attend him[42] and eighteen are afterwards mentioned, to each of whom he allowed
xiid. a-day, when that sum must have been of more than ten times the value it is at
present.[43] Yet when he entered London in triumph after the battle of Agincourt, he,
from a principle of humility, slighted the pageants and verses which were prepared to
hail his return; and, as we are told by Holingshed,[44] would not suffer "any Dities to
be made and song by Minstrels, of his glorious victorie; for that he would whollie
have the praise and thankes altogether given to God" (BB4). But this did not proceed
from any disregard for the professors of music or of song; for at the feast of Pentecost,
which he celebrated in 1410, having the Emperor and the Duke of Holland for his
guests, he ordered rich gowns for sixteen of his minstrels, of which the particulars are
preserved by Rymer.[45] And having before his death orally granted an annuity of
100 shillings to each of his minstrels, the grant was confirmed in the first year of Isis
son King Henry VI., A.D. 1428, and payment ordered out of the Exchequer.[46]
The unfortunate reign of King Henry VI. affords no occurrences respecting
our subject; but in his thirty-fourth year, A.D. 1456, we have in Rymer[47] a
commission for impressing boys or youths, to supply vacancies by death among the
king's minstrels: in which it is expressly directed that they shall be elegant in their
limbs, as well as instructed in the minstrel art, wherever they can be found, for the
solace of his majesty.
In the following reign, King Edward IV. (in his ninth year, 1409), upon a
complaint that certain rude husbandmen and artificers of various trades had assumed
the title and livery of the king's minstrels, and under that colour and pretence had
collected money in divers parts of the kingdom, and committed other disorders, the
king grants to Walter Holiday, Marshal, and to seven others his own minstrels, whom
he names, a Charter,[48] by which he creates, or rather restores, a Fraternity or
perpetual Gild (such as, he understands, the brothers and sisters of the fraternity of
Minstrels had in times past), to be governed by a Marshal, appointed for life, and by
two Wardens, to be chosen annually; who are empowered to admit brothers and
sisters into the said Gild, and are authorized to examine the pretentions of all such as
attempted to exercise the minstrel profession; and to regulate, govern, and punish
them throughout the realm (those of Chester excepted). This seems to have some
resemblance to the Earl Marshal's court among the Heralds, and is another proof of
the great affinity and resemblance which the Minstrels bore to the members of the
College of Arms.
It is remarkable that Walter Holiday, whose name occurs as Marshal in the
foregoing Charter, had been retained in the service of the two preceding Monarchs,
King Henry V.[49] and VI.[50] Nor is this the first time he is mentioned as Marshal of
the king's minstrels, for in the third year of this reign, 1464, he had a grant from King
Edward of ten marks per annum during life, directed to him with that title.[51]
But besides their Marshal, we have also in this reign mention of a Serjeant of
the Minstrels, who upon a particular occasion was able to do his royal master a
singular service, wherein his confidential situation and ready access to the king at all
hours is very apparent: for "as he [King Edward IV.] was in the north contray in the
mooneth of Septembre, as he lay in his bedde, one named Alexander Carlile, that was
Sariaunt of the Mynstrellis, cam to him in grete hast, and badde hym aryse, for he
hadde enemyes cummyng for to take him, the which were within vi. or vii. mylis, of
the which tydinges the king gretely marveylid,"[52] &c. this happened in the sane
year, 1460, wherein the king granted or confirmed the Charter for the Fraternity or