Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/484

470 ages the sculptured canopies, chantries, tracery, and statues are of singular merit and great poetic beauty, in many instances, and in none more than in those of this period. They make a marked advance on the prior period. Both in the Early English and the Decorated orders we have exquisite specimens of sculpture, spite of the huge destruction of the Reformation and the ravages of time. At York, Ely, Lichfield, Durham, Wells, and Westminster Abbey we can yet admire the labour of the sculptors of the eras of Henry III. and Edward I. In the cathedrals of Glasgow and Aberdeen, as well as in the splendid remains of Elgin and Holyrood, we have yet traces of it. The foliage, the trefoils, and quatrefoils of this period are peculiarly free, natural, and simple. In the Decorated order, at decaying Croyland and Tintern, the nave at York, in the magnificent choir at Lincoln, at Beverley, Ripon, and Carlisle, as well as in the beautiful ruin of Melrose, and a few churches in Scotland, we ought not to pass over the sculpture. On many of these graceful works the monks themselves are said to have laboured, and Walter de Colchester, sacristan of the abbey of St. Alban's, is expressly celebrated by Matthew Paris as an admirable statuary.

We are assured, too, that painting was carried to a great extent in adorning our palaces and churches in this period, though we find scarcely any trace of it left. Henry III. kept several painters constantly at work, whose names are recorded, and who executed many beautiful paintings at his various palaces at Westminster, Winchester, Woodstock, Windsor, Kenilworth, &c. Bishop Langton painted the history of the wars and life of Edward I. on the walls of the episcopal palace at Lichfield. Edward III. collected by royal order painters from all quarters to decorate his palace at Westminster; and Fox, in his "Acts and Monuments," tells us that the principal churches and chapels had not only portraits of the Madonna and the saints, but the walls were extensively decorated with paintings. So that, whatever its merits, painting was much in demand in this period.

MUSIC.

Of this art as practised at this period we can only speak historically, for no proofs appear to have come down to us of the actual written music of the times. According to Sir John Hawkins, in his "History of Music,"

Dance of Fools. Thirteenth Century. From MS. 1344 in the Bodleian library, Oxford.

though we had good writers on music in the fourteenth century, it is not till the fifteenth that we are enabled to judge of what the music of our ancestors was by actual notation. We know that both the ancient Gauls and Britons wore extremely fond of music, and that at all the banquets of the nobles their minstrels accompanied their songs on the harp. The minstrel in most European countries was a union of the poet and musician. He composed his own music and sang it. For this cause he was the welcome guest at all great houses. The fame of the scalds of the North and the troubadours of the South is familiar to all readers the world over. But in our country every great baron kept his train of minstrels—as well as our monarchs—who composed songs in honour of their martial deeds, and sang them to the harp at their tables. Matilda, queen of Henry I., was, according to William of Malmsbury, so fond of music, that she expended all her revenues upon them, and oppressed her tenants to pay her minstrels. John of Salisbury declares that the great of his time imitated Nero in his extravagance towards musicians. He says they prostituted their favour by bestowing it on minstrels and buffoons.

Rigordus says:—"The courts of princes are filled with crowds of minstrels, who extort from them gold, silver, houses, and vestments by their flattering songs. I have known some princes who have bestowed on these ministers of the devil, at the very first word, the most curious garments, beautifully embroidered with flowers and pictures, which had cost them twenty or thirty marks of silver, and which they had not worn above seven days."

Of the estimation in which minstrels were held by the Anglo-Saxons, we have a striking proof in King Alfred assuming the guise of one to explore the Danish camp. It proves that not only were the minstrels then admitted everywhere, but that the highest personages were skilled in music. Sixty years after Alfred's adventure, Aulaff, the Danish king, made use of the same stratagem to examine the camp of our King Athelstau. The Normans wore perhaps still more addicted to music and minstrels. They brought with them all the songs sung to the glory of Charlemagne and Roland, and in the conqueror's army was the celebrated Taillefer, who, at once minstrel and warrior, asked leave to command the onset, and died fighting valiantly and singing the old songs of France.

Richard I. was not only extremely fond of minstrels, but was a distinguished one himself, and every one knows the story of his being discovered by his minstrel Blondel, in his prison in Germany. Edward I. would have lost his life by assassination during the crusades, but his harper hearing the struggle, rushed in and dashed out the assassin's brains with a tripod. We could accumulate a whole volume of such facts all through our history; but one, which shows, too, how well the musicians were rewarded, is, that Roger or Raherus, the king's minstrel in the reign of Henry I., in the year 1102, according to Leland, founded the priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew in West Smithfield, became the first prior, and so remained till his death.

The first Earl of Chester gave a freedom of arrest on any account to all minstrels who should attend Chester Fair, and the last earl was rescued from the Welsh, who besieged him in Rhuddlan Castle, by a band of these minstrels and their followers, who rushed away from the fair for that purpose.

John of Gaunt established a court of minstrels at Tutbury in Staffordshre, traces of which remained to our own times.

In the Middle Ages, Du Cango says that these men swarmed so about the houses and courts of the great, and princes spout such large sums on them, as completely to