Supposing Pepys’s informant to have stated the actual truth, Tom Killigrew had, not a patent, but a warrant under the King’s sign manual, addressed to the officers of the Wardrobe, directing them to pay to Killigrew, “our fool or jester,” a certain amount per annum to enable him to provide the customary official indication of a cap and bells. Such warrants had nothing in them of the character of Letters Patent. An entry of the warrant should have been made in some book kept in the Wardrobe; the warrant or sign manual may have been preserved, and probably also a docket, or short minute of it, may have been made and kept by some Master of Requests or other officer who laid the warrant before the King for his signature. If such a warrant did actually exist, it ought to be found in some wardrobe book, or collection of signed bills or warrants, or dockets. The most careful research has failed to be rewarded by the discovery of any document confirmatory of the report conveyed to Pepys. All that I could find in conjunction with Mr. Bruce, or, I should rather say, all that his antiquarian zeal, patience, curiosity, and unwearied good-nature could find for me, consisted of several entries which show that Killigrew was in the receipt of various payments made by the Crown; but none of these show him to have been an official court jester. The only approach to a proof is, that he is styled “one of the Grooms of the Chamber,” a style by which Tarleton was designated when he was jester to Elizabeth.