The reign of Stephen does not furnish us with the names of any fool of distinguished quality; though Stephen himself, and particularly previous to his accession to the throne, was remarkable for the affability with which he associated with men of every condition. This was more especially the case when he was keeping house with his bride in the Tower-Royal. But neither in court or castle was there much patronage of the jester during the nearly nineteen years of the calamitous reign of Stephen. The court of his successor saw the joyous brotherhood fully restored, and its members seem even, not merely to have practised before him at home, but to have accompanied him abroad. “When King Henry sets out of a morning,” says his secretary, Peter of Blois, “you see multitudes of people running up and down, as if they were distracted; horses rushing against horses, carriages overturning carriages, players, gamesters, cooks, confectioners, morris-dancers, barbers, courtesans, and parasites, making so much noise and, in a word, such an intolerable tumultuous jumble of horse and foot, that you imagine the great abyss hath opened, and that hell hath poured forth all its inhabitants.” The court of Henry’s consort, Eleanor of gay Guienne, was a not less joyous one than her husband’s; but the joy was only empty noise and outward show, and beneath all the glittering were grief and settled gloom. During the reign of their lion-hearted successor, we meet with an illustration, showing how fools could be employed in order to support a vicious political system. Richard the First’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, may with propriety be called, the “proud,” for he sealed public acts, says Lord Campbell, “with his own signet seal, instead of the Great Seal of England.” Proud as he was, this Picard prelate (who was Bishop of Ely) was of very mean extraction. To him Richard left, conjointly with the Bishop of Durham, the guardianship of the realm, during the King’s absence in the Holy Land. Longchamp however clapped his colleague into prison, and ruled England by his sole authority. He maintained the state of the most ostentatious of sovereigns, and set such an example of arrogance and want of principle, that his body-guard became terrible for their rapine and licentiousness; and his servants, even when their master lodged for a night in a monastery, devoured in that one night the revenue of several years. The people at large suffered in proportion, and suffering was followed by grumbling, and that was succeeded by wrath. But, says the author of ‘The Lives of the Chancellors,’ (apparently translating a passage from Roger Hoveden _in Ricardo I._, p. 340,) “to drown the curses of the natives, he brought over from France, at a great expense, singers and jesters, who sang verses in places of public resort, declaring that the Chancellor never had his equal in the world.” The above, it will have been seen, is an example of jesters being employed, not with license to speak bold