In the 39th Queen Elizabeth, a statute was passed by which “Ministrels, wandering abroad,” were included among “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,” and were adjudged to be punished as such. “This act,” says Percy, in his Reliques of English Poetry, “seems to have put an end to the profession.” That writer suggests, however, that although the character ceased to exist, the appellation might be continued, and applied to fiddlers, or other common musicians; and in this sense, he adds, it is used in an ordinance in the time of Cromwell (1656), wherein it is enacted that if any of the “persons commonly called _Fiddlers_ or _Minstrels_ shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling, and making music in any inn, alehouse, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or desiring or intreating any ... to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they are to be “adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars[8].” By a similar change or declension, according to Mr. Percy, John of Gaunt’s _King of the Minstrels_ came, at length, to be called, like the _Roi des Violons_ in France, _King of the Fiddles_—it being always to be borne in mind, nevertheless, that it was only as yet a baser kind of instrument which brought its professors into such _scrapes_[9]. The term _crowd_, as well as that of _fiddle_, was commonly used in England before the appearance of the perfect Violin, but appears to have been soon disused (along with the barbarous instrument it designated) after that period. Butler, in his “Hudibras,” employs both terms indiscriminately, and seems to find enjoyment in linking them with mean and ludicrous associations—a tendency which must be allowed to have been quite in keeping with the feeling of the times he describes. His motley rabble, whom he puts in the way of the knight and his squire, were special affecters of the instrument he delights to dishonour, And to _crack’d fiddle_, and hoarse tabor, In merriment did drudge and labor. He makes contemptuous allusion, also, to certain persons That keep their consciences in cases, As fiddlers do their _crowds_ and bases. Crowdero, the fiddle-noted agent in the story, is made to cut, on the whole, a very sorry figure. Thus, as to his instrument, and his manner of calling it into exercise: A _squeaking engine_ he applied Unto his neck, on north-east side, Just where the hangman does dispose, To special friends, the knot of noose. When the knight, in the outset of his career, meets the aforesaid rabble, with the aggravating accompaniment of the bear and fiddler, and counsels them to peace and dispersion, he says But, to that purpose, first surrender The fiddler, as the prime offender!