On the Issue Roll, 1 March, 1665–6, there is notice of a payment of £100, being a quarter’s annuity granted to Killigrew and Cecilie, his wife. In 1666, the same Roll contains notices of payments on account of two annuities, one of £400 per annum, which he held jointly with his wife; and one of the annual value of £500. These annuities are duly ordered to be paid, at later dates, and from various sources. Sometimes there were no effects in the treasury, and then the Queen’s purse seems to have been tapped for the payment. In the Pells Enrolments, 1675, Killigrew receives £200, to be expended by him in support of his office as Master of the Revels; and, later, we come upon an entry of £1050, to be paid to him for getting up certain plays during the preceding nine years. I may add, that in a succeeding year, the 18th of August, 1678, there was another appointment of greater interest than the above, and which shows how different, now at least, was the court poet from the court fool. I allude to the appointment of Dryden as poet laureate. The letters patent making this appointment are entered on the Pells Book of Enrolments of the date above mentioned. In this document, Dryden’s predecessors, Gower and Chaucer, are spoken of as knights; the salary is fixed at £200 per annum; and directions are given that the butt of canary, or sack, shall be taken out of the King’s cellars at Whitehall, “yearly, and once a year.” At the above date, Killigrew was Master of the Revels; and if he were jester also, it may be said that the court of England had never seen so accomplished a “fool,” nor so eminent a laureate, as now figured on the household roll of Charles II. The position of Tom Killigrew at Court was, however, so closely allied to that of the official jester, as to forbid its being passed over without some brief notice. Killigrew was the son of a baronet; and his earliest vocation and amusement, was that of lingering about the doors of the theatre till he was invited in to play some imp, or any other character that a boy could enact. In this way he commenced a career which ended in his being, with Buckingham and others, one of the “merry villains” in the household of Charles II.