She is apparently a solitary example of feminine musical talent in England at that date. The position occupied by woman in the music of mediæval times had greatly deteriorated from that occupied by St Cecilia, yet she was still thought worthy of portrayal, and we find a picture of her playing a viol with four strings on the painted roof of Peterborough Cathedral, which dates from about the year 1194. Two years later the names of several lady minstrels or “jongleuresses” figure in the code of laws which the Corporation of Minstrels presented in 1321 to the “Prefect” of Paris for signature. Heading the women is “Isabel la Roufelle,” and after her “Marcel la Chastaine, Liegart, fame Bieuveignant, Marguerite, la fame au Morne,” etc., and lastly “Adeline, fame de l’Angloise” and “Isabian la Lorraine.” The significant “fame” (wife) which occurs several times in the above list helps us to a peep at the life of the faithful spouse of the jongleur. Decidedly her attainments as a female jongleur, roaming the country with her husband, were absolutely opposed to the dictum of Pericles. The lives of these women were hard, and they were but poorly paid in comparison to their male brethren. It is on record that the Queen’s male “fiddler” in 1497 was paid “in rewarde” £1, 6s. 8d. while the two shillings paid by Henry VIII. to “a woman that singeth with a fiddle” is a pathetic revelation of the proportionately low value set upon woman’s artistic efforts at that time. Among early amateurs of the bass-viol we find Anne of Cleves, who frequently amused her self by playing on a viol with six strings after her retirement from the turgid trials of her matrimonial life. The picture of a lady similarly occupied, which occurs in a fifteenth-century manuscript entitled “Les Echecs Amoreux,” shows us that the French ladies were also votaries of the viol at that time. In truth, the bass-viol was then a very fashionable instrument both in Europe and England. Shakespeare, who echoed the doings of the day with unerring exactitude, frequently employs the viol in a synonymous sense as, for instance, in _Pericles_, where the character that gives the title addresses his daughter, Antiochus: “You’re a fair viol and your sense the strings Who, finger’d to make man his lawful music, Would draw heaven down.” Again in _Richard II._ the Duke of Norfolk, upon realising the full despair of the word “banishment,” bursts forth into the grand speech beginning: “And now my tongue’s use is to me no more Than an unstring’d viol or a harp.” In _Twelfth Night_ playing the viola da gamba is mentioned as significant of good character. When Maria calls Sir Andrew Aguecheek a fool and prodigal, Sir Toby Belch defends him with: “Fye, that you’ll say so! he plays o’ the viol di gamboys....” In a ballad of the time of Charles I., which occurs in Mr Chappelle’s book, “Music of the Olden Time,” among the lady’s numerous accomplishments it is recorded that: