I must not omit, however, to relate an incident of this reign in connection with the subject of the license of the fool. If the latter official was not to be found at court, his representatives still lingered in the fairs, and exercised a privilege which the Royal authority, nevertheless, was not slow to oppose. In 1693, the magnificent Smyrna fleet set sail from our shores, under convoy of a squadron of English and Dutch men-of-war, at the head of which were Killigrew, Delaval, and Rooke. The first two abandoned the last admiral; and Rooke, left to encounter the whole maritime force of France in the Bay of Lagos, suffered severe loss, and the rich Smyrna fleet (with some exceptions) was scattered, sunk, burnt, or otherwise destroyed. This catastrophe, the return of the first two admirals to Torbay, and the disaster to “the Turkey fleet,” excited mingled indignation and grief. As the fool of the French King Philip made use of the defeat of the French fleet by the navy of Edward, whereon to exercise his wit and rouse the patriotic anger of his master, so now the fools and merry-andrews congregated at Bartholomew fair, in the vicinity of the edifice where Rahere the jester had founded a Priory in honour of the Apostle, made use of the public dishonour and loss, in order to keep alive the popular execration against those wretched and incapable ministers, to whose incapacity and indifference might be traced the fearful loss of life, property, and good name incurred by England on the fatal day in question. On Saturday, September 2, 1693, Narcissus Luttrell writes, in his Diary:--“A merry-andrew in Bartholomew fair is committed for telling the mobb news that our fleet was come into Torbay, being forced in by some French privateers; and other words reflecting on the conduct of great Ministers of State.” Lord Macaulay founds, on a paragraph in L’Hermitage of the same date, a very graphic description of this attempt of the fool at fairs, to wag his tongue as boldly as his predecessors used to do at court. Of all the shows at this period, says the historian, “none proved so attractive as a dramatic performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in execution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortal master-pieces of humour, in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachus to derision. Two strollers personated Killigrew and Delaval. The admirals were represented as flying with their whole fleet before a few French privateers, and taking shelter under the guns of the Tower. The office of Chorus was performed by a Jack Pudding, who expressed very freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flocked to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were great; and the mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now emboldened by impunity and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much higher station than their own, began to