The famous Pui d’Arras (vols. i. p. 376, ii. p. 88) was in a sense a minstrel guild. According to tradition a plague was stayed by a simultaneous apparition of the Virgin in a dream to two minstrels, which led to the acquisition of ‘le joyel d’Arras,’ the miraculous ‘cierge de notre Dame.’ This was about 1105, and the result was the foundation of the Confrérie or Carité de N. D. des Ardents, which afterwards developed into the pui. This was not confined to minstrels, but they were predominant. The Statutes say, ‘Ceste carité est estorée des jogleors, et les jogleors en sont signors[680].’ The objects of the pui, however, were religious, social, and literary. It was not a craft guild, such as grew up two centuries later.
Ordinances were made in 1321 ‘à l’acort du commun des menestreus et menestrelles, jougleurs et jougleresses’ of Paris for the reformation of their ‘mestier,’ and registered with the provost of Paris in 1341. They chiefly regulate the employment of minstrels within the city. The ‘mestres du dit mestier’ are to be ‘ii ou iii preudes hommes’ appointed by the provost on behalf of the King. A number of ‘guètes’ and other minstrels sign, beginning with ‘Pariset, menestrel le roy,’ and ending with ‘Jaque le Jougleur.’ As a possible head of the ‘mestier’ is named ‘li prevost de Saint-Julian.’ This seems to contemplate the foundation of the hospice et confrérie under the patronage of SS. Julian and Genesius, and in close connexion with the ‘mestier,’ which actually took place 1328-35. But in the later Statutes of 1407 the head of the guild is called the ‘roy des ménestriers,’ and as by this time the guild seems to claim some authority over the whole of France, it is probable that this ‘roy’ was identical with the ‘roy des menestreuls du royaume de France,’ a title which occurs in various documents from 1338 onwards. He may also have been identical with the ‘roy’ of the King’s household minstrels (cf. p. 239). The Paris guild lasted until the suppression of all such privileged bodies in 1776[681].
The corporation of ‘les Trompettes jougleurs’ of Chauny was founded during the fifteenth century. This town claimed to provide bateleurs for all the north of France[682].
There are two early jurisdictions over minstrelsy, which are not strictly of the nature of guilds.
Tradition has it that †1210 Randal Blundeville, Earl of Chester, besieged by the Welsh in Rhuddlan Castle, was relieved by Roger Lacy, constable of Cheshire, with a mob of riff-raff from Chester Midsummer fair. Randal gave to Lacy, and Lacy’s son John gave to his steward Hugh de Dutton and his heirs the ‘magistratum omnium leccatorum et meretricum totius Cestriae.’ The fact of the jurisdiction is undoubted. It was reserved by the charter to the London guild in 1469, claimed by Laurence de Dutton in 1499, admitted upon an action of quo warranto as a right ‘from time immemorial,’ further reserved in the first Vagrant Act (1572) which specifically included minstrels, and in the successive Acts of 1597, 1603, 1628, 1641, 1713, 1740, 1744. It lapsed when this last Act was repealed in 1822. Up to 1756 the heir of Dutton regularly held his curia Minstralciae at Chester Midsummer fair, and issued licences to fiddlers in the city and county for a fee of 4½d., afterwards raised to 2s. 6d. Thomas Dutton (1569-1614), under puritan influences, inserted a proviso against piping and dancing on Sundays[683].
Letters patent of John of Gaunt dated 1380 and confirmed by an ‘inspeximus’ of Henry VI in 1443 assigned ‘le roy des ministralx’ in the honour of Tutbury to arrest all minstrels within the honour not doing service on the feast of the Assumption. It was a custom that the prior of Tutbury should provide a bull for a bull-running by the assembled minstrels on this feast. The court was still held by an annual ‘king of the fiddlers,’ with the steward and bailiff of the honour (including Staffs., Derby, Notts., Leicester, and Warwick), at the end of the seventeenth century, and the minstrels claimed to be exempt, like those of Chester, from vagrancy legislation. But their rights were not reserved, either by the Charter of 1469 or the Vagrant Acts[684].
The first English craft guild of minstrels is later by a century and a half than that of Paris.
A charter of Edward IV (1469), ‘ex querelosa insinuatione dilectorum nobis Walteri Haliday, marescalli [and seven others] ministrallorum nostrorum,’ declares that ‘nonnulli rudes Agricolae et Artifices diversarum Misterarum Regni nostri Angliae finxerunt se fore Ministrallos. Quorum aliqui Liberatam nostram, eis minime datam, portarunt, seipsos etiam fingentes esse Ministrallos nostros proprios. Cuius quidem Liberatae ac dictae Artis sive Occupationis Ministrallorum colore in diversis Partibus Regni nostri praedicti grandes Pecuniarum Exactiones de Ligeis nostris deceptive colligunt et recipiunt.’ Hence illegitimate competition with the real minstrels, decay of the art, and neglect of agriculture. The charter then does two things. It makes the royal minstrels a corporation with a marshall elected by themselves, and it puts them at the head of a ‘Fraternitatem sive Gildam’ of minstrels already existing in the chapel of the Virgin in St. Paul’s, and in the royal free chapel of St. Anthony. All minstrels in the country are to join this guild or be suppressed. It is to have two custodes and to make statutes and ordinances. The jurisdiction of Dutton over Chester minstrels is, as already stated, reserved[685]. A ‘serviens’ or ‘serjeant’ seems to have been an officer of the guild[686]. With this exception nothing more is heard of it until 1594, when a dispute as to the office of the Master of the Musicians’ Company called for the intervention of the Lord Keeper[687].’ In 1604 the Company received a new charter, which gave it jurisdiction within the city and a radius of three miles from its boundaries. It was further restricted to the city itself under Charles I. It still exists as the Corporation of the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Art or Science of the Musicians of London[688].
The London guild would appear, from its peculiar relation to the royal household minstrels, and its claim to jurisdiction throughout the country, to have been modelled upon that of Paris. This claim was evidently not maintained, and in fact at least three other local guilds can be shown to have existed in the sixteenth century. A search, which I have not undertaken, would probably readily discover more.
Ordinances, dated 1526, of the ‘felowshyp of the craft and mystery of mynstrells’ give the prerogative right to perform in the city to the members of this body, saving the privileges of the city waits, and ‘the King’s mynstrells, the Queane’s, my Lord Prince’s, or any honorable or wurshipfull mann’s mynstrells of thys realme[689].’
An order of the Governors of the city (1555) recites an old custom ‘since Athelstan’ of the choice by minstrels between Trent and Tweed of aldermen of their fraternities during Rogation days, and renews orders for the ‘fraternity of our Lady of the read arke in Beverley.’ The statutes deal with the employment of minstrels in Beverley, and with their ‘castells’ at the Rogation-day procession. A new member must be ‘mynstrell to some man of honour or worship or waite of some towne corporate or other ancient town or else of such honestye and conyng as shalbe thought laudable and pleasant to the hearers.’ It is claimed that such are excluded from the ‘Kyng’s acts where they speake of vacabonds and valiant beggers.’ Quite in the spirit of the London charter of 1469 it is ordered that ‘no myler shepherd or of other occupation or husbandman or husbandman servant’ shall assume the functions of a minstrel outside his own parish[690]. The earliest notice of this guild in the Beverley archives seems to be in 1557[691], but the terms of the order and the existence of pillars put up by the minstrels in fifteenth-century churches in Beverley[692] point to some informal earlier association.
A craft of Mynstrells certainly existed by 1561, in which year they undertook the pageant of Herod at the Corpus Christi plays[693].