These knights were not the only individuals of the court of James I, who might aspire to fill the office of fool, either in foreign palaces or at home. Sir George Fitz-Jeffrey might have ranked with any of the above. L’Estrange (quoted by Mr. Thoms) says, he might have been “begged for a fool;” and in proof of the good ground he has for the assertion, tells the following incident, which occurred at Royston in 1607. “Fitz-Jeffrey being brought up a backstair to the King, to be knighted, was turned out another way, to pass through the presence chamber, which he entered, with his cap on his head, and many of the nobility of the court being there bare, and he, like the Egyptian Apis, thinking they did ‘Sir reverence’ to the new knight, he came to them very courteously, and desired them to be covered, for truly it was more than he expected at their hands, though his Majesty had conferred a great honour upon him. They thanked him very kindly, and desired to be excused, for they knew their duties, and so long as he was in the room they would not be covered. Upon that, away goes the fool, so puffed and swollen with his new honour, as when he comes home, he stuffs the clothes he was knighted in, and hangs them up in his hall for ensigns and monuments of an incomparable coxcomb, worthy to be begged by his respective gentleman of the presence-chamber.” When such “tame knaves” might be had for nothing, it is almost a matter of surprise that the Sovereign cared for other buffoons about him. But, at the court of James I. both King and Queen found pleasure in maintaining official fools upon their household. Of the fool of Anne of Denmark, that sovereign lady who purchased precious stones so liberally of the father of Herrick the poet--old Herrick, the jeweller--we know little but the name. In the accounts of John Lord Harrington, of Exton, as Treasurer of the Chambers to the wife of James I., Horace Walpole found an item--“Paid to T. Mawe, for the diet and lodging of Tom Derry, her Majesty’s jester, thirteen weeks, 10_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._” At between sixteen and seventeen shillings per week, Tom Derry cannot be said to have been a very expensive toy to her Majesty. He was of importance enough to have his name given to a gallery at Somerset House, in which he used to loiter and exchange jokes with lords and ladies. An entry in the weekly accounts of the time of Charles I. proves this, inasmuch as mention is there made of an order “for colouring Tom Derry’s gallery at Somerset House.” Tom is also incidentally mentioned in the extracts from the accounts of revels at court, edited for the Shakespeare Society by Mr. P. Cunningham; and to this extract my attention was kindly directed by Mr. Cunningham himself;--“To Thomas Derry, her Majesty’s jester, upon a warrant signed by the Lord Chamberlain, dated at Whitehall, 16th July, 1612, for the diet of the said Thomas Derry, and John Mawe his man, from the 25th day of December, 1611, to the 24th