From the period of the Conquest, authorities on the subject of which we are treating, though still not so numerous as could be desired, become too numerous to be all included within the limits to which our space restricts us. The reader may refer to Wharton's "History of English Poetry," to Bishop Percy's introductory essay to the "Reliques of Early English Poetry," and to the introductory essay to Ellis's "Early English Metrical Romances," for the principal published authorities. For a series of learned essays on mediæval musical instruments he may consult M. Didron's "Annales Archæologiques," vol. iii. pp. 76, 142, 260; vol. iv. pp. 25, 94; vol. vi. p. 315; vol. vii. pp. 92, 157, 244, 325; vol. viii. p. 242; vol. ix. pp. 289, 329.[327] We propose only from these and other published and unpublished materials to give a popular sketch of the subject. Throughout this period minstrelsy was in high estimation with all classes of society. The king himself, like his Saxon[328] predecessors, had a king's minstrel, or king of the minstrels, who probably from the first was at the head of a band of royal minstrels.[329] This fashion of the royal court, doubtless, like all its other fashions, obtained also in the courts of the great nobility (several instances will be observed in the sequel), and in their measure in the households of the lesser nobility. Every gentleman of estate had probably his one, two, or more minstrels as a regular part of his household. It is not difficult to discover their duties. In the representations of dinners, which occur plentifully in the mediæval MSS., we constantly find musicians introduced; sometimes we see them preceding the servants, who are bearing the dishes to table--a custom of classic usage, and which still lingers to this day at Queen's College, Oxford, in the song with which the choristers usher in the boar's head on Christmas-day, and at our modern public dinners, when the band strikes up "Oh the Roast Beef of Old England," as that national dish is brought to table.