In the reigns of George II. and his successor, among the men who seem to have united with other offices, something like the vocation of court fool, was the son of a Carlisle apothecary, named Bubb, who succeeded to the estates and adopted the name of his uncle, Doddington; and who is better known by their conjoined names, than by his subsequent title of Lord Melcombe. A disappointment in obtaining a peerage, took him from the ranks of Sir Robert Walpole and George II., to those of Frederick, Prince of Wales. In the household of the Prince, Bubb, who lacked neither good qualities nor ability, descended to play the fool. Horace Walpole tells us that “he submitted to the Prince’s childish horse-play, being once rolled up in a blanket and trundled down stairs.” He changed sides more than once; lent and lost money to the Prince; was laughed at, to his very face, by the King; slept in a bed canopied with peacocks’ feathers; and kept fools, “a tame booby or two,” of his own. These were Wyndham, his heir; Sir William Bruton, keeper of George II.’s privy purse; and Dr. Thompson--“a misanthrope, a courtier, and a quack,” as Cumberland names them. Thompson appears to have been the most ignoble of the “monks” who sojourned at “La Trappe,”--so Doddington called his company and mansion at Hammersmith. Thompson was ostensibly his medical adviser; but he practised his profession like a fool, and was treated by his patron as patrons were wont to treat fools of more audacity than wit. On one occasion, the Doctor observed Doddington, at breakfast, about to help himself to muffins. He denounced them as indigestible, and loudly bade the servant, “Take away those muffins!” “No, no!” said Doddington, pointing to the Doctor, “take away that ragamuffin!” In this way were “tame boobies” treated by their patrons, who, themselves, were princes’ fools. At an earlier period, that, namely, of Louis XIV., we find instances of noble persons assembling in their houses people of a very inferior rank, for the purpose of drawing from them something more than amusement. The Duchess de la Ferté was one of these. This exalted personage was in the habit of inviting all her tradespeople to her house. She entertained herself with their peculiarities at table, and then set them down to play with her at lansquenet, or some similar game. Madame de Staël, who tells the story in her Memoirs, adds, “The Duchess would sometimes whisper to me, ‘I am cheating the fellows, but Lord! serve them right! Don’t I know how they rob me daily?’” So that the Duchess made her fools pay their expenses, and her own.