intimation of the fact that the minstrel was employed also in dark deeds of poisoning. Still later on in the story of Fulk Fitz-Warine, the hero himself goes to a tournament in France in disguise, and John de Raunpaygne resumes his old character of a jougleur.” “John,” says the narrative, “was very richly attired, and well mounted, and he had a very rich tabor, and he struck the tabor at the entry to the lifts, that the hills and valleys rebounded, and the horses became joyful.” All these anecdotes reveal to us minstrels who were perfectly free, and wandered from place to place at will; but there were others who were retained by and in the regular employ of individuals. The king had his minstrels, and so most of the barons had their household minstrels. In one of the mediæval Latin stories, current in this country probably as early as the thirteenth century, we are told that a jougleur (_mimus_ he is called in the Latin, a word used at this time as synonymous with _joculator_) presented himself at the gate of a certain lord to enter the hall and eat (for the table in those days was rarely refused to a minstrel), but he was stopped by the porter, who asked him to what lord he was attached, evidently thinking, as was thought some three centuries later, that the treatment merited by the servant depended on the quality of the master. The minstrel replied that his master was God. When the porter communicated this response to his churlish lord, or equally churlish steward, they replied that if he had no other lord, he should not be admitted there. When the jougleur heard this, he said that he was the devil’s own servant; whereupon he was received joyfully, “because he was a good fellow” (_quia bonus socius erat_). The records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries contain many entries of payments to the king’s minstrels, and the names of some of them are preserved. On great festivals at the king’s court, minstrels came to seek employment from every part of the world which acknowledged the reign of feudalism. Four hundred and twenty-six minstrels were present at the marriage festivities of the princess Margaret, daughter of Edward I.; and several hundred played before the same monarch at the Whitsuntide of 1306. This affluence of minstrels gave rise to the practice of building a large music-gallery at one end of the mediæval hall, which seems to have been introduced in the fourteenth century. At this time minstrels were sometimes employed for very singular purposes, such as for soothing the king when undergoing a disagreeable operation. We learn from the wardrobe accounts that, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Edward I. (A.D. 1297) twenty shillings, or about fifteen pounds in modern money, was given to the minstrel of Sir John Maltravers as a reward for performing before the king while he was bled.