'
NOTE 6.--THE CUSTOM OF KEEPING FOOLS
I am ignorant how long the ancient and established custom of keeping
fools has been disused in England. Swift writes an epitaph on the Earl
of Suffolk's fool,--
'Whose name was Dickie Pearce.'
In Scotland the custom subsisted till late in the last century. At
Glamis Castle, is preserved the dress of one of the jesters, very
handsome, and ornamented with many bells. It is not above thirty years
since such a character stood by the sideboard of a nobleman of the first
rank in Scotland, and occasionally mixed in the conversation, till he
carried the joke rather too far, in making proposals to one of the young
ladies of the family, and publishing the banns betwixt her and himself
in the public church.
NOTE 7.--PERSECUTION OF EPISCOPAL CLERGYMEN
After the Revolution of 1688, and on some occasions when the spirit of
the Presbyterians had been unusually animated against their opponents,
the Episcopal clergymen, who were chiefly non-jurors, were exposed to
be mobbed, as we should now say, or rabbled, as the phrase then went,
to expiate their political heresies. But notwithstanding that the
Presbyterians had the persecution in Charles II and his brother's time
to exasperate them, there was little mischief done beyond the kind of
petty violence mentioned in the text.
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