Pepys calls Killigrew “a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King.” When the immortal diarist was in the Admiralty yacht, off the coast of Holland, in 1660, among the “persons of honour” also there, Killigrew is named. “He told us many merry stories,” says Pepys; “one, how he wrote a letter three or four days ago to the Princess Royal, about a Queen Dowager of Judea and Palestine, that was at the Hague _incognita_, that made love to the King, which was Mr. Cary (a courtier’s) wife, that had been a nun, who are all married to Jesus.” Two years later, when the clerk met the courtier at the Tower, the former designates the wit of the jester as consisting of “poor and frothy discourse.” In February, 1666–7, Killigrew narrated to Pepys what he had done, since he was a manager, for the improvement of the stage; rendering it “a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3lbs. of tallow. Now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as a bear-garden. Then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes on the ground, and everything else mean; now, all otherwise.” It was in the following year that Killigrew is said to have received his fee for the purchase of his cap and bells. What is more certain is, that in the last year named, he and gentlemen of similar mirthful quality relieved the depression of their spirits at Sir Thomas Teddiman’s funeral, by reading aloud, or listening to, a variety of comic ballads! The respect which Killigrew received at the hands of Rochester, appears to have been exactly that which an over-bold fool might win from a courtier equally proud and dissolute. It was for some fool’s offence given at a banquet at the Dutch Ambassador’s, at which the King himself was present, that Rochester dealt the saucy wit a stinging smack on the face. Tom took it as Tom Derry might have taken a cuff from a Lord; and Rochester lost no favour with the King for having thus assaulted one of his Majesty’s “merry villains.” Killigrew died in March 1682. Evelyn records in his Diary, the execution of Vrats, the murderer, who believed that “God would deal with him like a gentleman;” but he leaves Tom’s departure from the festive scene unhonoured by a word of remark.