minstrels received 100_s._ a year, and this annuity was continued under Henry VI, who in 1455 had twelve of them, besides a wait. In the next year this king issued a commission for the impressing of boys to fill vacancies in the body[210]. Edward IV had thirteen minstrels and a wait[211]. By 1469 these had been cut down to eight. At their head was a chief, who was now called, not as in Richard II’s time _rex_, but _marescallus_[212]. The eight king’s minstrels and their _marescallus_ can be traced through the reign of Henry VII, and so on into the sixteenth century[213]. Nor was the royal household singular in the maintenance of a permanent body of minstrels. The _citharista_ of Margaret, queen of Edward I, is mentioned in 1300, and her _istrio_ in 1302[214]. Philippa, queen of Edward III, had her minstrels in 1337[215], and those of Queen Elizabeth were a regular establishment in the reign of Henry VII[216]. The Scottish court, too, had its recognized troupe, known by the early years of the sixteenth century as the ‘minstrels of the chekkar[217].’ As with kings and queens so with lesser men. The list of minstrels at court in 1306 includes the harpers and other musicians of several lords, both English and foreign[218]. In 1308 the earl of Lancaster had a body of _menestralli_ and an _armiger menestrallorum_[219]. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entries of payments to the minstrels of a vast number of _domini_, small and great, are common in the account books[220]. Henry, earl of Derby, took minstrels with him in his expeditions abroad of 1390 and 1392[221]; while the _Household Book_ of the earl of Northumberland (†1512) shows that he was accustomed to entertain ‘a Taberett, a Luyte, and a Rebecc,’ as well as six ‘trompettes[222].’ Minstrels are also found, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the service of the municipal corporations. London, Coventry, Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Chester, York, Beverley, Leicester, Lynn, Canterbury had them, to name no others. They received fixed fees or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a silver scutcheon, played at all local celebrations and festivities, and were commonly known as _waits_[223]. This term we have already found in use at court, and the ‘Black Book,’ which contains the household regulations of Edward IV, informs us that the primary duty of a wait was to ‘pipe the watch,’ summer and winter, at certain fixed hours of the night[224].