Tea at Trianon: The Royal Fool

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Royal Fool

From author Judith Arnopp:

William Somer first emerges in 1535 when an order appears for new clothes for ‘William Somer, oure foole.’ Henry’s ‘olde foole’ Patch/Sexton had grown too old and it was Will who was chosen to take his place.

His initial requirements included a fool’s livery; ‘a dubblette of wursteed, lined with canvas and coton …a coote and a cappe of grene clothe, fringed with red crule, and lined with fryse …a dublette of fustian, lyned with cotton and canvas …a coote of grene clothe, with a hood of the same, fringed with white crule lyned with fryse and bokerham.’

It seems that throughout his service Somer was maintained by the Privy purse for although there is a surviving record from Cromwell in January 1538 of a ‘velvet purse for W. Somer’, there is no mention of anything to fill it, his expenses being met by the court.

In this fine new apparel Will Somer’s duty was to entertain and distract the king from his worldly care, and he seems to have done so admirably. His favour with Henry raised him so high that he appears in several portraits, commissioned by the king himself. The most famous being the family portrait by an unknown artist which is now housed in the Royal Collection. (See top of page)

It depicts Henry, at his most virile and vigorous best, and Queen Jane (who had already been dead for over a decade). On the king’s right is their son Edward (whose birth caused his mother’s death in 1537). Completing the Tudor idyll are the princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, both girls bastardised and legitimised so many times, they can have had no real idea as to their royal standing .

The entire royal family are assembled in a fantasy gathering, a made up truth to please the king, and what makes this especially poignant is that, a little behind the royal sitters, the painting also shows Will Somer, dressed in his ‘clothe coote,’ and his velvet purse is hanging from his belt. His pet monkey obligingly picks lice from the fool’s hair.

Framed in the opposite archway is a likeness of a girl, believed to be of Jane, the innocent fool of Princess Mary, whom it is believed she took into her household after the death of Anne Boleyn. The presence of the royal fools in this very personal portrayal of Henry’s family can only point to their importance. (Read more.)