There were itinerant purveyors of amusement who were to be found at every feast and at many family firesides. These were the wandering minstrels, or gleemen. Although they were welcomed for the entertainment they furnished, yet as a social class they were certainly in slight repute. Their forms of entertainment were not limited to music. They presented a programme that included the performances of trained animals, tricks of jugglery, feats of magic, and other exhibitions of skill and daring. Along with the gleemen went the glee maidens, who were the dancing and acrobatic girls of the day. Dancing itself was a very rudimentary performance, but the enthusiasm of the audience was aroused by the acts of tumbling and contortion that were introduced into it. Convinced that dancing alone could not account for the bewitchment of Herod by the daughter of his brother Philip's wife, the translators into the vernacular of that Biblical circumstance say of Herodias that she "tumbled" before Herod; and the illuminations in a prayerbook of the time show Herodias in the act of tumbling, with the assistance of a female attendant. Slight protection, either from law or custom, was afforded women of the lower classes from gross insults. Any female was likely to be stopped on the road and partially or altogether denuded of her clothing, and then sent on her way with taunts and jeers. But, despite the coarseness of the Anglo-Saxon times, sentiment finally made Itself felt for the correction of such manners. The women were responsible for the diffusion of notions of greater refinement. While there was little deserving the name of education, and even reading and writing were the accomplishments of but a small part of the people, the monastic orders conserved some notion of scholarship. Unfavorable as were the times to productive thought, scholars of no mean ability nevertheless flourished, and among men and women alike there was a desire for learning. To his female scholars the monk Anghelm dedicated his works: _De Laude Virginitatis_. Certain Saxon ladies of leisure occupied themselves with the study of Latin, which they came to read and write with some ease. The literary antecedents of the brilliant women of the sixteenth century are to be found in that little group of studious women of the Anglo-Saxons, of whom the Abbess Eadburga and her pupil Leobgitha, with both of whom Saint Boniface corresponded in Latin, were the most notable.