Note 180 — ARMTHORPE BELLS.[173]

In addition to the "lordlike" luxury of a pack of hounds, in which the old corporation of Doncaster formerly indulged, that highly respectable body, after the manner of the Royal Cole, of convivial memory, when they "called for their bowl," (which they not unfrequently did,) possessed also the king-like privilege of summoning their "fiddlers three." They maintained, as a part of their regular establishment, three musicians, called waits, who were clothed in scarlet liveries, and played at feasts, balls, &c., and walked in the procession to church. In former times they used to go about the town, during the night, playing a single tune on various instruments at the doors of the principal inhabitants; an office which seems to have answered the same purpose as that of watchman, to which they afterwards gave place.