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There was once a minstrel,

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a happy-go-lucky fellow
wandering the country

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to sing at the courts of lords and kings.

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Everywhere he was welcomed
with open arms.

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# And that is the end,
that is the end

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# That is the end of my story #

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Strumming his lute

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and spinning his tales
of romance and derring-do,

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he'd charm the ladies and then move on.

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oh! What a life.

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Yes, nice life.

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Except, of course,
it wasn't like that at all.

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showbiz was just as fickle in the Middle Ages
as it is today,

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the tastes of audiences
just as likely to change.

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And then, as now,
behind the entertainment,

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there was often a political agenda.

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In fact, being a minstrel or court poet
was often downright dangerous.

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(shouting)

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EsPecially when performing
in front of a hostile audience.

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or, even worse, a hostile army,

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as in the case of the Norman minstrel Taillefer.

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# Oh, Taillefer is my name
and singing is my game

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# And if you wanna know
what a minstrel's for

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# Here's how I got to start a war #

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It's the story of one of the greatest acts
of bravado of all time.

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Well, one of the daftest acts
of bravado, if you ask me.

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And it took place
in that field over there.

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1066, at the Battle of Hastings.

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King Harold and his 7,000 English trooPs

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are packed behind their shield wall
uP on that ridge there,

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where Battle Abbey now stands.

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Duke William had his Normans
aligned up in equal numbers

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further down the slope over there.

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It looks like the English
have got the advantage.

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And for a moment,

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it seems as if the Normans
have got last-minute nerves.

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Nobody wants to be the first to charge.

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But then suddenly a figure
rides out of the Norman lines.

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But it's not Duke William,
it's not even a soldier,

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it's the minstrel Taillefer.

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And he starts riding
straight to the English lines,

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Performing a juggling act
with his sword and lance.

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Well, the English stand there
enjoying the show,

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until Taillefer gets to the Point
where he hurls his sPear

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at one of the English soldiers
and kills him.

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And then all hell breaks loose.

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The French charge and the rest
is extremely well-known history.

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Considering how well-known the story
of the Battle of Hastings is,

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it's surprising that Taillefer never seems
to figure in it,

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not even in the Bayeux Tapestry.

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In fact, if it wasn't for
one of the chronicles,

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we'd have never heard of Taillefer's bravery.

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Then, I suppose
the Norman knights,

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whom the Bayeux Tapestry
was supposed to be celebrating,

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wouldn't want to be shown uP
by a mere minstrel.

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But then, what was a minstrel
doing on the battlefield in the first Place?

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Well, there was a lot more to being a minstrel
than just playing music.

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The word ''minstrel''
actually means little servant.

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And they were low down
in the social order.

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And in that rough-and-ready military culture
of the 11th century,

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little distinction was made between those
servants who could cook or do other chores

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and those who could write poetry
or play musical instruments.

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These were not particularly
soPhisticated courts.

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The warlords who ran them
placed little value on fancy stuff

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like the arts and entertainment.

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Their main interests
evolved around the subtleties

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of fighting and killing each other.

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so minstrels counted as little more than
menials in the household,

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and the more talents they had, the better.

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one 13th-century poem
defines a true minstrel

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as one who can speak and rhyme well,

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be witty, know the story of Troy,

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balance apples on the point of knives,

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juggle, jump through hoops,

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play the citole, mandora, harp,
fiddle and psaltery.

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He's further advised, for good measure,
to learn the arts of imitating birds,

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putting performing asses
and dogs through their paces

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and of course of operating marionettes.

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It seems it was also an advantage

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if you were good at breakdancing.

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Nothing's new.

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( # Low note )

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These little servants, these minstrels,

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would be exPected to perform
lots of different roles.

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For example, they might be asked
to act as night watchmen,

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so they could sound the alarm
in case of fire or attack.

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In fact, in 1306, a minstrel
by the name of Richard

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raised the alarm at Windsor

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and prevented the castle
from being burnt down.

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pity there weren't a few
minstrels around in 1992.

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( # Low notes )

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Servants who could blow a trumpet

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would also have been vital
amidst the cacophony of battle,

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to rally the troops or cheer them on.

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Away from the battlefield,

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these same servants provided
the entertainment,

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though with rather a restricted repertoire.

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You see, the warriors and warlords
of the 11th century

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weren't particularly interested
in stories of teenage love

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or stories about how someone who,
despite appalling handicaps,

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manages to become a concert pianist.

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What they wanted was stories
about men like themselves

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killing other men, like the ones
they killed that morning.

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preferably with lots of gory details
and swaggering about.

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These were called chansons de geste,
or songs of great deeds.

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( # sings in French)

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The chanson on every minstrel's
lips was this,

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the Song of Roland, a 4OOO-line epic

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and the Norman number one
for nearly a century.

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so that's kind of the Norman
Top Of The pops, is it?

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Well, it's a sort of big ballad
you'd have heard in the early 12th century,

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it would have been very popular.
It's the most popular of the chansons de geste.

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Any love element there?

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No, it's an environment where
love had very little...place.

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It's a kind of boys' culture, is it?

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Yeah, I think it's been referred to as
the sort of buddy movie mentality

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where the lads get together,
they do what they have to do.

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If there's any women there,
they're very peripheral.

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The only romance in the Song of Roland

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is when the hero charlemagne
declares his undying love

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and loyalty to his sword.

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It's a lovely song and there's
another 3,554 lines to go.

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They certainly knew how to get value
out of their minstrels.

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so why did they stick minstrels
uP in the galleries like that?

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Well, there are two reasons for it really.

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There was obviously
an acoustical reason for it,

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the sound would carry better.

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There was also another reason.

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In the courts,
you invite musicians in

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who are of a lower caste,

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you don't really want them
to be hobnobbing with you,

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so you keeP them away,
so it's a sort of hierarchical,

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and a spatial removal

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- of the lower caste.
- You keep the distance.

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Yeah. Absolutely.

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presumably, they could also, sort of...

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they were observing
what's going on, I guess.

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Yes, what they forgot was
that musicians have ears

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as well as fingers,
and whilst they're playing

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they can hear conversations
that are going on.

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And it's no surprise that
musicians often found themselves

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in a sort of secondary employment
in the field of espionage.

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As well as acting as spies,
minstrels were also expected

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to act as propagandists,

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supposedly recording
the deeds of battle

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and then producing a sort of
end of the match rePort.

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And of course,
they'd better make damn sure

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whoever's paying them
is chosen as man of the match.

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Medieval minstrels
were the PR men of their day.

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They'd embark on well-planned
tours reciting their poems

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to publicize the latest achievements
of their bosses.

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# simon de Montfort
is mighty and strong

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# He loves to do right
and he hates to do wrong #

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Of course, the minstrels didn't
let the truth stand in the way of a good story

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any more than
the sPin doctors of today do.

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Take this account.
It's by a herald-cum-minstrel

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in the entourage of the Black Prince,

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and it tells how the Prince

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wiped the floor
with the entire spanish navy.

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# The battle was fierce,
the battle was grim

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# But God let fortune smile on him

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# And through his courage,
skill and might

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# The spaniards all
were killed outright #

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But they weren't.

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And the victory was by no means

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as decisive as the minstrel's claim.

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on the continent,
they weren't even sure

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that the English had won.

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Facts? What facts?

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Minstrels in the service of a great lord

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would be entitled to wear
the lord's uniform or livery.

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A minstrel without a livery

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was a bit like a rock band
without a record contract.

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Livery indicated
a minstrel had both status

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and a regular income.

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course, when he wasn't
entertaining his own master

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it was all the easier
to get those classy gigs.

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Mark you, the entertainment
these great lords demanded

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was reassuringly downmarket.

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Even in the royal courts.

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Henry II's favorite minstrel,
for example,

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went by the name of Roland Le Peteur.

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Henry rewarded Roland
with 30 acres of land

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for his great master work,

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described as a leap,
a whistle and a fart.

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It appears that Roland's great musical talent

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lay in farting tunes.

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These were not highbrow entertainers.

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Have a look
at what's going on here -

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everyone's looking at everyone else.

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These guys are looking at these guys
and they're looking at the king,

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who's counting down, one, two, three,
wait for it...

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Whoo! Whoo!

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WhooPs.

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Another act that was, apparently,
popular with royalty

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was a variation of sticking
your head in the lion's mouth.

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Only this involved a minstrel
who spread honey on his member

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and then brought in
a performing bear.

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What the bear actually
performed isn't mentioned

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but, I bet it doesn't figure
in Winnie-the-Pooh.

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Maybe it's not surprising
that some disaPProved

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00:12:01,801 --> 00:12:04,668
of the way the wealthy
encouraged low comedy.

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00:12:04,704 --> 00:12:07,832
Here is John of Salisbury
writing in the 12th century.

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''Even those whose exposures
are so indecent

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''they make a cynic blush
are not debarred

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''from distinguished houses.

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00:12:16,482 --> 00:12:19,713
''They're not even turned out
when with more a hellish tumult,

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''they defile the air
and more shamelessly disclose

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00:12:23,256 --> 00:12:25,816
''that which in shame
they should have concealed. ''

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00:12:29,862 --> 00:12:34,162
But minstrels were woven into
the fabric of everyday life.

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00:12:34,200 --> 00:12:36,998
The town of Beverley in East Yorkshire

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00:12:37,036 --> 00:12:40,369
was a major center for Pilgrimage
in the Middle Ages.

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00:12:40,406 --> 00:12:43,375
And minstrels would stand here

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00:12:43,409 --> 00:12:46,776
on the steps of
the north porch of the Minster

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00:12:46,813 --> 00:12:50,806
as a sort of permanent welcoming committee
for arriving tourists.

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00:12:50,850 --> 00:12:55,048
In fact, the whole town
was crawling with minstrels.

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00:12:55,088 --> 00:12:58,489
And when they decorated
the inside of the Minster,

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they filled it with minstrels.

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00:13:06,933 --> 00:13:10,096
The Beverly figures offer us a unique glimPse

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00:13:10,136 --> 00:13:12,900
into the world of
the medieval minstrel.

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00:13:12,939 --> 00:13:15,499
Here we come face to face with musicians

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00:13:15,541 --> 00:13:19,341
whose humble lives
went otherwise unrecorded.

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These figures provide us

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00:13:26,686 --> 00:13:29,587
with a veritable
encycloPedia of minstrelsy.

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00:13:29,622 --> 00:13:32,352
They show us what instruments
minstrels played,

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00:13:32,391 --> 00:13:35,554
they show us how those instrument worked.

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00:13:35,595 --> 00:13:38,223
They show us what minstrels wore

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00:13:38,264 --> 00:13:41,665
and even what some people
thought about minstrels.

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00:13:43,636 --> 00:13:48,471
players of wind instruments
seem to have been regarded as rather vulgar.

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00:13:48,508 --> 00:13:51,841
perhaps because the blowing
distorted their features.

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00:13:51,878 --> 00:13:55,644
The church itself had
an ambivalent attitude to minstrels.

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00:13:55,681 --> 00:13:58,013
on the one hand, there were
the heavenly minstrels,

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00:13:58,050 --> 00:14:00,211
angels who played celestial music.

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00:14:03,089 --> 00:14:06,889
But on the other, there were minstrels
who encouraged dancing and ribaldry,

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00:14:06,926 --> 00:14:10,054
and were therefore,
servants of the devil.

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00:14:19,005 --> 00:14:21,667
In England, the fortunes of the minstrels

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00:14:21,707 --> 00:14:25,006
probably reached their zenith
in the reign of Edward II.

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00:14:26,512 --> 00:14:28,776
Edward, whose father tended
to be away rather a lot,

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00:14:28,814 --> 00:14:30,281
was brought uP by a nanny

240
00:14:30,316 --> 00:14:34,013
whose other job just happened to be
a court minstrel.

241
00:14:34,053 --> 00:14:36,180
Maybe this explains
why Edward grew up

242
00:14:36,222 --> 00:14:38,952
as one of the biggest fans
minstrels ever had.

243
00:14:40,293 --> 00:14:44,627
I went to the public Records office to riffle
through some 6OO-year-old documents

244
00:14:44,664 --> 00:14:47,861
in search of evidence
of Edward's minstrel craze.

245
00:14:47,900 --> 00:14:51,927
Here, for example,
is the treasury roll for his coronation.

246
00:14:51,971 --> 00:14:55,805
It a list of expenses for his coronation,
and it lists here

247
00:14:55,841 --> 00:14:59,834
all the minstrels at
the coronation, 154 of them.

248
00:14:59,879 --> 00:15:04,407
You can see there's, er,
five trumpeters of the boy Prince,

249
00:15:04,450 --> 00:15:06,384
Thomas the harpist,

250
00:15:06,419 --> 00:15:08,319
William the harper,

251
00:15:08,354 --> 00:15:11,152
Henry the flautist,

252
00:15:11,190 --> 00:15:13,124
Tanian the organist,

253
00:15:13,159 --> 00:15:17,858
and here we've got little William,
organist of the Countess of Hereford.

254
00:15:17,897 --> 00:15:20,889
Sounds all very lavish
but conventional.

255
00:15:20,933 --> 00:15:23,925
But then, the coronation
was a state occasion.

256
00:15:23,970 --> 00:15:25,437
In private, however,

257
00:15:25,471 --> 00:15:30,204
it seems that Edward enjoyed
something a little more spicy.

258
00:15:30,243 --> 00:15:34,839
This is the wardrobe account, in which
the king's personal expenditure was kept.

259
00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:38,441
Here we can see that on the anniversary
of the death of Piers Gaveston,

260
00:15:38,484 --> 00:15:41,647
his intimate friend,
and perhaps lover,

261
00:15:41,687 --> 00:15:50,095
he emPloyed a certain Bernard the Fool
and his 54 naked dancers.

262
00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:57,398
While the English nobility
were still getting their kicks

263
00:15:57,436 --> 00:15:59,495
out of stories about who killed who

264
00:15:59,538 --> 00:16:02,735
and how far their brains were spread around
in the process,

265
00:16:02,775 --> 00:16:06,711
down in the South of France,
a new kind of song was evolving.

266
00:16:06,746 --> 00:16:10,842
It was subtle, soPhisticated and sexy.

267
00:16:10,883 --> 00:16:16,549
The pioneer of this new style of poetry
was not a professional musician.

268
00:16:16,589 --> 00:16:22,960
He was an aristocrat, the gloriously randy
Duke William IX of Aquitaine.

269
00:16:22,995 --> 00:16:25,486
And his palace was here in Poitiers.

270
00:16:30,169 --> 00:16:33,229
If not the most rampant
of French noblemen,

271
00:16:33,272 --> 00:16:36,264
Duke William was certainly
the most upfront about it.

272
00:16:36,309 --> 00:16:40,439
He talked of opening an abbey
for prostitutes near his castle

273
00:16:40,479 --> 00:16:45,507
and confessed that he pursued women
with but one objective in mind.

274
00:16:45,551 --> 00:16:49,180
(French accent) I'll end up
wiz my 'and up her cloak.

275
00:16:49,221 --> 00:16:52,281
He was the first of a new breed
of court entertainer,

276
00:16:52,325 --> 00:16:55,419
aristocratic and educated - the troubadours.

277
00:16:55,461 --> 00:16:58,953
And by the 12th century
the court here at Poitiers

278
00:16:58,998 --> 00:17:02,126
was the most important
cultural center in France.

279
00:17:03,402 --> 00:17:05,427
It was here that Duke William

280
00:17:05,471 --> 00:17:08,099
changed forever the story of the minstrel.

281
00:17:08,140 --> 00:17:10,108
He invented a new kind of poetry

282
00:17:10,142 --> 00:17:13,669
that raved about his favorite subjects -
love and sex.

283
00:17:13,713 --> 00:17:17,843
His style was irreverent, witty
and made fun of everything,

284
00:17:17,883 --> 00:17:20,044
including himself.

285
00:17:22,088 --> 00:17:25,580
(French accent) I made these
verses just for fun

286
00:17:25,624 --> 00:17:29,583
Not for myself nor anyone

287
00:17:29,628 --> 00:17:34,588
Nor of great deeds
that knights have done

288
00:17:34,633 --> 00:17:38,364
Nor of lovers true

289
00:17:38,404 --> 00:17:41,669
I made them riding in the sun

290
00:17:41,707 --> 00:17:45,268
And my horse, he helped too

291
00:17:45,311 --> 00:17:46,778
(Neighing)

292
00:17:48,414 --> 00:17:53,317
The troubadours revolutionized
the way people thought about the sexes.

293
00:17:53,352 --> 00:17:55,479
They accorded women superiority
over men

294
00:17:55,521 --> 00:17:59,184
and they made love
a suitable subject for fiction.

295
00:17:59,225 --> 00:18:01,819
UP to this time, it had
been punishable by death

296
00:18:01,861 --> 00:18:04,125
to address a love song
to a married woman.

297
00:18:04,163 --> 00:18:07,564
It was regarded as the equivalent
of casting a sPell on her.

298
00:18:07,600 --> 00:18:11,229
But the most revolutionary
thing about the troubadours

299
00:18:11,270 --> 00:18:14,262
was that they did all this
in the everyday language

300
00:18:14,306 --> 00:18:16,103
of the man in the street.

301
00:18:16,142 --> 00:18:18,372
And it just so happened
that the troubadours lived

302
00:18:18,411 --> 00:18:21,676
in the region of France
where instead of oui for yes,

303
00:18:21,714 --> 00:18:23,181
they said oc.

304
00:18:23,215 --> 00:18:26,810
It was known as the land
of the oc, the Pays d'oc,

305
00:18:26,852 --> 00:18:29,650
and the language spoken was occitan.

306
00:18:29,688 --> 00:18:31,679
(RaPPing in Occitan )

307
00:18:35,928 --> 00:18:39,625
The French rap artists
Les Fabulous Troubadours,

308
00:18:39,665 --> 00:18:41,656
inspired by these medieval poets,

309
00:18:41,700 --> 00:18:45,158
are spearheading a revival
in occitan poetry.

310
00:18:45,204 --> 00:18:47,195
(Rapping in Occitan )

311
00:18:54,380 --> 00:18:58,510
so what was so important about the fact
they were doing this in Occitan?

312
00:18:58,551 --> 00:19:02,282
For the troubadours,
all the literature is in Latin,

313
00:19:02,321 --> 00:19:05,620
understood only
by the aristocratic people.

314
00:19:05,658 --> 00:19:11,153
But when they sing
and when you write in Occitan,

315
00:19:11,197 --> 00:19:13,461
everybody can understand.

316
00:19:13,499 --> 00:19:16,024
They make poetry
in the common language...

317
00:19:16,068 --> 00:19:17,365
common language of the people.

318
00:19:17,403 --> 00:19:19,633
The people, the language
people speak in the street.

319
00:19:19,672 --> 00:19:21,230
Yes.

320
00:19:24,410 --> 00:19:28,176
The troubadours used the language
of the man in the street

321
00:19:28,214 --> 00:19:31,775
for dazzlingly soPhisticated
intellectual games.

322
00:19:31,817 --> 00:19:34,285
Like this verbal jousting match

323
00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:36,914
in which the two poets
try to outwit each other

324
00:19:36,956 --> 00:19:39,356
with their rhymes and verbal dexterity.

325
00:19:44,463 --> 00:19:48,661
The soPhistication of
the writing is very important,

326
00:19:48,701 --> 00:19:51,431
and the sophistication of the music also

327
00:19:51,470 --> 00:19:54,030
is very important for this period.

328
00:19:54,073 --> 00:19:57,941
And did this poetry have
an influence on Europe?

329
00:19:57,977 --> 00:20:03,176
This poetry has a big impact in Europe

330
00:20:03,215 --> 00:20:06,150
because it's the first time they sing,

331
00:20:06,185 --> 00:20:07,413
''Make love, not war.

332
00:20:07,453 --> 00:20:09,387
''Make music, not war,

333
00:20:09,421 --> 00:20:12,652
''make tournament of poetry, not war.''

334
00:20:12,691 --> 00:20:17,060
In Middle Ages, occitan
is a sign of sophistication.

335
00:20:20,933 --> 00:20:23,527
Merci beaucoup. Merci beaucoup.

336
00:20:25,571 --> 00:20:28,131
The sophisticated culture
of the troubadours

337
00:20:28,173 --> 00:20:31,700
and the fashion for writing
and composing poetry in the native language

338
00:20:31,744 --> 00:20:34,338
spread across the courts of Europe.

339
00:20:34,380 --> 00:20:37,474
The whole nature of court entertainment
was revolutionized.

340
00:20:37,516 --> 00:20:39,882
Kings and Princes now saw that their realm

341
00:20:39,919 --> 00:20:43,047
was no longer defined by
simple geographical boundaries,

342
00:20:43,088 --> 00:20:46,114
but that they also ruled over
an intellectual territory.

343
00:20:46,158 --> 00:20:48,854
The territory of literature and song.

344
00:20:48,894 --> 00:20:54,059
And a new breed of court poet began to replace
the old rough-and-ready minstrels.

345
00:20:54,099 --> 00:20:58,832
The new court poets were decidedly sniffy
about the old minstrels.

346
00:20:58,871 --> 00:21:02,602
In France, for example,
Eustace Deschamps said

347
00:21:02,641 --> 00:21:07,874
''The artificial music of the minstrels could be
learned by le plus rude homme du monde.''

348
00:21:07,913 --> 00:21:10,973
By the most uncouth man in the world.

349
00:21:11,016 --> 00:21:15,385
In a way, the situation was a bit like
the mid-2oth century,

350
00:21:15,421 --> 00:21:18,584
when the musical comedians,
with their repertoire

351
00:21:18,624 --> 00:21:22,151
of hand-me-down material,
found themselves displaced

352
00:21:22,194 --> 00:21:26,221
by the university educated satirists
of the television age,

353
00:21:26,265 --> 00:21:29,200
coming up with
something fresh every week.

354
00:21:35,107 --> 00:21:37,701
(Arrow flies, screaming)

355
00:21:37,743 --> 00:21:41,076
The English court finally caught up
with the rest of Europe

356
00:21:41,113 --> 00:21:43,172
during the reign of Richard II,

357
00:21:43,215 --> 00:21:49,120
and the star of Richard's court was the greatest
of medieval English poets, Geoffrey chaucer.

358
00:21:50,456 --> 00:21:52,583
chaucer helped to put Richard's court on a par

359
00:21:52,625 --> 00:21:56,584
with the great sophisticated courts
of France and Italy.

360
00:21:56,629 --> 00:22:00,656
In one of his poems, he describes
how a goddess commands him

361
00:22:00,699 --> 00:22:05,534
to finish his book and then
give it to Richard's Queen Anne.

362
00:22:05,571 --> 00:22:09,530
''Go now thy way and when this book is made,
give it the queen

363
00:22:09,575 --> 00:22:13,170
''on my behalf at Eltham, or at sheen.''

364
00:22:18,117 --> 00:22:21,416
Eltham was one of the king and queen's
favorite palaces

365
00:22:21,453 --> 00:22:26,152
and chaucer actually supervised
the rebuilding of it in the 1390s

366
00:22:26,191 --> 00:22:30,594
to make it a fit venue
for Richard's fashion-conscious court.

367
00:22:30,629 --> 00:22:33,655
Ironically, it has itself become a victim
of fashion,

368
00:22:33,699 --> 00:22:38,102
having had an art deco makeover
at the start of the last century.

369
00:22:39,571 --> 00:22:43,837
only one room gives any idea
of its medieval past.

370
00:22:43,876 --> 00:22:47,835
The great hall here at Eltham
dates from the 147os.

371
00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:50,508
Richard II's hall would have been smaller.

372
00:22:50,549 --> 00:22:53,916
Nonetheless, it must
have been here on this very spot

373
00:22:53,952 --> 00:22:57,752
that Geoffrey Chaucer would
have read out for the first time

374
00:22:57,790 --> 00:23:02,489
many of his famous poems
to the king and his court,

375
00:23:02,528 --> 00:23:05,827
just as he is in this 15th-century painting.

376
00:23:05,864 --> 00:23:09,561
To be present when poets
like this read out from their latest work

377
00:23:09,601 --> 00:23:11,728
must have been a hugely exciting exPerience.

378
00:23:11,770 --> 00:23:15,228
A sort of medieval equivalent
of attending a movie premiere.

379
00:23:16,008 --> 00:23:17,532
The old-style minstrels

380
00:23:17,576 --> 00:23:19,976
began to find they were
no longer fashionable.

381
00:23:20,012 --> 00:23:22,003
They had to go downmarket.

382
00:23:22,047 --> 00:23:24,481
They did indeed become
wandering minstrels,

383
00:23:24,516 --> 00:23:27,314
traipsing around the land
in search of an audience.

384
00:23:27,352 --> 00:23:30,014
Adultery is wrong, fornication is wrong...

385
00:23:30,055 --> 00:23:33,718
Eking out a living in fairs
and at street corners

386
00:23:33,759 --> 00:23:35,784
wherever they could find a crowd.

387
00:23:37,229 --> 00:23:42,690
The upside was that they no longer had
to fill the role of propagandist for rich patrons.

388
00:23:42,735 --> 00:23:44,930
In fact, quite the reverse.

389
00:23:47,673 --> 00:23:52,633
The unemployed minstrels could easily
turn into sort of medieval Billy Braggs,

390
00:23:52,678 --> 00:23:55,704
sort of popular political agitators.

391
00:23:55,748 --> 00:23:58,308
I heard men on earth
make much lamentation

392
00:23:58,350 --> 00:24:00,944
how they are injured in their work.

393
00:24:00,986 --> 00:24:05,218
Do you remember that hit song from 1315
with that catchy title,

394
00:24:05,257 --> 00:24:07,782
The Evils Of Taxation?

395
00:24:07,826 --> 00:24:10,351
You know, it was written
after the great famine.

396
00:24:10,395 --> 00:24:14,525
And the writer complains that
he's being taxed ten times over

397
00:24:14,566 --> 00:24:15,999
so he has to sell his seed corn

398
00:24:16,034 --> 00:24:18,161
and he's going to end up a beggar.

399
00:24:18,203 --> 00:24:20,034
I can no longer live
with my gleaning

400
00:24:20,072 --> 00:24:23,473
Yet there is more grievous
cuts to the bone

401
00:24:23,509 --> 00:24:26,808
For every four penny
must go to the king

402
00:24:26,845 --> 00:24:29,541
Good years and corn
are both gone

403
00:24:29,581 --> 00:24:33,483
No one cares to listen
to stories or sing songs...

404
00:24:33,519 --> 00:24:35,350
Well, I suppose
when money's tight,

405
00:24:35,387 --> 00:24:38,220
no one's gonna waste it on minstrels.

406
00:24:39,391 --> 00:24:41,951
The power of minstrels to spread dissent

407
00:24:41,994 --> 00:24:44,224
was something
that couldn't be ignored.

408
00:24:44,263 --> 00:24:47,755
In Wales, for example,
during the rebellion of owen Glendower,

409
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:51,531
minstrels were banned
throughout the principality.

410
00:24:51,570 --> 00:24:55,404
But even for the court poets,
life could be precarious,

411
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:58,739
as chaucer may have found out to his cost.

412
00:25:00,045 --> 00:25:02,070
Richard's court seems to have encouraged

413
00:25:02,114 --> 00:25:05,572
a relaxed, easy-going
intellectual atmosphere

414
00:25:05,617 --> 00:25:09,781
in which satire and lampoon
were allowed to flourish.

415
00:25:09,822 --> 00:25:12,814
Chaucer took advantage of this to satirize

416
00:25:12,858 --> 00:25:16,419
the way the Church had become commercialized
in the 14th century.

417
00:25:16,461 --> 00:25:19,362
And it could be quite vicious satire.
Try this for size.

418
00:25:19,932 --> 00:25:24,164
An angel takes a friar down to hell.

419
00:25:24,203 --> 00:25:25,761
(Yelling)

420
00:25:25,804 --> 00:25:27,965
And the friar looks round and says,

421
00:25:28,006 --> 00:25:29,974
''Oh, I can't see
any friars around here,

422
00:25:30,008 --> 00:25:32,033
''does that mean we all go to heaven?''

423
00:25:32,077 --> 00:25:34,136
And the angel says,
''uh-uh, afraid not,

424
00:25:34,179 --> 00:25:36,044
''there are plenty
of friars around here.''

425
00:25:36,081 --> 00:25:40,575
And he takes the friar
to satan and accosts satan.

426
00:25:40,619 --> 00:25:43,588
''Hold up thy tail,
thou satanas,'' said he,

427
00:25:43,622 --> 00:25:46,716
''show forth thine arse
and let the friar see

428
00:25:46,758 --> 00:25:50,353
''Where is the nest
of friars in this place

429
00:25:50,395 --> 00:25:52,727
''And ere that
half a furlong way of space

430
00:25:52,764 --> 00:25:56,131
''Right so as bees
come swarming from a hive

431
00:25:56,168 --> 00:25:58,762
''Out of the devil's arse
began to drive

432
00:25:58,804 --> 00:26:01,398
''20,000 friars on a rout

433
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,102
''Throughout hell
they swarmed all about

434
00:26:04,142 --> 00:26:06,770
''And came again
as fast as they may gone

435
00:26:06,812 --> 00:26:10,077
''And in his arse,
they crept in every John.''

436
00:26:10,115 --> 00:26:11,776
(Buzzing)

437
00:26:11,817 --> 00:26:16,277
Chaucer may have felt safe
writing this outrageous satire of the Church

438
00:26:16,321 --> 00:26:18,983
in Richard II's court in the 1390s.

439
00:26:19,024 --> 00:26:23,120
But, within a few years, that court
was to be violently overthrown

440
00:26:23,161 --> 00:26:24,492
and Richard murdered.

441
00:26:24,529 --> 00:26:27,965
The whole political scene
changed dramatically

442
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,902
and Chaucer was caught
right in the middle of it.

443
00:26:33,538 --> 00:26:36,632
Richard was ousted
by his cousin Henry IV,

444
00:26:36,675 --> 00:26:40,202
who colluded with the exiled
Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel,

445
00:26:40,245 --> 00:26:41,974
to seize the throne.

446
00:26:42,014 --> 00:26:43,948
A religious crackdown ensued,

447
00:26:43,982 --> 00:26:47,440
with Arundel threatening to burn
those who criticized the church.

448
00:26:47,486 --> 00:26:50,785
EsPecially those who did so
in plain English

449
00:26:50,822 --> 00:26:53,723
that any Tom, Dick or Harriet
could understand.

450
00:26:55,294 --> 00:26:58,661
chaucer must have felt
he'd been caught with his pants down.

451
00:26:58,697 --> 00:27:05,000
Suddenly, his carefree vernacular satire
was political anathema.

452
00:27:06,872 --> 00:27:11,605
And this is where we come to
one of the great unnoticed mysteries of history.

453
00:27:11,643 --> 00:27:13,770
Chaucer, the father
of English literature,

454
00:27:13,812 --> 00:27:15,803
disappears without trace

455
00:27:15,847 --> 00:27:17,815
around the time that Archbishop Arundel

456
00:27:17,849 --> 00:27:21,580
is trying to limit the use of English in literature.

457
00:27:21,620 --> 00:27:25,021
Chaucer, of course, was one of
the most famous men in the kingdom

458
00:27:25,057 --> 00:27:27,116
and yet there's no record of his death.

459
00:27:27,159 --> 00:27:31,118
He doesn't leave a will,
we don't even know when he died.

460
00:27:31,163 --> 00:27:34,860
All we have to go on is this
now illegible inscription

461
00:27:34,900 --> 00:27:39,837
on this tomb that was put up over a century
and a half after he disappeared,

462
00:27:39,871 --> 00:27:43,602
and that, as far as we know,
never even contained his body.

463
00:27:44,676 --> 00:27:50,740
Isn't it odd that such an important man
should have disappeared so completely?

464
00:27:50,782 --> 00:27:54,650
Could it be that he was
deliberately disappeared?

465
00:27:56,922 --> 00:27:59,447
of course, he could have
just fallen off a ladder.

466
00:27:59,491 --> 00:28:00,685
We don't know.

467
00:28:00,726 --> 00:28:05,322
But the happy-go-lucky
medieval entertainers of our imaginations

468
00:28:05,364 --> 00:28:09,630
don't seem to have been
so happy-go-lucky after all.

469
00:28:13,605 --> 00:28:17,735
Literature had came a long way
from the days of Taillefer to Chaucer.

470
00:28:17,776 --> 00:28:21,906
But one thing hadn't changed,
whether you were a minstrel of the 11th century

471
00:28:21,947 --> 00:28:25,178
or a soPhisticated court poet of the 14th.

472
00:28:25,217 --> 00:28:28,084
It could be a dangerous business.

473
00:28:36,028 --> 00:28:38,588
Next time on
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives,

474
00:28:38,630 --> 00:28:40,723
the golden age of chivalry...

475
00:28:40,766 --> 00:28:42,358
or was it?

476
00:28:42,401 --> 00:28:47,395
I fearlessly uncover
the raw truth about the medieval knight.