they never enjoyed the respect of the high born or received favors from
them. The church evidently looked upon them with disfavor, as the
enemies of sobriety and the promoters of revelry and mirth. In the
sixteenth century they lost all credit and were classed, in penal
enactments, with "rogues and vagabonds." One reason of the decline of
minstrelsy was the introduction of printing and the advance of learning:
that which might afford amusement and pleasure when sung to the harp,
lost its point and spirit when read in retirement from the printed page.
Their composition would not bear criticism. Besides, the market had
become overstocked with these musical wares; as the religious houses had
with homilies and saintly legends. The consideration bestowed on the
early minstrels "enticed into their ranks idle vagabonds," according to
the act of Edward I, who went about the country under color of
minstrelsy; men who cared more about the supper than the song; who for
base lucre divorced the arts of writing and reciting and stole other
men's thunder. Their social degeneracy may be traced in the dictionary.
The chanter of the "gests" of kings, _gesta ducum regumque_,
dwindled into a gesticulator, a jester: the honored jogelar of Provence,
into a mountebank; the jockie, a doggrel ballad-monger.


Beggars they are by one consent,
And rogues by act of Parliament.


What a fall was there from their former high estate and reverence. The
earliest minstrels of the Norman courts, doubtless, came from France,
where their rank was almost regal.

Froissart, describing a Christmas festival given by Comte de Foix in the