Et d’Oliver et des vassals
Qui morurent en Rencevals.’
Cf. Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 477.
[171] Domesday Book, Gloc. f. 162; Hants, f. 38 (b). Before the Conquest, not to speak of Widsith and Deor, Edmund Ironside had given the hills of Chartham and Walworth ‘cuidam ioculatori suo nomine Hitardo’ (Somner-Battely, Antiq. of Canterbury, app. 39). Hitardus, wishing to visit Rome, gave it to Christ Church, Canterbury.
[172] Bernhard, iii. 378, gives a thirteenth-century regulation for the Petit Pont entry of Paris: ‘Et ausi tot li jougleur sunt quite por i ver de chançon.’
[173] Gautier, ii. 124.
[174] There were 426 at the wedding of Margaret of England with John of Brabant in 1290 (Chappell, i. 15, from Wardrobe Bk. 18 Edw. I).
[175] Rigordus, de gestis Philippi Augusti (1186) ‘vidimus quondam quosdam principes qui vestes diu excogitatas et variis florum picturationibus artificiossisimis elaboratas, pro quibus forsan viginti vel triginta marcas argenti consumpserant, vix revolutis septem diebus, histrionibus, ministris scilicet diaboli, ad primam vocem dedisse.’
[176] The Annales (†1330) of Johannes de Trokelowe (R. S.), 98, tell s. a. 1317, how when Edward II was keeping Pentecost in Westminster ‘quaedam mulier, ornatu histrionali redimita, equum bonum, histrionaliter phaleratum, ascensa, dictam aulam intravit, mensas more histrionum circuivit.’ She rode to the king, placed an insulting letter in his hands, and retired. The ‘ianitores et hostiarii,’ when blamed, declared ‘non esse moris regii, alicui menestrallo, palatium intrare volenti, in tanta solemnitate aditum denegare’; cf. Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (R. S.). i. 149.
[177] Strutt, 189, has a fourteenth-century story of a youth rebuked for coming to a feast in a coat bardy, cut German fashion like a minstrel’s; cf. the complaint against knights in A Poem on the times of Edward II (Percy Soc. lxxxii), 23: