Jacob Hall

Lady Castlemain, later the Duchess of Cleveland, to avenge herself on Charles II for neglecting her, fell, according to Samuel Pepys and Gramont, in love with him.

[2] Subsequently Hall began to build a booth in Charing Cross, and was committed to prison for continuing its erection after the local authorities had ordered its demolition.

On 4 September 1679 William Blaythwaite, in a letter to Robert Southwell, mentioned that he had just witnessed Hall's exhibitions of agility.

Robert Wild, in his Rome Rhymed to Death (1683), John Dryden, in his epilogue to Nat Lee's Mithridates, and Dr. John King, in his Collection of Riddles, refer to his skill; and in the second edition of the collection entitled Wit and Drollery (1682) he is described as still delighting London with his jumping.

[2] A picture of Hall, heavily dressed on a tight-rope, with a balancing rod in his hands, forms the frontispiece to News from Bartholomew Fair, or the World's Mad.