Henry the Eighth, at the commencement of his reign was a great patron of men of wit and learning, and probably the humour of More, as well as his virtue, recommended him to the King.  We read that at Cardinal Morton’s entertainments of his Christmas company, the future Chancellor, then a boy, would often mount the stage and extemporize with so much wit and talent as to surpass all the professional players.  During his university course, and shortly afterwards, he wrote many neat Latin epigrams of which the two following rough translations will give some idea—­

  “A thief about to be accused, implored
     Advice, and sent his counsel many a pound,
   The counsel, when o’er mighty tomes he’d pored,
     Replied, ‘If you’d escape, you must abscond.’

  “Once in the loving cup, a guest saw flies,
     Removed them, drank, and then put back a few. 
   And, being questioned, sagely thus replies,
     ‘I like them not—­but cannot speak for you.’”

He was to the last fond of pleasantry and kept a jester.

The daughter of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn[55] could scarcely have been deficient in mirthfulness, and we find that the dangers through which she passed in her youth were not able to extinguish Elizabeth’s love of humour.  According to the custom of the day she exhibited this not only in her sayings, but, as comedians were then often received in great houses, she ordered in 1583 that twelve of them should be made grooms of the chamber, be sworn the Queen’s servants, and be arrayed in her livery.  The most remarkable of these was Tarlton.  He came of humble origin.  Fuller says that, while tending his father’s swine, a servant of Robert, Earl of Leicester, passing by was so pleased with his happy unhappy answers that he took him to court.  But Tarlton’s humour was often that of the common fool, and depended generally upon action, look, and voice.  His face was in this respect his fortune, for he had a flat nose and squinting eyes.  Nash mentions that on one occasion he “peept out his head,” probably with a grimace, at the audience, which caused a burst of laughter, and led one of the justices, who did not understand the fun, to beat the people on the bare pates, inasmuch as they, “being farmers and hinds, had dared to laugh at the Queen’s men.”  He was celebrated for his jigs, i.e. extempore songs accompanied with tabor and pipe, and sometimes with dancing.

Fuller says he had great influence with Elizabeth, and could “undumpish” her at pleasure.  Her favourites were wont to go to him to prepare their access to her, and “he told the Queen more of her faults than most of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than all her physicians.”

Bohun says that, “at supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants, and if they made no answer she would put them upon mirth and pleasant discourse with great civility.  She would then also admit Tarlton, a famous comedian and pleasant talker, and other men to divert her with stories of the town, and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty.”  Tarlton, on one occasion, cast reflections upon Leicester; and said of Raleigh, “the knave commands the Queen,” at which she was so much offended that she forbade any of her jesters to approach her table.