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608 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
on swords, or upside/down (PL 1 3 1 &), and to music. Music,
till the fourteenth century, was chiefly used to accompany the
voice and the dance; it then became an entertainment in itself
(PL 1320). It was a normal practice in the great houses to have
music during meals or on festive occasions. No less than eighty
named instrumentalists, including players of tabors, kettle^
drums, harps, gitterns, citoles, trumpets, flutes, pipes, psalterx
ies, organs, and various forms of fiddle, were gathered together
at the court ofEdward I to celebrate the knighting of his son
in I306. 1 Edward III had a band attached to his household
(which served as a military band in time of war) composed of
five^trumpeters, one citoler, five pipers, one tabouretter, two
clarion players, one nekerer (kettlexdrummer), one fiddler, and
three waits. It was not uncommon for noblemen to have a
musician or two on their staff; at the close ofthe middle ages the
earl of Northumberland had a little orchestra consisting of a
tabouret, a lute, a rebeck, and six trumpets.
Pet animals provided amusement in the middle ages as they
do today. King Henry I kept a menagerie at Woodstock which
included lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, and a porcupine;
Henry III had three leopards and a camel presented to him by
his brotherxin/law, the Emperor Frederick II, and an elephant,
the gift of Louis IX of France, which he kept in a house spe>
dally built for it in the Tower of London; and Henry II had a
bear which sometimes travelled with him as he moved about
the country. Animals also play apart intherepertoireofthepnv
fessional entertainer. Some dressed up as animals, some led live
animals on to the stage. Bulls and bears were baited (PL 1326).
In the honour of Tutbury, where the minstrels were organ"
ized in the time of John ofGaunt under k roy des ministraulx, it
was customary for the prior of Tutbury to provide the bull for
the kistriones after they had attended matins on the feast of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. 2
Performing dogs and
1 The payments made to these musicians are
printed by E. K. Chambersop,
cit. ii, pp. 234-8.
2
This obligation survived the reformation and became vested in the family of
Cavendish (later earls of Devonshire) as bailiffs of Tutbury castle. An interesting