CHAPTER III

THE MINSTREL LIFE

The perpetual _infamia_ of the minstrels is variously reflected in the literature of their production. Sometimes they take their condemnation lightly enough, dismissing it with a jest or a touch of bravado. In _Aucassin et Nicolete_, that marvellous romance of the _viel caitif_, when the hero is warned that if he takes a mistress he must go to hell, he replies that, to hell will he go, for thither go all the goodly things of the world. ‘Thither go the gold and the silver, and the vair and the grey, and thither too go harpers and minstrels and the kings of the world. With these will I go, so that I have Nicolete, my most sweet friend, with me’[165]. At other times they show a wistful sense of the pathos of their secular lot. They tell little stories in which heaven proves more merciful than the vice-gerents of heaven upon earth, and Virgin or saint bestows upon a minstrel the sign of grace which the priest denies[166]. But often, again, they turn upon their persecutors and rend them with the merciless satire of the _fabliaux_, wherein it is the clerk, the theologian, who is eternally called upon to play the indecent or ridiculous part[167].

Under spiritual disabilities the minstrels may have been, but so far as substantial popularity amongst all classes went, they had no cause from the eleventh to the fourteenth century to envy the monks. As a social and literary force they figure largely both on the continent and in England. The distinctively Anglo-Saxon types of _scôp_ and _gleómon_ of course disappear at the Conquest. They do not cease to exist; but they go under ground, singing their defiant lays of Hereward[168]; and they pursue a more or less subterranean career until the fourteenth century brings the English tongue to its own again. But minstrelsy was no less popular with the invaders than with the invaded. Whether the _skald_ had yet developed amongst the Scandinavian pirates who landed with Rollo on the coasts of France may perhaps be left undetermined[169]: for a century and a half had sufficed to turn the Northmen into Norman French, and with the other elements of the borrowed civilization had certainly come the _ioculator_. In the very van of William’s army at Senlac strutted the minstrel Taillefer, and went to his death exercising the double arts of his hybrid profession, juggling with his sword, and chanting an heroic lay of Roncesvalles[170]. Twenty years later, Domesday Book records how Berdic the _ioculator regis_ held three vills and five carucates of land in Gloucestershire, and how in Hampshire Adelinda, a _ioculatrix_, held a virgate, which Earl Roger had given her[171]. During the reigns of the Angevin and Plantagenet kings the minstrels were ubiquitous. They wandered at their will from castle to castle, and in time from borough to borough, sure of their ready welcome alike in the village tavern, the guildhall, and the baron’s keep[172]. They sang and jested in the market-places, stopping cunningly at a critical moment in the performance, to gather their harvest of small coin from the bystanders[173]. In the great castles, while lords and ladies supped or sat around the fire, it was theirs to while away many a long bookless evening with courtly _geste_ or witty sally. At wedding or betrothal, baptism or knight-dubbing, treaty or tournament, their presence was indispensable. The greater festivities saw them literally in their hundreds[174], and rich was their reward in money and in jewels, in costly garments[175], and in broad acres. They were licensed vagabonds, with free right of entry into the presence-chambers of the land[176]. You might know them from afar by their coats of many colours, gaudier than any knight might respectably wear[177], by the instruments upon their backs and those of their servants, and by the shaven faces, close-clipped hair and flat shoes proper to their profession[178]. This kenspeckle appearance, together with the privilege of easy access, made the minstrel’s dress a favourite disguise in ages when disguise was often imperative. The device attributed by the chroniclers to Alfred and to Anlaf becomes in the romances one of the commonest of _clichés_[179]. The readiness with which the minstrels won the popular ear made them a power in the land. William de Longchamp, the little-loved chancellor of Richard I, found it worth his while to bring a number of them over from France, that they might sing his praises abroad in the public places[180]. Nor were they less in request for satire than for eulogy. The English speaking minstrels, in particular, were responsible for many songs in derision of unpopular causes and personalities[181]; and we need not doubt that ‘the lay that Sir Dinadan made by King Mark, which was the worst lay that ever harper sang with harp or with any other instruments,’ must have had its precise counterparts in actual life[182]. The Sarum statutes of 1319 lay especial stress on the flattery and the evil speaking with which the minstrels rewarded their entertainers[183]. Sometimes, indeed, they over-reached themselves, for Henry I is related to have put out the eyes of Lucas de Barre, a Norman _jougleur_, or perhaps rather _trouvère_, who made and sang songs against him[184]. But Lucas de Barre’s rank probably aggravated his offence, and as a rule the minstrels went scot-free. A wiser churchman here and there was not slow to perceive how the unexampled hold of minstrelsy on the popular ear might be turned to the service of religion. Eadhelm, standing in gleeman’s attire on an English bridge to mingle words of serious wisdom with his _carmina trivialia_, is one instance[185]. And in the same spirit St. Francis, himself half a troubadour in youth, would call his Minorites _ioculatores Domini_, and send them singing over the world to beg for their fee the repentance and spiritual joy of their hearers[186]. A popular hymn-writer of the present day is alleged to have thought it ‘hard that the devil should have all the good tunes’; but already in the Middle Ages religious words were being set to secular music, and graced with the secular imagery of youth and spring[187].

But if the minstrels were on the one hand a force among the people, on the other they had the ear of kings. The English court to judge by the payments recorded in the exchequer books, must have been full of them[188]. The fullest and most curious document on the subject dates from the reign of Edward I. It is a roll of payments made on the occasion of a Whitsuntide feast held in London in the year 1306, and a very large number of the minstrels recorded are mentioned by name[189]. At the head of the list come five minstrels with the high-sounding title of _le roy_[190], and these get five marks apiece. A number of others follow, who received sums varying from one mark upwards. Most of these have French names, and many are said to be in the company of this or that noble or reverend guest at the feast. Finally, two hundred marks were distributed in smaller sums amongst the inferior minstrels, _les autres menestraus de la commune_, and some of these seem to have been of English birth. Below the _roys_ rank two minstrels, Adam le Boscu and another, who are dignified with the title of _maistre_, which probably signifies that they were clerks[191]. The other names are mainly descriptive, ‘Janin le Lutour,’ ‘Gillotin le Sautreour,’ ‘Baudec le Taboureur,’ and the like; a few are jesting stage names, such as the inferior performers of our music halls bear to-day[192]. Such are ‘Guillaume sanz Maniere,’ ‘Reginaldus le Menteur,’ ‘le Petit Gauteron,’ ‘Parvus Willielmus,’ and those of the attractive comedians Perle in the Eghe, and Matill’ Makejoye. The last, by the way, is the only woman performer named. The resources of Edward I could no doubt stand the strain of rewarding with royal magnificence the entertainers of his guests. There is plenty of evidence, however, that even on secular grounds the diatribes of the moralists against the minstrels were often enough justified. To the lavish and unthrifty of purse they became blood-suckers. Matilda, the wife of Henry I, is said to have squandered most of her revenues upon them[193]; while the unfortunate Robert of Normandy, if no less a chronicler than Ordericus Vitalis may be believed, was stripped by these rapacious gentry to the very skin[194]. Yet for all the days of honour and all the rich gifts the minstrel life must have had its darker side. Easily won, easily parted with; and the lands and laced mantles did not last long, when the elbow itched for the dice-box. This was the incurable ruin of the minstrel folk[195]. And even that life of the road, so alluring to the fever in the blood, must have been a hard one in the rigours of an English climate. To tramp long miles in wind and rain, to stand wet to the skin and hungry and footsore, making the slow _bourgeois_ laugh while the heart was bitter within; such must have been the daily fate of many amongst the humbler minstrels at least[196]. And at the end to die like a dog in a ditch, under the ban of the Church and with the prospect of eternal damnation before the soul.

Kings and nobles were not accustomed to depend for their entertainment merely upon the stray visits of wandering minstrels. Others more or less domiciled formed a permanent part of the household. These indeed are the minstrels in the stricter sense of that term--_ministri_, _ministeriales_. In Domesday Book, as we have seen, one Berdic bears the title of the _ioculator regis_. Shortly afterwards Henry I had his _mimus regis_, by name Raherus, who made large sums by his _suavitas iocularis_, and founded the great priory of St. Bartholomew at Smithfield[197]. Laying aside his parti-coloured coat, he even became himself the first prior of the new community. The old spirit remained with him, however; and it is recorded that the fame of the house was largely magnified by means of some feigned miracles which Raherus put forth. Richard I was a noted lover of song, and the names of more than one minstrel of his are preserved. There was Ambroise, who was present at Richard’s coronation in 1189 and at the siege of Acre in 1191, and who wrote a history, still extant, of the third crusade[198]. And there was that Blondiaux or Blondel de Nesle, the story of whose discovery of his captive master, apocryphal though it may be, is in all the history books[199]. Henry III had his _magister Henricus versificator_ in 1251[200], and his _magister Ricardus citharista_ in 1252[201]. A harper was also amongst the _ministri_ of Prince Edward in the Holy War[202], and when the prince became Edward I, he still retained one in his service. He is mentioned as Walter de Stourton, the king’s harper, in 1290[203], and as the _citharista regis_ in 1300[204]. Edward II had several minstrels, to one of whom, William de Morlee, known as _Roy de North_, he made a grant of land[205]. By this time the royal minstrels seem to have become a regular establishment of no inconsiderable numbers. Under Edward III they received 7¹⁄₂_d._ a day[206]. A little later in the reign, between 1344 and 1347, there were nineteen who received 12_d._ a day in war, when they doubtless formed a military band, and 20_s._ a year in peace. These included five trumpeters, one citoler, five pipers, one tabouretter, two clarions, one nakerer, and one fiddler, together with three additional minstrels, known as waits[207]. The leader of the minstrels bore the title of _rex_, for in 1387 we find a licence given by Richard II to his _rex ministrallorum_, John Caumz, permitting him to pass the seas[208]. Henry V had fifteen minstrels when he invaded France in 1415, and at a later date eighteen, who received 12_d._ a day apiece[209]. At the end of his reign his minstrels received 100_s._ a year, and this annuity was continued under Henry VI, who in 1455 had twelve of them, besides a wait. In the next year this king issued a commission for the impressing of boys to fill vacancies in the body[210]. Edward IV had thirteen minstrels and a wait[211]. By 1469 these had been cut down to eight. At their head was a chief, who was now called, not as in Richard II’s time _rex_, but _marescallus_[212]. The eight king’s minstrels and their _marescallus_ can be traced through the reign of Henry VII, and so on into the sixteenth century[213].

Nor was the royal household singular in the maintenance of a permanent body of minstrels. The _citharista_ of Margaret, queen of Edward I, is mentioned in 1300, and her _istrio_ in 1302[214]. Philippa, queen of Edward III, had her minstrels in 1337[215], and those of Queen Elizabeth were a regular establishment in the reign of Henry VII[216]. The Scottish court, too, had its recognized troupe, known by the early years of the sixteenth century as the ‘minstrels of the chekkar[217].’ As with kings and queens so with lesser men. The list of minstrels at court in 1306 includes the harpers and other musicians of several lords, both English and foreign[218]. In 1308 the earl of Lancaster had a body of _menestralli_ and an _armiger menestrallorum_[219]. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entries of payments to the minstrels of a vast number of _domini_, small and great, are common in the account books[220]. Henry, earl of Derby, took minstrels with him in his expeditions abroad of 1390 and 1392[221]; while the _Household Book_ of the earl of Northumberland (†1512) shows that he was accustomed to entertain ‘a Taberett, a Luyte, and a Rebecc,’ as well as six ‘trompettes[222].’ Minstrels are also found, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the service of the municipal corporations. London, Coventry, Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Chester, York, Beverley, Leicester, Lynn, Canterbury had them, to name no others. They received fixed fees or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a silver scutcheon, played at all local celebrations and festivities, and were commonly known as _waits_[223]. This term we have already found in use at court, and the ‘Black Book,’ which contains the household regulations of Edward IV, informs us that the primary duty of a wait was to ‘pipe the watch,’ summer and winter, at certain fixed hours of the night[224].

It must not be supposed that established minstrels, whether royal, noble, or municipal, were always in constant attendance on their lords. Certain fixed services were required of them, which were not very serious, except in the case of waits[225]; for the rest of their time they were free. This same ‘Black Book’ of Edward IV is very explicit on the point. The minstrels are to receive a yearly fee and a livery[226]. They must attend at court for the five great feasts of the year. At other times, two or three out of their number, or more if the king desire it, are to be in waiting. The last regulation on the subject is curious. The king forbids his minstrels to be too presumptuous or familiar in asking rewards of any lord of the land; and in support of this he quotes a similar prohibition by the Emperor Henry II[227]. Doubtless, in the intervals of their services, the household minstrels travelled, like their unattached brethren of the road, but with the added advantage of a letter of recommendation from their lord, which ensured them the hospitality of his friends[228]. Such letters were indeed often given, both to the minstrels of a man’s own household and as testimonials to other minstrels who may have especially pleased the giver. Those interesting collections of mediaeval epistolary formulae, the _summae dictaminis_, contain many models for them, and judging by the lavish eulogy which they employ, the minstrels themselves must have had a hand in drawing them up[229]. Many minstrels probably confined themselves to short tours in the vicinity of their head quarters; others, like Widsith, the Anglo-Saxon _scôp_, were far travellers. John Caumz received a licence from Richard II to cross the seas, and in 1483 we find Richard III entertaining minstrels of the dukes of Austria and Bavaria[230]. Possibly the object of John Caumz was to visit one of the _scolae ministrallorum_ in France, where experiences might be exchanged and new songs learnt. Beauvais, Lyon, Cambrai were famous for these schools, which were held year by year in Lent, when performances were stopped; and the wardrobe accounts of Edward III record grants of licences and expenses to Barbor and Morlan, two bagpipers, to visit the _scolas ministrallis in partibus trans mare_[231].

From the fourteenth century it is possible to trace the growth of the household minstrels as a privileged class at the expense of their less fortunate rivals. The freedom of access enjoyed by the entertainers of earlier days was obviously open to abuse. We have seen that in 1317 it led to the offering of an insult to Edward II by an emissary clad as a minstrel at his own table. It was only two years before that a royal proclamation had considerably restrained the liberty of the minstrels. In view of the number of idle persons who ‘under colour of mynstrelsie’ claimed food, drink, and gifts in private houses, it was ordered ‘that to the houses of prelates earls and barons none resort to meate and drynke, unless he be a mynstrel, and of these mynstrels that there come none except it be three or four minstrels of honour at the most in one day, unlesse he be desired of the lorde of the house.’ The houses of meaner men are to be altogether exempt, except at their desire[232]. I think it is probable that by ‘minstrels of honour’ we must here understand ‘household minstrels[233]’; and that the severity of the ordinance must have come upon those irresponsible vagrants who had not the shelter of a great man’s name. With the Statutes of Labourers in the middle of the fourteenth century begins a history of legislation against ‘vacabonds and valiant beggars,’ which put further and serious difficulties in the way of the free movement of the migratory classes through the country[234]. Minstrels, indeed, are not specifically declared to be ‘vacabonds’ until this legislation was codified by William Cecil in 1572[235]; but there is evidence that they were none the less liable to be treated as such, unless they had some protection in the shape of livery or licence. At Chester from the early thirteenth century, and at Tutbury in Staffordshire from 1380, there existed courts of minstrelsy which claimed to issue licences to all performers within their purview. It is not probable that this jurisdiction was very effective. But a step taken by Edward IV in 1469 had for its avowed object to strengthen the hands of what may be called official minstrelsy. Representation had been made to the king that certain rude husbandmen and artificers had usurped the title and livery of his minstrels, and had thus been enabled to gather an illegitimate harvest of fees. He therefore created or revived a regular guild or fraternity of minstrels, putting his own household performers with their _marescallus_ at the head of it, and giving its officers a disciplinary authority over the profession throughout the country, with the exception of Chester. It is not improbable, although it is not distinctly stated, that admission into the guild was practically confined to ‘minstrels of honour.’ Certainly one of the later local guilds which grew up in the sixteenth century, that of Beverley, limited its membership to such as could claim to 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[236].’ In any case the whole drift of social development was to make things difficult for the independent minstrels and to restrict the area of their wanderings.

The widespread popularity of the minstrels amongst the mediaeval laity, whether courtiers, burghers, or peasants, needs no further labouring. It is more curious to find that in spite of the formal anathemas of the Church upon their art, they were not, as a matter of fact, rigorously held at arm’s length by the clergy. We find them taking a prominent

## part in the holyday festivities of religious guilds[237]; we find

them solacing the slow progress of the pilgrimages with their ready wit and copious narrative or song[238]; we find them received with favour by bishops, even upon their visitations[239], and not excluded from a welcome in the hall of many a monastery. As early as 1180, one Galfridus, a _citharoedus_, held a ‘corrody,’ or right to a daily commons of food and drink in the abbey of Hyde at Winchester[240]. And payments for performances are frequent in the accounts of the Augustinian priories at Canterbury[241], Bicester, and Maxtoke, and the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Norwich, Thetford, and St. Swithin’s, Winchester[242], and doubtless in those of many another cloistered retreat. The Minorite chroniclers relate, how at the time of the coming of the friars in 1224 two of them were mistaken for minstrels by the porter of a Benedictine grange near Abingdon, received by the prior and brethren with unbecoming glee, and when the error was discovered, turned out with contumely[243]. At such semi-religious foundations also, as the college of St. Mary at Winchester, or Waynflete’s great house of St. Mary Magdalen in Oxford, minstrels of all degrees found, at least by the fifteenth century, ready and liberal entertainment[244].

How, then, is one to reconcile this discrepancy between the actual practice of the monasteries and the strict, the uncompromising prohibition of minstrelsy in rule and canon? An incomplete answer readily presents itself. The monks being merely human, fell short of the ideal prescribed for them. We do not now learn for the first time, that the ambitions of the pious founder, the ecclesiastical law-giver, the patristic preacher, were one thing; the effective daily life of churchmen in many respects quite another. Here, as in matters of even more moment, did mediaeval monasticism ‘dream from deed dissever’--

‘The reule of Seint Maure or of Seint Beneit, By-cause that it was old and som-del streit This ilke monk leet olde thinges pace, And held after the newe world the space.’

True enough, but not the whole truth. It doubtless explains the behaviour of the Benedictines of Abingdon; but we can hardly suppose that when Robert de Grosseteste, the sworn enemy of ecclesiastical abuses, kept his harper’s chamber next his own, he was surreptitiously allowing himself an illegitimate gratification which he denied to his clergy. The fact is that the condemnations of the Church, transferred, as we have seen, wholesale from the _mimi_ and _histriones_ of the decaying Empire, were honestly not applicable without qualification, even from the ecclesiastical point of view, to their successors, the _mimi_ and _histriones_ of the Middle Ages. The traditions of the Roman stage, its manners, its topics, its ethical code, became indeed a large part of the direct inheritance of minstrelsy. But, as we have seen, they were far from being the whole of that inheritance. The Teutonic as well as the Latin element in the civilization of western Europe must be taken into account. The minstrel derives from the disreputable _planipes_; he derives also from the _scôp_, and has not altogether renounced the very different social and ethical position which the _scôp_ enjoyed. After all, nine-tenths of the secular music and literature, something even of the religious literature, of the Middle Ages had its origin in minstrelsy. Practically, if not theoretically, the Church had to look facts in the face, and to draw a distinction between the different elements and tendencies that bore a single name. The formularies, of course, continued to confound all minstrels under the common condemnation of _ioculatores_. The Church has never been good at altering its formularies to suit altered conditions. But it has generally been good at practical compromises. And in the case of minstrelsy, a practical compromise, rough enough, was easily arrived at.

The effective conscience of the thirteenth-century Church had clearly come to recognize degrees in the ethical status of the minstrels. No more authoritative exponent of the official morals of his day can be desired than St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Thomas Aquinas is very far from pronouncing an unqualified condemnation of all secular entertainment. The profession of an _histrio_, he declares, is by no means in itself unlawful. It was ordained for the reasonable solace of humanity, and the _histrio_ who exercises it at a fitting time and in a fitting manner is not on that account to be regarded as a sinner[245]. Another contemporary document is still more explicit. This is the _Penitential_ written at the close of the thirteenth century by Thomas de Cabham, sub-dean of Salisbury and subsequently archbishop of Canterbury[246]. In the course of his analysis of human frailty, Thomas de Cabham makes a careful classification from the ethical point of view, of minstrels. There are those who wear horrible masks, or entertain by indecent dance and gesture. There are those again who follow the courts of the great, and amuse by satire and by raillery. Both these classes are altogether damnable. Those that remain are distinguished by their use of musical instruments. Some sing wanton songs at banquets. These too are damnable, no less than the satirists and posture-mongers. Others, however, sing of the deeds of princes, and the lives of the saints. To these it is that the name _ioculatores_ more strictly belongs, and they, on no less an authority than that of Pope Alexander himself[247], may be tolerated.

Of the three main groups of minstrels distinguished by Thomas de Cabham, two correspond roughly to the two broad types which, from the point of view of racial tradition, we have already differentiated. His musicians correspond to the Teutonic gleemen and their successors; his posture-mongers and buffoons to the Roman _mimi_ and their successors. Who then are Thomas de Cabham’s third and intermediate group, the satirists whose lampoons beset the courts of the great? Well, raillery and invective, as we have seen, were common features of minstrelsy; but Gautier may very likely be right when he surmises that Thomas de Cabham has particularly in mind the _scolares vagantes_, who brought so much scandal upon the Church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries[248]. Some of these were actually out at elbows and disfrocked clerks; others were scholars drifting from university to university, and making their living meantime by their wits; most of them were probably at least in minor orders. But practically they lived the life of the minstrels, tramping the road with them, sharing the same temptations of wine, women, and dice, and bringing into the profession a trained facility of composition, and at least a flavour of classical learning[249]. They were indeed the main intermediaries between the learned and the vernacular letters of their day; the spilth of their wit and wisdom is to be found in the burlesque Latin verse of such collections as the _Carmina Burana_, riotous lines, by no means devoid of poetry, with their half-humorous half-pathetic burden,

‘In taberna quando sumus Non curamus quid sit humus[250].’

And especially they were satirists, satirists mainly of the hypocrisy, cupidity and evil living of those in the high places of the Church, for whom they conceived a grotesque expression in Bishop Golias, a type of materialistic prelate, in whose name they wrote and whose _pueri_ or _discipuli_ they declared themselves to be[251]. _Goliardi_, _goliardenses_, their reputation in the eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities was of the worst, and their ill practices are coupled with those of the minstrels in many a condemnatory decree[252].

It is not with the _goliardi_ then, that Thomas de Cabham’s relaxation of the strict ecclesiastical rigours is concerned. Neither is it, naturally enough, with the lower minstrels of the _mimus_ tradition. Towards these Thomas de Cabham, like his predecessors, is inexorable. And even of the higher minstrels the musicians and singers, his toleration has its limits. He discriminates. In a sense, a social and professional sense, all these higher minstrels fall into the same class. But from the ethical point of view there is a very marked distinction amongst them. Some there are who haunt taverns and merry-makings with loose songs of love and dalliance. These it is not to be expected that the holy mother Church should in any way countenance. Her toleration must be reserved for those more reputable performers who find material for their verse either in the life and conversation of the saints and martyrs themselves, or at least in the noble and inspiring deeds of national heroes and champions. Legends of the saints and gests of princes: if the minstrels will confine themselves to the celebration of these, then, secure in the pronouncement of a pope, they may claim a hearing even from the devout. It would be rash to assert that even the comparatively liberal theory of Thomas de Cabham certainly justified in all cases the practice of the monasteries. But it is at least noteworthy that in several instances where the subjects of the minstrelsy presented for the delectation of a cowled audience remain upon record, they do fall precisely within the twofold definition which he lays down. At Winchester in 1338 the minstrel Herbert sang the song of Colbrond (or Guy of Warwick), and the gest of the miraculous deliverance of Queen Emma; while at Bicester in 1432 it was the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus that made the Epiphany entertainment of the assembled canons.

If now we set aside the very special class of ribald _galiardi_, and if we set aside also the distinction drawn by Thomas de Cabham on purely ethical grounds between the minstrels of the love-songs and the minstrels of saintly or heroic gest, the net result is the twofold classification of higher and lower minstrels already familiar to us. Roughly--it must always be borne in mind how roughly--it corresponds on the one hand to the difference between the Teutonic and the Roman tradition, on the other to the distinction between the established ‘minstrel of honour’ and his unattached rival of the road. And there is abundant evidence that such a distinction was generally present, and occasionally became acute, in the consciousness of the minstrels themselves. The aristocrats of minstrelsy, a Baudouin or a Jean de Condé, or a Watriquet de Couvin, have very exalted ideas as to the dignity of their profession. They will not let you, if they can help it, put the _grans menestreus_ on the same level with every-day _jangleur_ of poor attainments and still poorer repute[253]. In the _Dit des Taboureurs_ again it is a whole class, the _joueurs de vielle_, who arise to vindicate their dignity and to pour scorn upon the humble and uninstructed drummers[254]. But the most instructive and curious evidence comes from Provence. It was in 1273, when the amazing growth of Provençal poetry was approaching its sudden decay, that the last of the great troubadours, Guiraut de Riquier, addressed a verse _Supplicatio_ to Alphonso X of Castile on the state of minstrelsy. He points out the confusion caused by the indiscriminate grouping of poets, singers, and entertainers of all degrees under the title of _joglars_, and begs the king, as high patron of letters, to take order for it. A reply from Alphonso, also in verse, and also, one may suspect, due to the fertile pen of Guiraut Riquier, is extant. Herein he establishes or confirms a fourfold hierarchy. At the head come two classes, the _doctors de trobar_ and the _trobaires_, who are composers, the former of didactic, the latter of ordinary songs and melodies. Beneath these are the _joglars_ proper, instrumentalists and reciters of delightful stories, and beneath these again the _bufos_, the entertainers of common folk, who have really no claim to be considered as _joglars_ at all[255]. One of the distinctions here made is new to us. The difference between _doctor de trobar_ and _trobaire_ is perhaps negligible. But that between the _trobaire_ or composer and the _joglar_ or executant of poetry, is an important one. It is not, however, so far as the Teutonic element in minstrelsy goes, primitive. The _scôpas_ and the French or Anglo-Norman _ioculatores_ up to the twelfth century composed their verses as a class, and sang them as well[256]. In Provence, however, the Teutonic element in minstrelsy must have been of the slightest, and perhaps the Roman tradition, illustrated by the story of Laberius, of a marked barrier between composing and executing, had vaguely lingered. At any rate it is in Provence, in the eleventh century, that the distinction between _trobaire_ and _joglar_ makes its appearance. It never became a very complete one. The _trobaire_ was generally, not always, of gentle or burgess birth; sometimes actually a king or noble. In the latter case he contented himself with writing his songs, and let the _joglars_ spread them abroad. But the bulk of the _trobaires_ lived by their art. They wandered from castle to castle, alone with a _vielle_, or with _joglars_ in their train, and although they mingled with their hosts on fairly equal terms, they did not disdain to take their rewards of horse or mantle or jewel, just like any common performer. Moreover, they confined themselves to lyric poetry, leaving the writing of epic, so far as epic was abroad in Provence, to the _joglars_[257]. From Provence, the _trobaire_ spread to other countries, reappearing in the north of France and England as the _trouvère_. We seem to trace an early _trouvère_ in Lucas de Barre in the time of Henry I. But it is Eleanor of Poitiers, daughter of the _trobaire_ count William of Poitiers, and mother of the _trouvère_ Richard Cœur de Lion, who appears as the chief intermediary between north and south. The intrusion of the _trouvère_ was the first step in the degradation of minstrelsy. Amongst the Anglo-Saxons, even apart from the _cantilenae_ of the folk, the professional singer had no monopoly of song. Hrothgar and Alfred harped with their _scôpas_. But if there had been a similar tendency amongst the continental Teutons who merged in the French and Norman-French, it had been checked by the complete absorption of all literary energies, outside the minstrel class, in neo-Latin. It was not until the twelfth century, and as has been said, under Provençal influence, that secular-minded clerks, and exceptionally educated nobles, merchants, or officials, began to devote themselves to the vernacular, and by so doing to develop the _trouvère_ type. The _trouvère_ had the advantage of the minstrel in learning and independence, if not in leisure; and though the latter long held his own by the side of his rival, he was fated in the end to give way, and to content himself with the humbler task of spreading abroad what the _trouvère_ wrote[258]. By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, the conquest of literature by the _bourgeoisie_ was complete. The interest had shifted from the minstrel on the hall floor to the burgher or clerk in the _puy_; the prize of a successful poem was no longer a royal mantle, but a laureate crown or the golden violet of the _jeux floraux_; and its destiny less to be recited at the banquet, than read in the bower. In England the completion of the process perhaps came a little later, and was coincident with the triumph of English, the tongue of the _bourgeois_, over French, the tongue of the noble. The full flower of minstrelsy had been the out-at-elbows vagabond, Rutebeuf. The full flower of the _trouvère_ is the comptroller of the customs and subsidies of the port of London, Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first distinction, then, made by Guiraut Riquier, that between _trobaire_ and _joglar_, implies a development from within minstrelsy itself that was destined one day to overwhelm it. But the second, that between the _joglar_ and the _bufo_, is precisely the one already familiar to us, between the minstrels of the _scôp_ and the minstrels of the _mimus_ tradition. And, as has been said, it is

## partly, if not entirely, identical with that which grew up in course

of time between the protected minstrels of the court and of great men’s houses, and their vagrant brethren of the road. This general antithesis between the higher and lower mintrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a bare half of the truth[259]. And it runs through the whole history of minstrelsy. It became acute, no doubt, with the growth in importance of the minstrels of honour in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But it had probably been just as acute, if not more so, at the very beginning of things, when the clash of Teutonic and Roman civilization first brought the bard face to face with the serious rivalry of the mime. Bard and mime merged without ever becoming quite identical; and even at the moment when this process was most nearly complete, say in the eleventh century, the _jouglerie seigneuriale_, to use Magnin’s happy terms, was never quite the same thing as the _jouglerie foraine et populaire_[260], least of all in a country like England where differences of tongue went to perpetuate and emphasize the breach.

Nevertheless, the antithesis may easily be pushed too far. After all, the minstrels were entertainers, and therefore their business was to entertain. Did the lord yawn over a gest or a saintly legend? the discreet minstrel would be well advised to drop high art, and to substitute some less exacting, even if less refined fashion of passing the time. The instincts of boor and baron were not then, of course, so far apart as they are nowadays. And as a matter of fact we find many of the most eminent minstrels boasting of the width and variety of their accomplishments. Thus of Baudouin II, count of Guisnes (1169-1206), it is recorded that he might have matched the most celebrated professionals, not only in _chansons de gestes_ and _romans d’aventure_ but also in the _fabliaux_ which formed the delight of the vulgar _bourgeoisie_[261]. Less aristocratic performers descended even lower than Baudouin de Guisnes. If we study the répertoires of such _jougleurs_ as the diabolic one in Gautier de Coincy’s miracle[262], or Daurel in the romance of _Daurel et Beton_[263], or the disputants who vaunt their respective proficiencies in _Des Deus Bordeors Ribauz_[264], we shall find that they cover not only every conceivable form of minstrel literature proper, but also tricks with knives and strings, sleight of hand, dancing and tumbling. Even in Provence, the _Enseignamens_ for _joglars_ warn their readers to learn the arts of imitating birds, throwing knives, leaping through hoops, showing off performing asses and dogs, and dangling marionettes[265]. So that one discerns the difference between the lower and the higher minstrels to have been not so much that the one did not sink so low, as that the other, for lack of capacity and education, did not rise so high.

The palmy days of minstrelsy were the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The germ of decay, however, which appeared when the separation grew up between _trouvère_ and _jougleur_, and when men began to read books instead of listening to recitations, was further developed by the invention of printing. For then, while the _trouvère_ could adapt himself readily enough to the new order of things, the _jougleur’s_ occupation was gone. Like Benedick he might still be talking, but nobody marked him. Eyes cast down over a page of Chaucer or of Caxton had no further glitter or tear for him to win[266]. The fifteenth, and still more the sixteenth century, witness the complete break-up of minstrelsy in its mediaeval form. The mimes of course endured. They survived the overthrow of mediaevalism, as they had survived the overthrow of the Empire[267]. The Tudor kings and nobles had still their jugglers, their bearwards, their domestic buffoons, jesters or fools[268]. Bearbaiting in Elizabethan London rivalled the drama in its vogue. Acrobats and miscellaneous entertainers never ceased to crowd to every fair, and there is applause even to-day in circus and music-hall for the old jests and the old somersaults that have already done duty for upwards of twenty centuries. But the _jougleur_ as the thirteenth century knew him was by the sixteenth century no more. Professional musicians there were in plenty; ‘Sneak’s noise’ haunted the taverns of Eastcheap[269], and instrumentalists and vocalists in royal palaces and noble mansions still kept the name and style of minstrels. But they were not minstrels in the old sense, for with the production of literature, except perhaps for a song here and there, they had no longer anything to do. That had passed into other hands, and even the lineaments of the _trouvère_ are barely recognizable in the new types of poets and men of letters whom the Renaissance produced. The old fashioned minstrel in his style and habit as he lived, was to be presented before Elizabeth at Kenilworth as an interesting anachronism[270]. Some of the discarded entertainers, as we shall see, were absorbed into the growing profession of stage-players; others sunk to be ballad singers. For to the illiterate the story-teller still continued to appeal. The ballad indeed, at least on one side of it, was the _detritus_, as the _lai_ had been the germ, of romance[271], and at the very moment when Spenser was reviving romance as a conscious archaism, it was still possible for a blind fiddler with a ballad to offend the irritable susceptibilities of a Puritan, or to touch the sensitive heart-strings of a Sidney[272]. But as a social and literary force, the glory of minstrelsy had departed[273].

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