And though Sir Thopas almost comes within the scope of the present work, being an adventure seeker, “a knight auntrous,” ever on his way, never sleeping in a house—
“And for he was a knight auntrous,
He nolde slepen in non hous,
But liggen in his hode;
His bright helm was his wonger (pillow),”
yet must we abide by the ruling of mine host and leave him alone:
“No more of this for Goddes dignitee.”
But, even at a comparatively late date, the inmate of an out of the way castle usually proved more lenient. He welcomed the minstrel, his verse and his viol as he welcomed change; he lent a complacent ear to his commonplace romances, his ballads on every subject, his praise of flowers, women, wine, spring, heroes and saints, his goliardic dispraise of women,[253] monks and friars, his tales of love or laughter, his patriotic songs the rarest of all, for the Hundred Years War was for the English chiefly a royal and not a national war, and this alone can explain the scant place occupied in the songs of the time by Crécy {201} and Poictiers, never mentioned by Chaucer, never mentioned by Langland (who disapproved of the war), celebrated only by one solitary songster known by name and otherwise unknown, the unimitated and ungifted Laurence Minot.[254] The noble listened; he had few intellectual diversions; he gave little time if any to reading, which was not for him then an unmixed pleasure, and needed effort; there was no theatre for him to go to. At long intervals only, when the great yearly feasts came round, the knight might go, in company with the crowd, to see Pilate and Jesus on the boards. There he found sometimes not only the crowd but the king too. Richard II, for example, witnessed a religious play or mystery in the fourteenth year of his reign, and had ten pounds distributed among several clerks of London who had played before him at Skinnerwell “the play of the Passion and of the creation of the world.”[255] A few years later he saw the famous York plays, at the feast of Corpus Christi, performed in the streets of that city.[256] In ordinary times the knight was only too happy to receive in his home men of vast memory, who knew more verse and more music than could be heard in a day.
The king himself liked their coming. He had them sometimes brought up to him in his very chamber, where he was pleased to sit and hear their music. Edward II received four minstrels in his chamber at Westminster and heard their songs, and when they went he ordered twenty ells of cloth to be given them for their reward.[257] No one thought in those days of rejoicings without minstrels; there were four hundred and twenty-six of them {202} at the marriage of the Princess Margaret, daughter of Edward I.[258] Edward III gave a hundred pounds to those who were present at the marriage of his daughter Isabella,[259] some figured also at his tournaments.[260] When a bishop went on his pastoral rounds he was occasionally greeted by minstrels, hired on purpose to cheer him; they were of necessity chosen among local artists, who were apt to fiddle cheap music to his lordship. Bishop Swinfield, in one of his rounds, gave a penny a piece to two minstrels who had just played before him; but on another occasion he distributed twelve pence a piece.[261]
When men of importance were travelling they sometimes had the pleasure of hearing minstrels at the inn, and in that manner whiled away the long empty evenings. In the curious manual already quoted, called “La manière de langage,” composed in French by an Englishman of the fourteenth century, the traveller of distinction is represented listening to the musicians at the inn, and mingling his voice at need with their music: “Then,” says our author, “come forward into the lord’s presence the trumpeters and horn-blowers with their frestels (pipes) and clarions, and begin to play and blow very loud, and then the lord with his squires begin to move, to sway, to dance, to utter and sing fine carols till midnight without ceasing.”[262]