LUCY BURDETTE: Here at JRW, we love the advent of a brand new series. Today, I'm delighted to have Jeri Westerson here to introduce hers. She has imagined a most unusual protagonist...Take it away Jeri!
JERI WESTERSON: There is a proverb that tells us that “All places are full of fools” and I certainly can’t argue with that. But one fool in particular has always captured my imagination, possibly because he is so long-lived (as royal courts go). That would be Will Somers, Henry VIII’s court jester, who survived through Henry and all of his wives, in the court of his son Edward VI, Henry’s daughter Mary I, and even into the reign of Henry’s other daughter, Elizabeth I.
That must have been one witty fellow.
And yet, we know so little. He appears in a few paintings with Henry, usually somewhere in the background, and even one with a pet monkey on his shoulder; he appears in a few plays of the later time period, and in other contemporary novels. We believe he was born in Shropshire, he first shows up in the accounts at Henry’s court 28 June 1535, though we know he came to court ten years earlier, and we know the date of his death; 15 June 1560. But we don’t know exactly when he was born, if he ever married and had children, and of his personal life in general.
There is a most interesting account written a hundred years after his death called “A Pleasant History of the Life and Death of Will Summers: How He Came First To The Be Known At Court, And By What Means He Got To Be King Henry The Eighth’s Jester; With The Entertainment That His Cousin Patch, Cardinal Wolsey’s Fool, Gave Him At The Lord’s House And How The Hogsheads Of Gold Were Known By His Means.” That’s a mouthful. Which means that there might be grains of truth in this account, but, well, mostly it can’t quite be trusted. Therefore, much of it is up for grabs. That makes my life easier as I write my series, though it’s just as easily problematic.
“A Jester? A Jester? A funny idea a jester.” – from the 1955 film The Court Jester
But just what did a jester do? Men—and women—were fools or jesters. With two sorts of jesters: the “natural” kind of fool, meaning mentally challenged, deformed, or genetically little people, (and yes, part of their comical value was to make fun of their looks but also because they were thought to be guileless.) And then there was the cunning and crafty kind, true wits. These latter had to be quick-witted with a jibe or jest. Some were musically inclined and could sing and play for their masters (not always the monarch. Rich men and women had their own fools. Cardinal Wolsey had his own, a man named “Patch”, who became a friend of Will’s).
A good fool could juggle, do acrobatics or at least pratfalls, was quick and often scathing with his tongue, and, most importantly, had the ear of the monarch. In my novel COURTING DRAGONS, I often have Will express he is therefore the most dangerous man in the court because he is close to the king, even calling him “uncle” or “Harry” in public. Except because of his staunch loyalty to Henry, he is also the safest man.
And because my series is a mystery, Will Somers can also go anywhere he needs to go at court to do his amateur investigations, threading him nicely between the politics and intrigues that beset Henry VIII’s troubled reign.
I think Will must have been a very likeable man, the sounding board for Henry and his wives, and Henry’s children, the other Tudor monarchs that came after him, whom Will must have entertained by playing with them when they were small. After all, these were Will’s family, the only family he would ever know after, on that fateful day, he was sent to the Tudor court to take up residence for the rest of his life. And like any person under those circumstances, he came to love those who became his surrogate intimates. It makes for some tender moments between fool and monarch. But it isn’t all drama, because Will is, after all, a fool, a man whose job it was to entertain, to make quips, to make fun of others. So there is, naturally, a lot of comedy as well.
Let it not be said that he could ever turn away a good fart joke.
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Jeri Westerson is the author of the new King’s Fool Mysteries with the reluctant sleuth Will Somers, Henry VIII’s real court jester, solving mysteries and murder at the Tudor court. She is also the author of an upcoming Sherlockian series An Irregular Detective Mystery, the multi-award-nominated Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series, paranormal books, including a gaslamp-steampunk fantasy the Enchanter Chronicles Trilogy, standalone historicals, and an LGBTQ rom/com mystery series. See it all at JeriWesterson.com.
