honours, and be received with similar respect among the inferior English Gentry and Populace. I must be allowed therefore to consider them as belonging to the same community, as subordinate members at least of the same College; and therefore, in gleaning the scanty materials for this slight history, I shall collect whatever incidents I can find relating to Minstrels and their art, and arrange them, as they occur in our own annals, without distinction; as it will not always be easy to ascertain, from the slight mention of them by our regular historians, whether the artists were Norman or English. For it need not be remarked that subjects of this trivial nature are but incidentally mentioned by our ancient annalists, and were fastidiously rejected by other grave and serious writers; so that, unless they were accidently connected with such events as became recorded in history, they would pass unnoticed through the lapse of ages, and be as unknown to posterity as other topics relating to the private life and amusements of the greatest nations.

On this account it can hardly be expected that we should be able to produce regular and unbroken annals of the Minstrel Art and its professors, or have sufficient information whether every Minstrel or Harper composed himself, or only repeated, the songs he chanted. Some probably did the one, and some the other: and it would have been wonderful indeed, if men whose peculiar profession it was, and who devoted their time and talents to entertain their hearers with poetical compositions, were peculiarly deprived of all poetical genius themselves, and had been under a physical incapacity of composing those common popular rhymes which were the usual subjects of their recitation. Whoever examines any considerable quantity of these, finds them in style and colouring as different from the elaborate production of the sedentary composer at his desk or in his cell, as the rambling Harper or Minstrel was remote in his modes

of life and habits of thinking from the retired Scholar or the solitary Monk. (T)

It is well known that on the Continent, whence our Norman Nobles came, the Bard who composed, the Harper who played and sang, and even the Dancer and the Mimic, were all considered as of one community, and were even all included under the common name of MINSTRELS.* I must therefore be allowed the same application of the term here, without being expected to prove that every singer composed, or every composer chanted, his own song; much less that every one excelled in all the arts which were occasionally exercised by some or other of this fraternity.

IV. AFTER the Norman Conquest, the first occurrence which I have met with relating to this order of men is the founding of a priory and hospital by one of them scil. the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, London, by Royer or Raherus the KING'S MINSTREL, in the third year of King Henry I, A. D. 1102. He was the first Prior of his own establishment, and presided over it to the time of his death. (T 2)

In the reign of K. Henry II. we have upon record the name of Galfrid or Jeffrey, a Harper, who in 1180 received a corrody or annuity from the abbey of Hide near Winchester; and, as in the early times every Harper was expected to sing, we cannot doubt but this reward was given to him for his Music and his Songs; which, if they were for the solace of the Monks there, we may conclude would be in the English language. (U)

Under his romantic son, K. Richard I, the Minstrel profession seems to have acquired additional splendour. Richard, who was the great hero of chivalry, was also the distinguished patron of Poets and Minstrels. He was himself of their number, and *See Note (B) and (A a.)

some of his poems are still extant.* They were no less patronized by his favourites and chief officers. His Chancellor, William bishop of Ely, is expressly mentioned to have invited Singers and Minstrels from France, whom he loaded with rewards; and they in return celebrated him as the most accomplished person in the world. (U 2) This high distinction and regard, although confined perhaps in the first instance to Poets and Songsters of the French nation, must have had a tendency to do honour to Poetry and Song among all his subjects, and to encourage the cultivation of these arts among the natives; as the indulgent favour shown by the Monarch or his great courtiers to the Provençal Troubadour, or Norman Rymour, would naturally be imitated by their inferior vassals to the English Gleeman or Minstrel. At more than a century after the Conquest, the national distinctions must have begun to decline, and both the Norman and English languages would be heard in the houses of the great (U 3;) so that probably about this æra, or soon after, we are to date that remarkable intercommunity and exchange of each other's compositions, which we discover to have taken place at some early period between the French and English Minstrels; the same set of phrases, the same species of characters, incidents, and adventures, and often the same identical stories, being found in the old metrical Romances of both nations (V.)

The distinguished service which Richard received from one of his own Minstrels, in rescuing him from his cruel and tedious captivity, is a remarkable fact, which ought to be recorded for the honour of Poets

* See a pathetic Song of his in Mr. WALPOLE'S Catalogue of Royal Authors, vol. i. p. 5. The reader will find a Translation of it into modern French, in Hist. litéraire des Troubadours, 1774, 3 tom. 12mo. See vol. i. (p. 58,) where some more of Richard's Poetry is translated. In Dr Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. ii. p. 238, is a poetical version of it in English

and their art. This fact I shall relate in the follow ing words of an ancient writer.*

"The Englishmen were more then a whole yeare "without hearing any tydings of their King, or in "what place he was kept prisoner. He had trained "up in his court a Rimer or Minstrill, called Blon"dell de Nesle: who so (saith the Manuscript of old "Poesies, and an auncient Manuscript French Chro"nicle) being so long without the sight of his Lord, "his life seemed wearisome to him, and he became "confounded with melancholly. Knowne it was, that "he came backe from the Holy Land; but none could "tell in what countrey he arrived. Whereupon this "Blondel, resolving to make search for him in many "countries, but he would heare some newes of him; "after expence of divers dayes in travaile, he came to "a towne (by good hap) neere to the castell where

* Mons. FAVINE's Theatre of Honour and Knighthood, translated from the French. Lond. 1623. fol. tom. ii. p. 49.-An elegant relation of the same event (from the French of Presid. FAUCHET'S Recueil. &c.) may be seen in " Miscellanies in prose and verse, by ANNA WILLIAMS, Lond. 1766." 4to. p. 46.-It will excite the reader's admiration to be informed, that most of the pieces of that collection were composed under the disadvantage of a total deprivation of SIGHT.

Favine's words are "JONGLEUR appellé Blondiaux de Nesle." (Paris. 1620. 4to. p. 1106.) But Fauchet, who has given the same story, thus expresses it, "Or ce roy ayant nourri un MENESTREL appellé Blondel," &c. liv. 2. p. 92. “Des anciens Poetes François." He is however said to have been another Blondel, not Blondel (or Blondiaux) de Nesle; but this no way affects the circumstances of the story.

This the author calls in another place, "An ancient MS. of old Poesies, written about those very times."-From this MS. Favine gives a good account of the taking of Richard by the Duke of Austria, who sold him to the Emperor. As for the MS. chronicle, it is evidently the same that supplied FAUCHET with this story. See his "Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue & Poesie Françoie, Ryme, et Romans," Par 1581.

S TRIBALES." Retrudi eum præcepit in Triballis: a quo carcere nullus ante dies istos exivit." Lat. chron. of Otho of Austria apud Favin.

"his maister King Richard was kept. Of his host he "demanded to whom the castell appertained, and the "host told him, that it belonged to the Duke of Aus"tria. Then he enquired whether there were any "prisoners therein detained or no: for alwayes he "made such secret questionings wheresoever he came. "And the hoste gave answer, there was one onely "prisoner, but he knew not what he was, and yet he "had bin detained there more then the space of a "yeare. When Blondel heard this, he wrought such "meanes, that he became acquainted with them of "the castell, as Minstrels doe easily win acquaintance "any where: but see the King he could not, nei"ther understand that it was he. One day he sat di"rectly before a window of the castell, where King "Richard was kept prisoner, and began to sing a song "in French, which King Richard and Blondel had "sometime composed together. When King Richard "heard the song, he knew it was Blondel that sung it: "and when Blondel paused at halfe of the song, the "King BEGAN THE OTHER HALF AND COMPLETED "IT.' Thus Blondel won knowledge of the King "his maister, and returning home into England, made "the Barons of the countrie acquainted where the "King was." This happened about the year 1193.

The following old Provençal lines are given as the very original song; which I shall accompany with an imitation offered by Dr. Burney, ii. 237.

• Comme MENESTRELS S'accointent legerement." Favine. (Fauchet expresses it in the same manner.)

t I give this passage corrected; as the English translator of FAVINE'S book appeared here to have mistaken the original:Scil. "Et quant Blondel eut dit la moitie de la Chanson, le Roy Richart se prist a dire l'autre moitie et l'acheva." Favine, p. 1106. Fauchet has also expressed it in nearly the same words. Recueil, p. 93.

In a little romance or novel, entitled, "La Tour Tenebreuse, et les Jours Lumineux, Contes Angloises, accompagnez d'Historiettes, & tirez d'une ancienne Chronique composee par