[267] There are numerous payments to jugglers, tumblers and dancers in the Household Accounts of Henry VII (Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 85-113; Collier, i. 50). A letter to Wolsey of July 6, 1527, from R. Croke, the tutor of Henry VIII’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, complains of difficulties put in his way by R. Cotton, the Clerk-comptroller of the duke’s household, and adds: ‘At hic tamen in praeceptore arcendo diligens, libenter patitur scurras et mimos (qui digna lupanari in sacro cubiculo coram principe cantillent) admitti’ (Nichols, Memoir of Henry Fitzroy in Camden Miscellany, iii. xxxviii).
[268] For the ioculator regis, cf. Appendix E, and Leach, Beverley MSS. 179. He is called ‘jugler’ in N. H. B. 67. Is he distinct from the royal gestator (gestour, jester)? Both appear in the Shrewsbury accounts (s. ann. 1521, 1549). In 1554 both le jugler and le gester were entertained. The gestator seems to have merged in the stultus or court fool (ch. xvi). The accounts in App. E often mention the royal bearward, who remained an important official under Elizabeth.
[269] 2 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 12.
[270] Cf. Appendix H (i).
[271] Courthope, i. 445; A. Lang, s.v. Ballad in Enc. Brit. and in A Collection of Ballads, xi; Quarterly Review (July, 1898); Henderson, 335; G. Smith, 180. But I think that Gummere, B. P. passim, succeeds in showing that the element of folk-poetry in balladry is stronger than some of the above writers recognize.
[272] Sidney, Apologie for Poetrie (ed. Arber), 46 ‘Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness. I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet. And yet is it sung but by some blind Crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style.’ For the Puritan view, see Stubbes, i. 169.
[273] Ritson, ccxxiv, quotes the following lines, ascribed to Dr. Bull (†1597), from a Harl. MS., as the epitaph of minstrelsy:
‘When Jesus went to Jairus’ house
(Whose daughter was about to dye),
He turned the minstrels out of doors,