while Edward was celebrating the festival of Whitsuntide, at Westminster, with his peers, a woman, “dressed in the manner of minstrels,” and mounted on a large horse, caparisoned ‘‘according to the custom of minstrels,” entered the banqueting-hall, rode round the tables, laid a letter before the king, and, quickly turning her horse, went away with a salute to the company. The letter displeased the king, whom it blamed for having lavished liberalities on his favorites to the detriment of his faithful servants; and the porters were reprimanded for having allowed the woman to come in. Their excuse was, “that it was not the custom ever to refuse to minstrels admission into the royal houses.” During the reign of Henry VI., we find that the minstrels, who undertook to impart mirth to festivals, were frequently better paid than the priests who came to solemnize them. To the festival of the Holy Cross, at Abingdon, came twelve priests and twelve minstrels; each of the former received “fourpence,” and each of the latter ‘‘two shillings and fourpence.” In 1441, eight priests, from Coventry, who had been invited to Maxtoke Priory to perform an annual service, received two shillings each; but the six minstrels who had been appointed to amuse the assembled monks in the refectory had four shillings a piece, and supped with the sub-prior in the “painted chamber,” which was lighted up for the occasion with eight large flambeaux of wax, the expense of which is set down in due form in the accounts of the convent.
Thus, wherever festivities took place, wherever men gathered together for amusement, in convents and fairs, in the public highways and in the castles of the nobility, the minstrels were always present, mixing with all classes of society, and charming, with their songs and tales, the inhabitants of the country and the dwellers in towns,
