country giving crude and generally offensive performances styled himself musician, so the public, having no greater genius for fine discrimination then than now, came to regard all persons who were engaged in the performance of music, if not with active aversion, at any rate with passive contempt.
It is in these early times that the foundation of the feeling was laid, only to be strengthened later on when Puritanism came with fanatic intensity to still further deepen it. How engrained in the spirit of the people this sentiment became is evident, even to this day.
That the composer of music was regarded in a different light, we shall be able to prove.
He obtained degrees at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where he proceeded to the high position of Professor of the University in the Chair of Music.
Leases of Crown lands were made to him, with grants of armorial bearings in some cases; indeed, there are evidences of many kinds to show that his calling was held in high esteem. With the "musicians," as they were called, or "minstrels," as they called themselves, things went from bad to worse. Doubtless reinforced again by cast-off camp-followers from the armies of the Wars of the Roses, they became, by the reign of Queen Elizabeth, not only a source of terror to the countryside, but a nuisance and a pest to the towns. Gosson writes, about 1580: "London is so full of unprofitable pipers and fiddlers that a man can no sooner enter a tavern, than two or three cast of
them hang at his heels, to give him a dance before he depart."[5]
In 1597 a law was passed in which they were classed as "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars," and were threatened with severe penalties.
The War of the Rebellion probably brought them still another accession to their ranks, as, so far from being harmed by this threat, things must have got even worse, to judge by the following edict issued by Cromwell only a few years later:—
"Any persons commonly called fidlers or minstrels who shall at any time be taken playing, fidling, and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or desiring, or intreating any to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid, shall be adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars."
It may be at once assumed that if they were able to evade the hands of Elizabeth, they were little likely to escape those of Cromwell, who may be said to have, at last, cleared the country of what had become a positive menace to the security of life, since under the guise of wandering minstrels, highwaymen and other criminals had long been wont to carry on their occupations with comparative immunity.