made the ground for a retort, as will be seen by the following incident, recorded also by Sir Nicholas L’Estrange. “Jack Paston began one time to jest upon Capon (who sat very silent and replied nothing), and told him merrily, that he never met with such a dull, clay-pated fool, that could not answer a word, and bade him remember he out-fooled him once. ‘No, faith,’ says Capon, ‘I were a fool indeed, to deal with you at that weapon. I know the strain of the Pastons too well, and you must needs be right bred for it; for I am sure your race has not been without a good fool these fifty years and upwards.’” It would seem, too, that ambassadors carried in their train individuals who represented the jesters at the court from which the envoys were despatched, even as the latter represented the sovereigns by whom they were commissioned. Thus, when the Earl of Carlisle repaired to the court of France, in 1616, deputed by James I., he went thither at the head of an extraordinary retinue. “The Lady Haddington,” says Mr. John Chamberlain, in a contemporary letter, quoted in Nichols’s ‘Progresses of James I.,’ “hath bestowed a favour upon him that will not easily fall to the ground, for she says, the flower and beauty of his embassy consists in three mignards, three dancers, and three fools or buffoons. The mignards are himself, Sir Harry Rich, and Sir George Goring. The dancers, Sir Gilbert Hoghton, Auchmuty, and Abercromby. The fools, or buffoons, are Sir Thomas Jermyn,[E] Sir Ralph Sheldon, and Thomas Badger.”