MINSTREL. The word "minstrel," derived from the Latin minister, a servant, was used after the 13th century to signify a household entertainer, its earlier equivalent being "jogelour" (Fr. jongleur). Still earlier the same part was played by the Teu tonic gleeman or stop. In the Anglo-Saxon poem that bears his name, Widsith, the far-traveller, wanders from place to place, from the Picts and Scots in the west to the Medes and Persians in the east, singing and telling stories and welcomed everywhere; from the Ostrogoth Eormanric (Hermanric, d. 375) he receives a collar of gold, and on his return home he is given an estate. Other early poems, such as Beowulf, show the honour in which these minstrels were held in pagan times; but, although patron ized by Charlemagne, they were denounced by the Church with a vigour and frequency which show how ineffective such denun ciations were in stemming their popularity.
The term minstrel covered a great variety of performers. At the head of the profession the place of the stop was taken in the nth century by the trouvere (q.v.) or the troubadour (q.v.), who was often a man of high social standing. Such a trouvere was Taillefer, who led the Norman attack at Hastings, singing the song of Roland and juggling with his sword. After the Conquest, Berdic, joculator regis, is shown by Domesday to have been given estates in Gloucestershire; and the traditions that Rahere, found er of St. Bartholomew's priory at Smithfield, had been minstrel to Henry I., and that Richard I. was discovered in his captivity by his minstrel Blonde!, if not true to fact, show the position occupied by such persons in popular opinion. Master Henry, versificator regis, to whom Henry III. made various gifts, may have been one of the last of the English trouveres; certainly of ter that king's reign the minstrels seem to take a lower place in so ciety. Kings and nobles still kept their minstrels, even so strict a churchman as Bishop Robert Grosseteste having a private harper, but they were more professional musicians. For these there were professional schools at Beauvais, Cambrai, Lyons and elsewhere, and in many towns they formed themselves into gilds, of which the earliest known is the Pui of Arras, founded in '105. The minstrels' gild of Paris, of which the head was called roy des menestriers, was founded in 1321 and lasted to 1776; m London the minstrels were incorporated in 2469, and all minstrels in the country were ordered to join the gild, but this order was ignored, and when a new charter was granted in 1604 the gild's jurisdic tion was limited to three miles beyond the city. The gild still exists as the Corporation of Musicians of London. Canterbury had such a fraternity in 1526, and that of Beverley claimed to date from the time of Athelstan, certainly existed in the 15th century, and was reorganized in 1555, when rules were made that members must be minstrels to men of honour, "waits" to some town,' or otherwise approved. The minstrels of the county of Chester were from an early date (traditionally 1210) under the control of the head of the family of Dutton, whose rights were recognized in all the vagrancy acts from 1572 onwards; as late as 1756 the heir of Dutton held a court at Chester fair and issued licences to musicians. Similarly at Tutbury John of Gaunt in
1380 established a roy des ministralx, whose court was still held at the end of the 17th century.
Mediaeval account rolls of the expenses of royal and noble households, towns and monasteries are full of payments, often lavish, to all kinds of minstrels, musicians, players and jugglers, and at the marriage of Princess Margaret in 1290 no fewer than 426 minstrels, English and foreign, attended. Most of these came with noble guests, and the king himself, Edward I., had a large staff of musicians, partly minstrels and partly military band, as had his successors. But by the 15th century the day of the real minstrel was passing ; and with the coming of printing the taste for listening to long chanted ballads and romances died out, and the minstrel became more and more an instrumental performer, just as the "minstrels' galleries" in the halls of Tudor houses were purely for instrumental or choral music. With the 16th century the minstrels became players, in the sense of actors, or degenerated into that "thing of shreds and patches," the wandering minstrel.
Even from early times there had been many of these un attached, vagrant entertainers, picking up a precarious living by performing in fairs and village taverns, or thrusting themselves brazenly into the halls of the great, risking kicks for the sake of halfpence. It was against these, headed by the Goliards (q.v.), that the Church chiefly fulminated for their ribaldry, indecency and lack of reverence. The State also viewed them with disfavour as men who wasted their own time and that of their listeners, and, not unjustifiably, as promoters of sedition. For these masterless men carried the news from place to place, sang biting lampoons against unpopular ministers, or voiced the wrongs of the poor; and such revolts as the Peasants' rising of 1381, Jack Cade's of 1450, and other more local riots seem to have owed much to their activity. Consequently from the time of the Black Death (1349) onwards, and particularly after 1572, they were continu ally in danger of the stocks, the whipping-post and prison.
'The chief English towns, such as London, York, Chester, Bristol, Coventry, etc., had minstrels, usually called "waits," who wore a livery and silver badge and combined the duties of town band and night-watchman, "piping the watch" at fixed hours of the night.
The best account of the subject is in E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, i., 23-86, and ii. 230-266 (1903) ; where references are given to other works. See also A. Schultz, Das holische Leben zur zeit der Minnesinger (1889) ; J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life (3rd ed., 1925). (L. F. S.)