stopping cunningly at a critical moment in the performance, to gather their harvest of small coin from the bystanders[173]. In the great castles, while lords and ladies supped or sat around the fire, it was theirs to while away many a long bookless evening with courtly _geste_ or witty sally. At wedding or betrothal, baptism or knight-dubbing, treaty or tournament, their presence was indispensable. The greater festivities saw them literally in their hundreds[174], and rich was their reward in money and in jewels, in costly garments[175], and in broad acres. They were licensed vagabonds, with free right of entry into the presence-chambers of the land[176]. You might know them from afar by their coats of many colours, gaudier than any knight might respectably wear[177], by the instruments upon their backs and those of their servants, and by the shaven faces, close-clipped hair and flat shoes proper to their profession[178]. This kenspeckle appearance, together with the privilege of easy access, made the minstrel’s dress a favourite disguise in ages when disguise was often imperative. The device attributed by the chroniclers to Alfred and to Anlaf becomes in the romances one of the commonest of _clichés_[179]. The readiness with which the minstrels won the popular ear made them a power in the land. William de Longchamp, the little-loved chancellor of Richard I, found it worth his while to bring a number of them over from France, that they might sing his praises abroad in the public places[180]. Nor were they less in request for satire than for eulogy. The English speaking minstrels, in particular, were responsible for many songs in derision of unpopular causes and personalities[181]; and we need not doubt that ‘the lay that Sir Dinadan made by King Mark, which was the worst lay that ever harper sang with harp or with any other instruments,’ must have had its precise counterparts in actual life[182]. The Sarum statutes of 1319 lay especial stress on the flattery and the evil speaking with which the minstrels rewarded their entertainers[183]. Sometimes, indeed, they over-reached themselves, for Henry I is related to have put out the eyes of Lucas de Barre, a Norman _jougleur_, or perhaps rather _trouvère_, who made and sang songs against him[184]. But Lucas de Barre’s rank probably aggravated his offence, and as a rule the minstrels went scot-free. A wiser churchman here and there was not slow to perceive how the unexampled hold of minstrelsy on the popular ear might be turned to the service of religion. Eadhelm, standing in gleeman’s attire on an English bridge to mingle words of serious wisdom with his _carmina trivialia_, is one instance[185]. And in the same spirit St. Francis, himself half a troubadour in youth, would call his Minorites _ioculatores Domini_, and send them singing over the world to beg for their fee the repentance and spiritual joy of their hearers[186]. A popular hymn-writer of the present day is