There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes; there was none whom the Court more delighted to honour. In May 1670, Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians. When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion, in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts, the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests the play founded on Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," and called "Sir Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on the stage, King and Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so admirably were the foreign guests caricatured; at which outrage on courtesy and hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, "were much chagrined," says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to his dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the original representative of about forty characters, in plays which have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the first who recognised, on the occasion of his playing the part of Norfolk, in "Henry VIII.," the merit of Nokes as an actor.[22] James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the sword and belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed estate at Totteridge, near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. Pepys may have kissed that nephew's mother, on the August day of 1665, when he fell into company near Rochester with a lady and gentleman riding singly, and differing as to the merits of a copy of verses, which Pepys, by his style of reading aloud, got the husband to confess that they were as excellent as the wife had pronounced them to be. "His name is Nokes," writes the diarist, "over against Bow Church.... We promised to meet, if ever we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair salute on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady."