[285] “Sicut lex justissima, provida circumspectione sacrorum principum stabilita, hortatur et statuit ut quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur, sic.,” etc. Rymer’s “Fœdera,” year 1295, vol. ii. p. 689. [286] “Fœdera,” year 1297, vol. ii. p. 783. [287] Isambert’s “Recueil,” vol. iii, pp. 102, 104. [288] A not at all rare occurrence. See in the _fabliau_, “Le povre Clerc,” how the itinerant verse teller is asked by the peasant who receives him to say, while the supper is cooking: “Some of those things that are in writing, either a song or a story of adventure.” Bédier, “Les Fabliaux,” 2nd ed., 1895, p. 391. [289] Performing animals or wild ones in cages enjoyed a popularity which proved more constant than that of minstrels, since it has continued unabated from the early middle ages to the present time. _Ursinarii_ frequently appear in the accounts of the Shrewsbury corporation quoted by Chambers who gives, e.g. this noteworthy entry: “In regardo dato ursinario domini Regis pro agitacione bestiarum suarum ultra denarios tunc ibidem collectos. . . .” (Mediæval Stage, ii. 251; year 1517). The English kings, as is well known, had their ménagerie in the Tower, as the French ones had theirs in Paris. St. Louis sent, “as a great gift,” in 1255, an elephant to Henry III; “and we do not believe any had been seen before in England,” wrote Matthew Paris who, good draughtsman as he was, painted the portrait of the wondrous beast. The miniature in MS. Nero D I, in the British Museum, fol. 169, is by him, according to Madden, “Historia Anglorum,” Rolls, Preface. [290] “There saugh I pleyen jugelours, Magiciens and tregetours, And phitonisses, charmeresses, Olde wiches, sorceresses That use exorsisaciouns And eke thes fumygaciouns.” (Chaucer’s “House of Fame,” l. 169.) [291] Chambers, “Mediæval Stage,” i. 58, quoting, the “Summa Theologiæ”: “Sicut dictum est, ludus est necessarius ad conservationem vitæ humanæ,” etc. On the distinction between the higher and lower minstrelsy, see ibid. pp. 59 ff. [292] Lib. i. chap. viii. [293] “Historical Papers from the Northern Registers,” ed. Raine, Rolls Series, p. 398. Cf. Bodleian MS. 264, fos. 21, 51, 56, 91, etc. [294] “Ich can nat tabre ne trompe · ne telle faire gestes, Farten ne fithelen · at festes, ne harpen, Japen ne jogelen · ne gentelliche pipe, Nother sailen ne sautrien · ne singe with the giterne.” (“Piers Plowman,” ed. Skeat, Text C, passus xvi. l. 205.) [295] “_Loci e libro veritatum_; Passages selected from Gascoigne’s Theological Dictionary” (1403–48), ed. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, p. 144. [296] For instance, MS. Add. 29704, fol. 11. This particular illumination seems to be of the fourteenth century. [297] Devon’s “Issues of the Exchequer,” p. 212.