And Chaucer, in his description of the limitour or mendicant friar, speaks of harping as inseparable from singing (i. p. 11, ver. 268):—
"—in his harping, whan that he hadde songe."
[U2] [At the most accomplished, &c.] See Hoveden, p. 103, in the following passage, which had erroneously been applied to K. Richard himself, till Mr. Tyrwhitt ("Chaucer," iv. p. 62) shewed it to belong to his Chancellor: "Hic ad augmentum et famam sui nominis, emendicata carmina, et rhythmos adulatorios comparabat; et de regno Francorum Cantores et Joculatores muneribus allexerat, ut de illo canerent in plateis: et jam dicebatur ubique, quod non erat talis in orbe." For other particulars relating to this chancellor, see T. Warton's Hist. vol. ii. addit. to p. 113 of vol. i.
[U3] [Both the Norman and English languages would be heard at the houses of the great.] A remarkable proof of this is that the most diligent inquirers after ancient English rhimes find the earliest they can discover in the mouths of the Norman nobles, such as that of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and his Flemings in 1173, temp. Hen. II. (little more than a century after the Conquest), recorded by Lambarde in his Dictionary of England, p. 36:
"Hoppe Wyliken, hoppe Wyliken
Ingland is thine and myne," &c.
and that noted boast of Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk, in the same reign of K. Henry II. vid. Camdeni Britannia (art. Suffolk), 1607, folio
"Were I in my castle of Bungey
Vpon the riuer of Waueney
I would ne care for the king of Cockeney."
Indeed, many of our old metrical romances, whether originally English, or translated from the French to be sung to an English audience, are addressed to persons of high rank, as appears from their beginning thus: "Listen, Lordings," and the like. These were prior to the time of Chaucer, as appears from vol. iii. appendix (sect. ii.). And yet to his time our Norman nobles are supposed to have adhered to their French language.
[V] [That intercommunity, &c. between the French and English Minstrels, &c.] This might, perhaps, in a great measure be re-referred even to the Norman Conquest, when the victors brought with them all their original opinions and fables; which could not fail to be adopted by the English minstrels and others who solicited their favour. This interchange, &c. between the minstrels of the two nations would be afterwards promoted by the great intercourse produced among all the nations of Christendom in the general crusades, and by that spirit of chivalry which led knights, and their attendants the heralds, and minstrels, &c. to ramble about continually from one court to another in order to be present at solemn turnaments, and other feats of arms.