The juggler, who under the Normans filled the place of the English gleeman, tumbled, sang, and balanced knives in the hall; or, out in the bailey of an afternoon, displayed the acquirements of his trained monkey or bear. The fool, too, clad in coloured patchwork, cracked his ribald jests and shook his cap and bells at the elbow of roaring barons, when the board was spread and the circling of the wine began.
Monasteries served many useful purposes at this time. Besides their manifest value as centres of study and literary work, they gave alms to the poor, a supper and a bed to travellers; their tenants were better off and better treated than the tenants of the nobles; the monks could store grain, grow apples, and cultivate their flower-beds with little risk of injury from war, because they had spiritual penalties at their call, which usually awed even the most reckless of the soldiery into a respect for sacred property.
As schools, too, the monasteries did no trifling service to society in the Middle Ages. In addition to their influence as great centres of learning, English law had enjoined every mass-priest to keep a school in his parish church where all the young committed to his care might be instructed. The youth of the middle classes, destined for the cloister or the merchant's stall, chiefly thronged these schools. The aristocracy cared little for book-learning. Very few indeed of the barons could read or write. But all could ride, fence, tilt, play at cards, and carve extremely well; for to these accomplishments many years of pagehood and squirehood were given.
W. F. Collier, (Adapted)
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Tennyson