Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/201

 and Sentime?its. 1 8 1 drinking, they lay down and fell afleep. John de Raunpaygne and Sir Audulf de Bracy took the opportunity for making their efcape. We have here a myflerious intimation of the facSt that the minftrel was employed alfo in dark deeds of poifoning. Still later on in the ftory of Fulk Fitz-Warine, the hero himielf goes to a tournament in France in difguife, and John de Raunpaygne refumes his old charatrler of a jongleur. " John/' fays the narrative, " was very richly attired, and well mounted, and he had a very rich tabor, and he ftruck the tabor at the entry to the lilts, that the hills and valleys rebounded, and the horfes became joyful." All thele anecdotes reveal to us minftrels ho were perfe6lly free, and wandered from place to place at will ; but there were others who were retained by and in the regular employ of individuals. The king had his minltrels, and lb moft of the barons had their houfehold min- llrels. In one of the mediaeval Latin ftories, current in this country probably as early as the thirteenth century, we are told that a jougleur (niimiis he is called in tlie Latin, a ^'ord ufed at this time as fynonymous M'ith joculator) prefented himfelf at the gate of a certain lord to enter the hall and eat (for the table in thofe days was rarely refufed to a min- ftrel), but he was flopped by the porter, who alked him to what lord he was attached, evidently thinking, as was thought fome three centuries later, that the treatment merited by the fervant depended on the quality of the mafter. The minftrel replied that his mafter was God. When the porter communicated this refponle to his churliih lord, or equally churlifti fteward, they replied that if he had no other lord, he fliould not be admitted there. When the jougleur heard this, he faid that he was the devil's own fervant 3 ^ hereupon he was received joyfully, " becaufe he was a good fellow" (quia l-o?uis focius erat). The records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries contain many entries of payments to the king's minftrels, and the names of fome of them are preferved. On great felVivals at the king's court, minftrels came to feek employment from every part of the world which acknowledged the reign of feudalifm. Four hundred and twenty-fix minftrels were prefcnt at the marriage feftivities of the princefs iSIargaret, daughter of Edard J. 3 and feveral hundred