The minstrels and trumpeters of Edward IV: some further thoughts

Extract

In her article on Edward IV's household minstrels Helen Marsh Jeffries asked many pertinent questions and went much of the way towards answering them. There is more information available than she suggested, however, so that some of her speculations were unnecessary and others less well informed than they might have been. The royal minstrels, far from being ignored by scholars, have been discussed as thoroughly as the evidence allows by the historian Rosalind Conklin (now Conklin Hays) and myself. I should therefore like here to take up some of the ideas contained in her article, to add to her commentary and to place some of her comments in context. This process will not always result in a clearer picture, but it will perhaps paint a fuller and more helpful one in some respects.