It appears that in England in the Middle Ages the word ‘fool’ was more than the abstract term of abuse which it appears to be today, but placed the owner of the name within a recognizable relation to a figure in cap and bell. At the same period in France such an association was clearer for a man called sot; however, in England such was not the case. Two of the most famous early Fools were not called Fool at all. Hitard, jester to the Saxon King Edmund Ironside was called joculator and Rahere, of Henry I’s twelfth-century court, was referred to as a minstrel. Both were greatly rewarded by their patrons and enjoyed a degree of independence not to be known again by English Fools until the sixteenth century. It is interesting that both men felt called to end their lives in pilgrimage to Rome and each willed significant religious bequests. Hitard left Walworth to Canterbury and Rahere founded St Bartholomew’s Hospital.1 Appropriately, therefore, the famous fair which was the great annual event at St Bartholomew’s and which was to be the Fool’s refuge for the next seven centuries, was itself founded by a Fool. In the words of a nineteenth-century antiquarian, ‘Gentlemen, on this anniversary of St. Bartholomew, let us not forget that we owe this Fair to a priest and jester’: (Daniel, p. 201).

However, at first sight, the medieval English countryside was devoid of colourful figures in cap and bell, who in France led Carnival entertainments and imposed a period of disorder as welcome to the people as unwelcome to the authorities. Sir Edmund Kirchever Chambers in his fine work on medieval drama appeared to have found the reason why. The ecclesiastic Feast of Fools was totally subdued in England by the end of the fourteenth century, whereas in France, despite decrees, protests and impositions, the lower clergy continued to indulge their annual usurped authority until the sixteenth century. Since secular Fool activity in France also developed into societies and scripted sot plays, it was assumed that the early demise of the church feast in England prevented similar emulation, and consequently, popular cap and bell activity never had chance to take root. However, it is now known that church and secular customs existed apart from each other, even though they doubtlessly had aspects in common.2 As far as French Fool societies are concerned, Natalie Zeman Davis writes that secular societies ‘existed in some form in French cities from the thirteenth century on, contemporaneous with the cathedral fête’.3 The importance of this with regard to English social behaviour is that we can consider on its own merits fragmented evidence which had previously not been looked for or, when seen, appeared as unimportant anomalies. The fragmentation is partly accounted for by Richard Axton’s observation that ‘the Church’s virtual monopoly of written records and its concern with conserving the Word, led to rather full documentation of its own traditional Latin drama’.4 Further, lack of comment now seems tacit disapproval rather than rarity of occurrence, for even prior to the extirpation of the church’s own regis stultorum (Feast of Fools) only one solitary comment on Fools in society appears. This is found in a neglected passage of the Summa Confessorum, written by Thomas of Chobham about 1220. He wrote:

Chobham is disarming in his honesty over the pragmatism of many of his brethren and the account of social disturbances in churches complements records of liberties taken in the sixteenth century. For when, in 1535—a year before official restraint was placed on holy day games—the youths of the parish of Harwich entered the church on St Stephen’s Day, led by a piper, to choose them ‘A Lord of Misrule, as has been the custom in years past’, the vicar, Thomas Colthorpe, broke the pipe over the player’s head and, it was claimed, caused a general disturbance.6 Chobham acknowledged that such occurrence was habitual, even indigenous before his time; therefore one cannot attribute his lone thirteenth-century comment to the occasional eruption. Further information to be included here leads to the same conclusion. Fool behaviour was largely suffered in silence as it couldn’t be prevented.

It is worth looking again at Chambers’ examples of the church feast evidenced in England at Lincoln and Beverley. In both cases one finds reference to a separate secular custom. The 1398 Statutes concerning the better government of the church at Beverley are uncompromising over the extirpation of the corrupt church custom of regis stultorum at New Year.7 However, the Statutes continue (and this Chambers omits) that the ancient church custom in Beverley called les Fulles will continue. What this might have involved is indicated in visual rather than written evidence. In the church are carvings of Fools. The earliest (c 1330) depicts a grotesque: a crouching figure ‘half human, half animal, with hooves and an animal’s legs, but wearing a two-eared cap of a fool on a grotesque human face’.8 Four other carvings of men wearing cap and bell are found on the later misericords of about 1520. Since, in the Statutes of 1398, approval for les Fulles is incorporated among permissable Christmas games for the laity, it would seem that the Christmas season was where the feast belonged in the Church Calendar.

At Lincoln, after Archbishop Grosseteste forbade the ecclesiastic feast in 1236, William Courtney intervened a century and a half later, when he found that the vicars ‘were still in the habit of disturbing divine service on January 1st, in the name of the Feast’ (Chambers,9 vol. 1, p. 322). This is the final reference to the church feast in England and since it occurs at almost the same date as the reforms carried out at Beverley, Chambers concludes that from the end of the fourteenth century English vicars were probably obliged to forgo their New Year privileges. However, he adds the word ‘probably’ in relation to a fifteenth-century reference to feasting in Lincoln. This took place in ultimo natali, the last day of Christmas or the Epiphany. Chambers wrote: ‘what was ly ffolcfeste of which Canon John Marshall complained in Bishop Alnwick’s visitation of 1437 that he was called upon to bear the expense?’ (p. 322, note). Ly ffolcefeste is an Anglo-French name like the name of the Beverley feast and, although Canon Marshall questioned its propriety, he nevertheless promised to maintain it at his own expense,10 which means that this celebration would have continued further into the fifteenth century. Since no further reference is found to the regis stultorum—the name of the church feast—one can only conclude that surviving feasts were secular and, like the games suffered to be played in churches, were permitted in preference to the abstention of the entire congregation.

The end of the fourteenth century saw a watershed in ecclesiastical definitions of the Fool and the theology is explored in Chapter 2. For, despite growing disapproval from church and court written evidence can be found for the activities of Fools over this period and coincidental with the change in church attitudes, it appears that Fool behaviour also underwent a change. Evidence from the earlier half of the fourteenth century shows that Fool games involved stripping oneself naked, possibly in imitation of the real idiot. In Exeter College, Oxford, is an Etymology of about 1300 in which the definition of cachinor is accompanied by a prancing figure, naked save for the two-eared hood, bauble, ornamental sword (which was to become the hallmark of the Fool in drama) and, curiously, a single shoe. The definition of cachinor is given as one who from ancient times is said to laugh immoderately and without intelligence.11 The definition could cover the idiot or the idiot’s mimic and no strong condemnation is implied apart from the degrading aspects of such behaviour. However, theology is a vital aspect in assessing social values regarding the Fool and two of the main iconographical sources of evidence are Psalters and Bibles. Before 1350 illuminations accompanying the Psalm beginning ‘The fool hath said in his heart there is no God’12 consistently show a naked or semi-naked figure with bauble and occasionally a bell on his eared hood. The group of English Psalters of this period which repeatedly use this motif, albeit with variations in iconographical meaning, are the Peterborough Psalters.13 Others show a roughly-clad man carrying a phallic-shaped bauble.14

These pictures complement written evidence. As I have said, ecclesiastic and popular customs could have elements in common and one distinct factor which pre-1350 Fools of church and laity both had was...