Note 267 — Chapter III · THE MINSTREL LIFE

There are numerous payments to jugglers, tumblers and dancers in the Household Accounts of Henry VII (Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 85-113; Collier, i. 50). A letter to Wolsey of July 6, 1527, from R. Croke, the tutor of Henry VIII’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, complains of difficulties put in his way by R. Cotton, the Clerk-comptroller of the duke’s household, and adds: ‘At hic tamen in praeceptore arcendo diligens, libenter patitur scurras et mimos (qui digna lupanari in sacro cubiculo coram principe cantillent) admitti’ (Nichols, Memoir of Henry Fitzroy in Camden Miscellany, iii. xxxviii).