Foolscap was named after the [[Court jester|fool]]'s [[cap and bells]] [[watermark]] commonly used from the fifteenth15th century onwards on paper of these dimensions.<ref>{{cite book |author=Müller, Lothar |title=White Magic: The Age of Paper. |place=Cambridge|publisher=Polity Press |date=2014|page=173}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/foolscap|title=Foolscap|last=Anon|work=The Free Dictionary|publisher=Farlex Inc.|accessdate=17 September 2009}}</ref> The earliest example of such paper was made in Germany in 1479. Unsubstantiated anecdotes suggest that this watermark was introduced to England in 1580 by [[John Spilman]], a German who established a papermill at [[Dartford (borough)|Dartford]], Kent.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cityark.medway.gov.uk/gallery/|title=Entry in the Dartford Holy Trinity parish register for Sir John Spielman (Spillman), 8 November 1626|last=Anon|work=Medway: City Ark Document Gallery|publisher=Medway Council|accessdate=17 September 2009}}</ref>
The general pattern of the mark was used by Dutch and English papermakers in the late seventeenth17th and eighteenth18th centuries, and as early as 1674 the term 'foolscap' was being used to designate a specific size of paper regardless of its watermark.<ref>{{citation |last1=Ashbee |first1=Andrew |last2=Thompson |first2=Robert |last3=Wainwright |first3=Jonathan |chapter=Appendix I: 08-Watermarks and Paper Types |publisher=The Viola da Gamba Society |page=279 [29] |chapter-url=https://vdgs.org.uk/indexmss/08%20Watermarks.pdf |title=Index of Manuscripts containing Consort Music, Volume 1 |url=https://vdgs.org.uk/indexmss/ |accessdate=13 July 2021}} - Shows several types of foolscap watermark</ref>
Apocryphally, the [[Rump Parliament]] of 1648–1653 substituted a fool's cap for the royal arms as a watermark on the paper used for the journals of Parliament.<ref>{{cite book
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|date=2021
|isbn=9780192639370
|url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3HA3EAAAQBAJ&pg=PT502&lpg=PT502&dq=watermark+royal+arms}}</ref>{{pn|date=July 2021}}{{efn|[[Charles I of England|Charles I]] was executed on 30 January 1649, which would have been the cause of this supposed change. There were only around 40 mills making hand-made paper in England between 1601 and 1650, with 23 of them within thirty30 miles of London.<ref name="Hills" >{{cite book
