Two portraits of Sommers are preserved at Hampton Court, one in a picture after Holbein, representing Henry VII. with his queen, Elizabeth, and Henry VIII. with his queen, Jane Seymour. Will is on one side, his wife on the other. The other portrait is by Holbein, three-quarter life size, where he is represented looking through a closed window.[106] He also figures in Henry VIII.’s illuminated Psalter,[107] in which King Henry’s features are given to David, and those of Will Sommers to the fool who accompanies him. Sommers was born at Eston Neston, Northamptonshire, where his father was a shepherd. His popularity arose from his frankness, which is thus eulogised by Ascham in his “Toxophilus:”--“They be not much unlike in this to Wyll Sommers, the kingis foole, which smiteth him that standeth alwayes before his face, be he never so worshipful a man, and never greatlye lokes for him which lurkes behinde another man’s backe that hurte him indeede.” We next come to _Broughton_, the champion pugilist of England in the reign of George II. He kept a public-house in the Haymarket, opposite the present theatre; his sign was a portrait of himself, without a wig, in the costume of a bruiser. Underneath was the following line, from Æneid, v. 484:-- “HIC VICTOR CÆSTUS, ARTEMQUE REPONO.” Numerous public-houses already retail their good things under the auspices of the great TOM SAYERS. One in Pimlico, Brighton, deserves especial mention, as it is reported to be the identical house in which the mighty champion made his entry on the stage of this world, for the noble purpose of dealing and receiving the blows of fistic fortune. But, as in the case of Homer’s birthplace, the honour is contested; almost every house in Pimlico lays claim to his nativity, and unless the great man writes his life and settles this mooted point, it is likely to give serious trouble to future historiographers. Another athlete, TOPHAM, “the strong man,” had also his quantum of signboards. “The public interest which his extraordinary exhibitions of strength had always excited did not die with him. His feats were delineated on many signs which were remaining up to 1800. One in particular, over a public-house near the Maypole, in East Smithfield, represented his first great feat of pulling against two dray horses.”[108]