[186] Speculum Perfectionis (ed. Sabatier), 197. When Francis had finished his Canticle of the Sun, he thought for a moment of summoning ‘frater Pacificus qui in saeculo vocabatur rex versuum et fuit valde curialis doctor cantorum,’ and giving him a band of friars who might sing it to the people at the end of their sermons: ‘finitis autem laudibus volebat quod praedicator diceret populo: “Nos sumus ioculatores Domini, et pro his volumus remunerari a vobis, videlicet ut stetis in vera paenitentia.” Et ait: “Quid enim sunt servi Dei nisi quidam ioculatores eius qui corda hominum erigere debent et movere ad laetitiam spiritualem.”’ Cf. Sabatier, Life of St. Francis, 9, 51, 307. Perhaps Francis may have heard of Joachim of Flora, his contemporary, who wrote in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, f. 183. a. 2 ‘qui vere monachus est nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam.’
[187] The MS. of the famous thirteenth-century canon Sumer is icumen in has religious words written beneath the profane ones; cf. Wooldridge, Oxford Hist. of Music, i. 326. Several religious adaptations of common motives of profane lyric are amongst the English thirteenth-century poems preserved in Harl. MS. 2253 (Specimens of Lyrical Poetry: Percy Soc., 1842, no. 19, and ed. Böddeker, Berlin, 1878).
[188] Jusserand, E. W. L. 195, 199, 215; Strutt, 194-5, 210, 227; Hazlitt-Warton, ii. 119; Chappell, i. 15; Collier, i. 22; Wardrobe Accounts of Edward I (Soc. Antiq.), 163, 166, 168.
[189] Cf. Appendix C.
[190] Cf. Appendix D.
[191] This cannot be the famous Adan de le Hale (cf. ch. viii), known as ‘le Bossu,’ if Guy, 178, is right in saying that his nephew, Jean Mados, wrote a lament for his death in 1288. He quotes Hist. Litt. xx. 666, as to this.
[192] Gautier, ii. 103; Bédier, 405, quote many similar names; e.g. Quatre Œufs, Malebouche, Ronge-foie, Tourne-en-fuie, Courtebarbe, Porte-Hotte, Mal Quarrel, Songe-Feste a la grant viele, Mal-appareillié, Pelé, Brise-Pot, Simple d’Amour, Chevrete, Passereau.
[193] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Reg. Angl. (R. S.), ii. 494.
[194] Ordericus Vitalis, v. 12, &c. On one occasion ‘ad ecclesiam, quia nudus erat, non pervenit.’
[195] Bédier, 359.
[196] Gautier, chs. xx, xxi, gives an admirable account of the jougleur’s daily life, and its seamy side is brought out by Bédier, 399-418. A typical jougleur figure is that of the poet Rutebeuf, a man of genius, but often near death’s door from starvation. See the editions of his works by Jubinal and Kressner, and the biography by Clédat in the series of Grands Écrivains français.
[197] Morley, Bartholomew Fair, 1-25, from Liber Fundacionis in Cott. Vesp. B. ix; Leland, Collectanea, 1, 61, 99; Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 166; Stow, Survey, 140; C. Knight, London, ii. 34; Percy, 406. No minstrels, however, appear in the formal list of Henry I’s Norman Household (†1135), which seems to have been the nucleus of the English Royal Household as it existed up to 1782 (Hall, Red Book of Exchequer, R.S., iii. cclxxxvii, 807).
[198] Gautier, ii. 47, 54; G. Paris, § 88; Ambroise, L’Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. G. Paris (Documents inédits sur l’Hist. de France, 1897).
[199] Percy, 358.
[200] Madox, Hist. of Exchequer, 268.
[201] Percy, 365.
[202] Walter Hemmingford, Chronicon, c. 35 (Vet. Hist. Angl. Script. ii. 591).
[203] Chappell, i. 15, from Wardrobe Book, 18 Edw. I.
[204] Wardrobe Accounts of Edw. I (Soc. Antiq.), 323.
[205] Anstis, Register of Order of the Garter, ii. 303, from Pat. de terr. forisfact. 16 Edw. III. Cf. Gesta Edw. de Carnarvon in Chron. of Edw. I and II (R. S.), ii. 91 ‘adhaesit cantoribus, tragoedis, aurigis, navigiis et aliis huiuscemodi artificiis mechanicis.’
[206] Strutt, 194; Issue Roll of Thomas de Brantingham (ed. Devon), 54-57, 296-8.
[207] Household Ordinances, 4, 11.
[208] Rymer, vii. 555.
[209] Ibid. ix. 255, 260, 336.
[210] Ibid. x. 287; xi. 375.
[211] Household Ordinances, 48.
[212] Rymer, xi. 642; cf. Appendix D.
[213] Ibid. xiii. 705; Collier, i. 45; Campbell, i. 407, 516, 570; ii. 100, 224.
[214] Wardrobe Accounts of Edw. I (Soc. Antiq.), 7, 95; Calendar of Anc. Deeds, ii. A, 2050, 2068, 2076.
[215] Strutt, 189.
[216] Collier, i. 46; Campbell, i. 407, 542, 572; ii. 68, 84, 176.
[217] The entry ‘ad solvendum histrionibus’ occurs in 1364 (Compoti Camerarii Scot. i. 422). The Exchequer Rolls from 1433-50 contain payments to the ‘mimi,’ ‘histriones,’ ‘ioculatores regis’; and in 1507-8 for the ‘histriones in scaccario’ or ‘minstrels of the chekkar’ (Accounts of Treasurer of Scotland, i. xx, cxcix; ii. lxxi).
[218] Cf. Appendix C.
[219] Collier, i. 21, from Lansd. MS. 1. Two of this lord’s menestriers were entertained by Robert of Artois, who also had his own (Guy, 154).
[220] Gautier, ii. 51; cf. the extracts from various computi in Appendix E. There are many entries also in the accounts of King’s Lynn (Hist. MSS. xi. 3. 213); Beverley (Leach, Beverley MSS. 171), &c.
[221] L. T. Smith, Derby Accounts (C. S.), xcvi.
[222] Percy, N. H. B. 42, 344.
[223] Stowe, Survey, 39 (London); Smith, English Guilds, 423, 447 (Bristol, Norwich); Davies, 14 (York); Kelly, 131 (Leicester); Morris, 348 (Chester); Civis, No. xxi (Canterbury); Sharpe, 207 (Coventry); Hist. MSS. xi. 3. 163 (Lynn); Leach, Beverley MSS. 105, &c. (Beverley); for Shrewsbury cf. Appendix E. On Waits’ Badges, cf. Ll. Jewitt, in Reliquary, xii. 145. Gautier, ii. 57, describes the communal cantorini of Perugia, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The usual Latin term for the Beverley waits is speculatores; but they are also called ministralli, histriones and mimi. Apparently waits are intended by the satrapi of the Winchester Accounts (App. E. (iv)). Elsewhere histriones is the most usual term. The signatories to the 1321 statutes of the Paris guild include several guètes (Bernhard, iii. 402).
[224] Household Ordinances, 48 ‘A Wayte, that nyghtly, from Mighelmasse till Shere-Thursday, pipeth the watche within this courte fower tymes, and in the somer nyghtes three tymes.’ He is also to attend the new Knights of the Bath when they keep watch in the chapel the night before they are dubbed.
[225] The Lynn waits had to go through the town from All Saints to Candlemas. Those of Coventry had similar duties, and in 1467 were forbidden ‘to pass this Cite but to Abbotts and Priors within x myles of this Cite.’
[226] The six minstrels of the Earl of Derby in 1391 had a livery of ‘blod ray cloth and tanne facings’ (Wylie, iv. 160).
[227] Household Ordinances, 48: ‘Mynstrelles, xiii, whereof one is verger, that directeth them all in festivall dayes to theyre stations, to bloweings and pipynges, to suche offices as must be warned to prepare for the king and his houshold at metes and soupers, to be the more readie in all servyces; and all these sittinge in the hall togyder; whereof sume use trumpettes, sume shalmuse and small pipes, and sume as strengemen, comyng to this courte at five festes of the yere, and then to take theyre wages of houshold after iiijd ob. a day, if they be present in courte, and then they to avoyde the next day after the festes be done. Besides eche of them anothyr reward yerely, taking of the king in the resceyte of the chekker, and clothing wynter and somer, or xxs a piece, and lyverey in courte, at evyn amonges them all, iiij gallons ale; and for wynter season, iij candels wax, vj candells peris’, iiij talwood, and sufficiaunt logging by the herberger, for them and theyre horses, nygh to the courte. Also havyng into courte ij servauntes honest, to beare theyre trumpettes, pipes, and other instrumentes, and a torche for wynter nyghts, whyles they blowe to souper, and other revelles, delyvered at the chaundrey; and allway ij of these persons to continue in courte in wages, beyng present to warne at the kinge’s rydinges, when he goeth to horse-backe, as ofte as it shall require, and by theyre blowinges the houshold meny may follow in the countries. And if any of these two minstrelles be sicke in courte, he taketh ij loves, one messe of grete mete, one gallon ale. They have no part of any rewardes gevyn to the houshold. And if it please the kinge to have ij strenge Minstrelles to contynue in like wise. The kinge wull not for his worshipp that his Minstrelles be too presumptuous, nor too familier to aske any rewardes of the lordes of his londe, remembring De Henrico secundo imperatore [1002-24] qui omnes Ioculatores suos et Armaturos monuerit, ut nullus eorum in eius nomine vel dummodo steterint in servicio suo nihil ab aliquo in regno suo deberent petere donandum; sed quod ipsi domini donatores pro Regis amore citius pauperibus erogarent.’
[228] Percy, N. H. B. (†1512), 339. The king’s shawms, if they came yearly, got 10s., the king’s jugler and the king’s or queen’s bearward, 6s. 8d.; a duke’s or earl’s trumpeters, if they came six together, also got 6s. 8d., an earl’s minstrels only 3s. 4d. If the troupe came only once in two or three years, and belonged to a ‘speciall Lorde, Friende, or Kynsman’ of the earl, the rate was higher.
[229] Gautier, ii. 107, from Bibl. de l’Arsenal MS. 854; e.g. ‘Deprecatio pro dono instrioni impendendo. Salutem et amoris perpetui firmitatem. R. latorem praesentium, egregium instrionem qui nuper meis interfuit nuptiis, ubi suum officium exercuit eleganter, ad vos cum magna confidentia destinamus, rogantes precibus, quibus possumus, quatinus aliquid subsidium gracie specialis eidem impendere debeatis.’ Collier, i. 42, gives a letter of Richard III for his bearward.
[230] Collier, i. 41.
[231] Strutt, 194; Gautier, ii. 173-8; H. Lavoix, ii. 198. They are called Scolae ministrorum, Scolae mimorum. They can be traced to the fourteenth century. Genève and Bourg-en-Bresse also had them. The Paris statutes of 1407 (cf. Appendix F) require a licence from the roi des ménestrels for such an assembly. A Beauvais computus (1402) has ‘Dati sunt de gratia panes ducenti capitulares mimis in hac civitate de diversis partibus pro cantilenis novis addiscendis confluentibus.’
[232] Hearne, Appendix ad Lelandi Collectanea, vi. 36; Percy, 367. The proclamation is dated Aug. 6, 9 Edw. II (i. e. 1315).
[233] No technical term seems, however, intended in Launfal (ed. Ritson), 668:
[234] C. J. Ribton-Turner, Vagrants and Vagrancy, chs. 3, 4, 5. The proclamation of 1284 against ‘Westours, Bards, and Rhymers and other idlers and vagabonds, who live on the gifts called Cymmortha,’ and the Act of 1402 (4 Hen. IV, c. 27) in the same sense, seem only to refer to the Welsh bards (cf. p. 77).
[235] Ribton-Turner, 107 (14 Eliz. c. 5). Whipping is provided for ‘all Fencers Bearewardes Comon Players in Enterludes & Minstrels, not belonging to any Baron of this Realme or towards any other honourable personage of greater Degree; all Juglers Pedlars Tynkers and Petye Chapmen; whiche said Fencers Bearewardes comon Players in Enterludes Mynstrels Juglers Pedlars Tynkers & Petye Chapmen, shall wander abroade and have not Lycense of two Justices of the Peace at the leaste, whereof one to be of the Quorum, wher and in what Shier they shall happen to wander.’ The terms of 39 Eliz. c. 4 (1597-8) are very similar, but 1 Jac. I, c. 7 (1603-4), took away the exemption for noblemen’s servants.
[236] Appendix F.
[237] Gautier, ii. 156; Ducange, s.v. Ministelli.
[238] Gautier, ii. 158. Strutt, 195, quotes from Cott. MS. Nero, c. viii a payment of Edw. III ‘ministrallo facienti ministralsiam suam coram imagine Beatae Mariae in Veltam, rege praesente.’ Chaucer’s pilgrims had no professional minstrels, but the miller did as well:
It was in the absence of regular minstrels that the pilgrims fell to telling one another stories.
[239] Gautier, ii. 160. Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, more than once rewarded minstrels on his episcopal rounds (J. Webb, Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield, C. S. i. 152, 155). The bishops of Durham in 1355, Norwich in 1362, and Winchester in 1374, 1422, and 1481 had ‘minstrels of honour,’ like any secular noble (see Appendix E, &c.). Even the austere Robert Grosseteste had his private harper, if we may credit Mannyng, 150:
Mannyng represents Grosseteste as excusing his predilection by a reference to King David.
[240] Madox, Hist. of Exchequer, 251.
[241] Norfolk Archaeology, xi. 339 (Norwich); Hazlitt-Warton, ii. 97; Kennet, Parochial Antiq. ii. 259 (Bicester); Decem Scriptores, 2011 (Canterbury); for the rest cf. Appendix E.
[242] Hazlitt-Warton, ii. 97; iii. 118, quotes from the Register of St. Swithin’s amongst the Wolvesey MSS.; in 1338 ‘cantabat ioculator quidam nomine Herebertus canticum Colbrondi, necdum gestum Emmae reginae a iudicio ignis liberatae, in aula prioris’: in 1374 ‘In festo Alwynis episcopi ... in aula conventus sex ministralli, cum quatuor citharisatoribus, faciebant ministralcias suas. Et post cenam, in magna camera arcuata domini Prioris, cantabant idem gestum.... Veniebant autem dicti ioculatores a castello domini regis et ex familia episcopi.’ The ‘canticum Colbrondi’ was doubtless a romance of Guy of Warwick, of which Winchester is the locality. Fragments of early fourteenth-century English versions exist (Ten Brink, i. 246; Jusserand, E. L. i. 224; Zupitza, Guy of Warwick, E. E. T. S.; G. L. Morrill, Speculum Gy de Warewyke, E. E. T. S. lxxxi).
[243] Bartholomaeus (Albizzi) de Pisis (1385-99), Liber Conformitatum (ed. 1590, i. 94b); Antoninus Episc. Florentiae (1389-1459), Chronicon (ed. 1586, iii. 752) ‘alterius linguae ioculatores eos existimans’; cf. A. Wood, Hist. et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. (1674), i. 69; City of Oxford (O. H. S.), ii. 349.
[244] See Appendix E. At Paris the Statutes of Cornouaille College (1380) required abstinence from ‘ludis mimorum, ioculatorum, histrionum, goliardorum, et consimilium.’ Bulaeus, v. 782, gives another Paris regulation allowing ‘mimi, ad summum duo’ on Twelfth Night (Rashdall, ii. 674).
[245] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (†1274), ii. 2, quaest. 168, art. 3 ‘Sicut dictum est, ludus est necessarius ad conversationem vitae humanae. ad omnia autem, quae sunt utilia conversationi humanae, deputari possunt aliqua officia licita. et ideo etiam officium histrionum, quod ordinatur ad solatium hominibus exhibendum, non est secundum se illicitum, nec sunt in statu peccati: dummodo moderate ludo utantur, id est, non utendo aliquibus illicitis verbis vel factis ad ludum, et non adhibendo ludum negotiis et temporibus indebitis ... unde illi, qui moderate iis subveniunt, non peccant, sed iusta faciunt, mercedem ministerii eorum iis attribuendo. si qui autem superflue sua in tales consumunt, vel etiam sustentant illos histriones qui illicitis ludis utuntur, peccant, quasi eos in peccatis foventes. unde Augustinus dicit, super Ioan. quod donare res suas histrionibus vitium est immane,’ &c., &c.
[246] Cf. Appendix G.
[247] Another version of this story is given by Petrus Cantor (ob. 1197), Verbum Abbreviatum, c. 84 (P. L. ccv. 254) ‘Ioculatori cuidam papa Alexander (Alex. III) nec concessit vivere de officio suo, nec ei penitus interdixit.’ In c. 49 of the same work Petrus Cantor inveighs learnedly Contra dantes histrionibus. Doubtless the Alexander in question is Alexander III (1159-81), though the (Alex. III) above may be due to the seventeenth-century editor, Galopinus. A hasty glance at the voluminous and practically unindexed decrees and letters of Alexander III in P. L. cc. and Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum (ed. 2, 1885-8), ii. 145-418, has not revealed the source of the story; and I doubt whether the Pope’s decision, if it was ever given, is to be found in black and white. The two reports of it by Thomas de Cabham and Petrus Cantor are barely consistent. In any case, it never got into the Gregorian Decretals.
[248] Gautier, ii. 42; Bédier, 389; Ten Brink, i. 186; Ducange, s. vv. Golia, &c.; O. Hubatsch, Lat. Vagantenlieder des Mittelalters (1870).
[249] Le Département des Livres (Méon, N. R. i. 404):
[250] The chief collections of goliardic verse are Schmeller, Carmina Burana (ed. 3, 1894), and T. Wright, Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes (C. S. 1841): for others cf. Hubatsch, 16. Latin was not unknown amongst lay minstrels: cf. Deus Bordeors Ribauz (Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 3):
[251] Hubatsch, 15. The origin, precise meaning, and mutual relations of the terms Golias, goliardi are uncertain. Probably the goliardic literature arose in France, rather than in England with Walter Mapes, the attribution to whom of many of the poems is perhaps due to a confusion of G[olias] with G[ualterus] in the MSS. Giraldus Cambrensis (ob. 1217), Speculum Ecclesiae, says ‘Parasitus quidam Golias nomine nostris diebus gulositate pariter et leccacitate famosissimus ... in papam et curiam Romanam carmina famosa ... evomuit’: but the following note points to a much earlier origin for Golias and his pueri, and this is upheld by W. Scherer, Gesch. d. deutsch. Dichtung im 11. und 12. Jahrh. 16.
[252] Early decrees forbidding the clergy to be ioculatores are given on p. 39. More precise is the order of Gautier of Sens (†913) in his Constitutiones, c. 13 (Mansi, xviii. 324) ‘Statuimus quod clerici ribaldi, maxime qui dicuntur de familia Goliae, per episcopos, archidiaconos, officiales, et decanos Christianitatis, tonderi praecipiantur vel etiam radi, ita quod eis non remaneat tonsura clericalis: ita tamen quod sine periculo et scandalo ita fiant.’ If Mansi’s date is right, this precedes by three centuries the almost identical Conc. of Rouen, c. 8 (Mansi, xxiii. 215), and Conc. of Castle Gonther (Tours), c. 21 (Mansi, xxiii. 237), both in 1231. Gautier, Les Tropaires, i. 186, dwells on the influence of the goliardi on the late and ribald development of the tropes, and quotes Conc. of Treves (1227), c. 9 (Mansi, xxiii. 33) ‘praecipimus ut omnes sacerdotes non permittant trutannos et alios vagos scholares aut goliardos cantare versus super Sanctus et Agnus Dei.’ On their probable share in the Feast of Fools cf. ch. xiv. For later legislation cf. Hubatsch, 14, 95, and the passage from the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII on p. 39. It lasts to the Conc. Frisingense (1440) ‘statuimus ne clerici mimis, ioculatoribus, histrionibus, buffonibus, galliardis, largiantur’ (Labbe, xiii. 1286). By this time ‘goliard’ seems little more than a synonym for ‘minstrel.’ The ‘mynstralle, a gulardous,’ of Mannyng, 148, does not appear to be a clerk, while Chaucer’s ‘goliardeys’ is the Miller (C. T. prol. 560). On the other hand, Langland’s ‘Goliardeys, a glotoun of wordes’ (Piers Plowman, prol. 139), speaks Latin. Another name for the goliardi occurs in an Epistola Guidonis S. Laurentii in Lucina Cardinalis, xx. (1266, Hartzheim, iii. 807) against ‘vagi scolares, qui Eberdini vocantur,’ and who ‘divinum invertunt officium, unde laici scandalizantur.’
[253] Baudouin de Condé in his Contes des Hiraus contrasts the ‘grans menestreus,’ the
with the ‘felons et honteux,’ who win pence,
while in Les États du Monde his son Jean sets up a high standard of behaviour for the true minstrels:
(Scheler, Dits et Contes de Baudouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé, i. 154; ii. 377). Cf. Watriquet de Couvin, Dis du fol menestrel (ed. Scheler, 367):
These three writers belong to the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century.
[254] A. Jubinal, Jongleurs et Trouvères, 165. Cf. Gautier, ii. 78; Bédier, 418.
[255] F. Diaz, Poesie der Troubadours (ed. Bartsch), 63; K. Bartsch, Grundriss der provenzalischen Literatur, 25; F. Hueffer, The Troubadours, 63. Diaz, op. cit. 297, prints the documents.
[256] There is nothing to show that Scilling, the companion of Widsith (Widsith, 104), was of an inferior grade.
[257] Hueffer, 52; G. Paris, 182: A. Stimming in Grober’s Grundriss, ii. 2. 15; Gautier, ii. 45, 58. The commonest of phrases in troubadour biography is ‘cantet et trobet.’ The term trobador is properly the accusative case of trobaire.
[258] Petrarch, Epist. Rerum Senil. n. 3 ‘sunt homines non magni ingenii, magnae vero memoriae, magnaeque diligentiae, sed maioris audaciae, qui regum ac potentum aulas frequentant, de proprio nudi, vestiti autem carminibus alienis, dumque quid ab hoc, aut ab illo exquisitius materno praesertim charactere dictum sit, ingenti expressione pronunciant, gratiam sibi nobilium, et pecunias quaerunt, et vestes et munera.’ Fulke of Marseilles, afterwards bishop of Toulouse, wrote songs in his youth. He became an austere Cistercian; but the songs had got abroad, and whenever he heard one of them sung by a joglar, he would eat only bread and water (Sermo of Robert de Sorbonne in Hauréau, Man. Fr. xxiv. 2. 286).
[259] In the first edition of his Reliques (1765), Percy gave the mediaeval minstrel as high a status as the Norse scald or Anglo-Saxon scôp. This led to an acrid criticism by Ritson who, in his essay On the ancient English Minstrels in Ancient Songs and Ballads (1829), easily showed the low repute in which many minstrels were held. See also his elaborate Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy in his Ancient English Metrical Romances (1802). The truth really lay between the two, for neither appreciated the wide variety covered by a common name. On the controversy, cf. Minto in Enc. Brit. s. v. Minstrels, Courthope, i. 426-31, and H. B. Wheatley’s Introduction to his edition of Percy’s Reliques, xiii-xv. Percy in his later editions profited largely by Ritson’s criticism; a careful collation of these is given in Schroer’s edition (1889).
[260] Magnin, Journal des Savants (1846), 545.
[261] Lambertus Ardensis, Chronicon, c. 81 (ed. Godefroy Menilglaise, 175) ‘quid plura? tot et tantorum ditatus est copia librorum ut Augustinum in theologia, Areopagitam Dionysium in philosophia, Milesium fabularium in naeniis gentium, in cantilenis gestoriis, sive in eventuris nobilium, sive etiam in fabellis ignobilium, ioculatores quosque nominatissimos aequiparare putaretur.’
[262] Freymond, Jongleurs et Menestrels, 34:
[263] Daurel et Beton (ed. Meyer, Soc. des anc. textes fr. 1886), 1206:
[264] Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 1:
[265] Three of these Enseignamens, by Guiraut de Cabreira (†1170), Guiraut de Calanso (†1200), and Bertran de Paris (†1250), are printed by K. Bartsch, Denkmäler der provenzalischen Litteratur, 85-101. Cf. Bartsch, Grundriss der prov. Lit. 25; Hueffer, The Troubadours, 66; Hist. Litt. xvii. 581.
[266] Bernhard, iii. 397, gives some French references, one dated 1395, for ‘menestriers de bouches,’ a term signifying minstrels who sang as well as played instruments.
[267] There are numerous payments to jugglers, tumblers and dancers in the Household Accounts of Henry VII (Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 85-113; Collier, i. 50). A letter to Wolsey of July 6, 1527, from R. Croke, the tutor of Henry VIII’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, complains of difficulties put in his way by R. Cotton, the Clerk-comptroller of the duke’s household, and adds: ‘At hic tamen in praeceptore arcendo diligens, libenter patitur scurras et mimos (qui digna lupanari in sacro cubiculo coram principe cantillent) admitti’ (Nichols, Memoir of Henry Fitzroy in Camden Miscellany, iii. xxxviii).
[268] For the ioculator regis, cf. Appendix E, and Leach, Beverley MSS. 179. He is called ‘jugler’ in N. H. B. 67. Is he distinct from the royal gestator (gestour, jester)? Both appear in the Shrewsbury accounts (s. ann. 1521, 1549). In 1554 both le jugler and le gester were entertained. The gestator seems to have merged in the stultus or court fool (ch. xvi). The accounts in App. E often mention the royal bearward, who remained an important official under Elizabeth.
[269] 2 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 12.
[270] Cf. Appendix H (i).
[271] Courthope, i. 445; A. Lang, s.v. Ballad in Enc. Brit. and in A Collection of Ballads, xi; Quarterly Review (July, 1898); Henderson, 335; G. Smith, 180. But I think that Gummere, B. P. passim, succeeds in showing that the element of folk-poetry in balladry is stronger than some of the above writers recognize.
[272] Sidney, Apologie for Poetrie (ed. Arber), 46 ‘Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness. I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet. And yet is it sung but by some blind Crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style.’ For the Puritan view, see Stubbes, i. 169.