The early commentator on the Dictionarius, or Vocabulary, of John de Garlande, calls the musical instruments _instrumenta leccatorum_, (instruments of the letchers or ribalds), and I have already stated that the minstrels, or jougleurs, were considered as belonging generally to that degraded class of society. In the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, they are generally classed under the head of reprehensible or disgraceful professions, along with ribalds, heretics, harlots, and so forth. It was the same character which led them, a little later, to be proscribed in acts of parliament, under the titles of rogues and vagabonds. In the older poetry, too, they are often joined with disgraceful epithets. There is a curious early metrical story, or fabliau, which was made, no doubt, to be recited by the minstrels themselves, although it throws ridicule on their profession; it is entitled _Les deux Troveors ribauz_, “the two ribald trouvères,” and consists in a ludicrous dispute between them on their qualifications as minstrels. My readers must not suppose that at this time the reciters of poetry were a different or better class than those who performed jugglery and low buffoonery--for, in this poem, either of the two claimants to superiority boasts of his skill equally in possessing in his memory completely, and being able to recite well, the early Chansons de Geste, or Carlovingian romances, the later romances of chivalry, and the fabliaux or metrical stories; in playing upon the most fashionable musical instruments, such as the citole, the fiddle, and the _gigue_ (gittern); in performing extraordinary feats and in sleight of hand; and even in making chaplets of flowers, and in acting as a spy or as a go-between in love intrigues. No doubt there were minstrels who kept themselves more respectable, but they were exceptions to the general character of the class, and were chiefly men in the service of the king or of the great barons. There appears also to have been, for a long time, a continued attempt to raise minstrelsy to a respectable position, and out of this attempt arose, in different places, companies and guilds. Of these, the most remarkable of which we have any knowledge in this country, was the ancient fraternity of minstrels of Beverley, in Yorkshire. When this company originated is not known; but it was of some consideration and wealth in the reign of Henry VI., when the church of St. Mary’s, in that town, was built; for the minstrels gave a pillar to it, on the capital of which a band of minstrels were sculptured. The cut below (No. 137) is copied from the engraving of this group, given in Carter’s “Ancient Painting and Sculpture.” The oldest existing document of the fraternity is a copy of laws of the time of Philip and Mary, similar to those by which all trade guilds were governed: their officers were an alderman and two stewards or seers (_i. e._ searchers); and the only items in