And if these be withdrawn, they will incur the hatred of those subject to them [their parishioners], and will lose the favour of passers-by [travellers] and their neighbours."[317] Again, in 1253 A.D., Bishop Grostête, in his remonstrance to the Pope, says of the foreigners who were intruded into English benefices, that they "could not even take up their residence, to administer to the wants of the poor, and to receive travellers."[318] There is an interesting passage illustrative of the subject quoted in Parker's "Domestic Architecture," i. p. 123. Æneus Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., describing his journey from Scotland into England, in the year 1448, says that he entered a large village in a wild and barbarous part of the country, about sunset, and "alighted at a rustic's house, and supped there with the priest of the place and the host." The special mention of the priest in the first place almost leads us to conjecture that the foreign ecclesiastic had first gone to the priest of the place for the usual hospitality, and had been taken on by him to the manor house--for the "rustic" seems to have been a squire--as better able to afford him a suitable hospitality. Sundry pottages, and fowls, and geese, were placed on the table, but there was neither bread nor wine. He had, however, brought with him a few loaves and a roundel of wine, which he had received at a certain monastery. Either a stranger was a great novelty, or the Italian ecclesiastic had something remarkable in his appearance, for he says all "the people of the place ran to the house to stare at him." Kelvedon being on one of the great high roads of the country, its parson would often be called upon to exercise his duty of hospitality, hence the provision of a special guest chamber in the parsonage house. And so in our picture of the domestic economy and ordinary life of a mediæval country parson we must furnish his guest chamber, and add a little to the contents of buttery and cellar, to provide for his duty of hospitality; and we must picture him not always sitting in solitary dignity at his high table on the dais, but often playing the courteous host to knight and lady, merchant, minstrel, or pilgrim; and after dinner giving the broken meat to the poor, who in the days when there was no poor law were the regular dependants on his bounty. THE MINSTRELS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. CHAPTER I. It would carry us too far a-field to attempt to give a sketch of the early music of the principal nations of antiquity, such as might be deduced from the monuments of Egypt and Nineveh and Greece. We may, however, briefly glance at the most ancient minstrelsy of the Israelites; partly for the sake of the peculiar interest of the subject itself, partly because the early history of music is nearly the same in all nations, and this earliest history will illustrate and receive illustration from a comparison with the history of music in mediæval England.