Beauclerc—the most accomplished monarch of his day, so far as letters were concerned, became by fellowship of feeling and taste, the patron of all the caste. The court-fed minions, like the lizard whose color depends on the species of grass or plant of which it eats, became of course completely Norman in their feelings. Indeed the greater number were Normans by birth and education, lured to the English court by the ever ready bait of patronage; and those that were not, seeing that these met with favor, imitated them in style and every thing else. The 'Anglo' might with propriety have been dropped in Sir Walter's verse just quoted.10
10 It is a melancholy sight to see so exalted a class of human beings, whether from necessity or not, forever debasing themselves into servile dependency. Even Dante, whose lament that he had to climb another's stair would seem the outbreak of an independent spirit, could humble himself before a Guido.
That the six kings following the conqueror were, with an exception, completely Norman in their habits and predilections, we may easily discover in the history of English law, traced back to its foundation among the very roots of the feudal system. It was against Norman innovation that the independent Barons of the thirteenth century arose, and held John Lackland in duress until his name was affixed to Magna Charta—a paper purporting to restore affairs to the state in which Edward the Saxon left them. It was this same fondness for French men and French rules that forced from Henry III a signature to the same paper,—John having evaded his on plea of compulsion.
But, although extremely opposed to those principles of freedom which Hengist and his followers had brought from the woods of Germany, and which ages after marked England as a great and prosperous nation, Norman ideas and sentiments were a southern sun to the growth of poetry and other literature.
I have mentioned Henry Beauclerc's love for these. After him, in the struggles of the heroic Maud or Matilda, and in the turbulent reign of the ill-fated Stephen, neither party had leisure for literary pursuits. But in the reign of Henry II, love and poetry both received countenance from that gallant monarch. His amours with Rosamond Clifford of Woodstock, have been the theme of many a popular ballad. Richard Coeur de Lion, the knight errant king,11 and king of knight errants, invited the most famous of the Provencal bards to his court. Ubi mel ibi apes, and London was soon a theatre crowded with troubadours warm from the feet of the Pyrenees and banks of the Rhone. The whispers of the sunny Provencal love-ditty were breathed upon the rough ballad spirit of an earlier time,—mellowing that spirit, and adding to its former dauntlessness the gloss of polish and refinement.—Richard was himself a troubadour; and though at the present day his deeds of verse would damn a schoolboy, they were then thought worthy of being coupled with his deeds in arms.
11 Richard was truly a king errant,—for he spent scarcely one out of the ten years of his reign, in England.
Many romantic traditions have been handed down to us of that adventurous monarch and Blondel de Nesle, his favorite minstrel. We read in the records of our ancient chroniclers, a simple tale of the latter's long pilgrimage in search of the captive king his master. How Blondel came one evening as the sun went down among the hills of the Rhine, to the solitary castle of Trifels, where the monarch lay in a damp cold dungeon. How he seated himself at the dungeon grate, and taking his harp from his shoulder, began a song which Richard and he had made together in Palestine; and how the overjoyed king took up the words as they reached his ear, and chanted to the top of his full voice in answer. And farthermore, how Blondel returned to England, and went 'shoonless and unhooded' through all parts of the land, until the captive's loyal subjects were aroused; and until the great ransom was gathered together by which those subjects bought his freedom. Many such stories are told of the time of the chivalric Richard; and the devoted fidelity of his dependents will ever be a bright spot on the page of that history into which their names have stolen, and through which they are now receiving—reward dearest to noble spirits,—virtuous and stainless renown.
In the reign of John Lackland, the minstrels were the means of saving the life and fortunes of an Earl of Chester, by stirring up the rabble, who had gathered to a fair in the border of Wales, to go to his rescue. This they did under one Dutton, at sight of whom and his followers, the Welsh besiegers retired from before the Earl's castle.
In the time of Edward I, "a multitude of minstrels attended at the knighting of his son."
Under the reign of Edward II, such privileges were claimed by this class, that it became necessary to restrain them by a particular statute. Yet notwithstanding this, towards the latter part of this reign, we find that the minstrels still retained the liberty of entrance at will into the royal presence, and were still remarkable for splendor of dress.