the 15th century. The Edinburgh Waits ("tounis minstrels") were employed to play in the morning and evening, and also to give a special concert at noon. When Oliver Cromwell visited the mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne the town waits played before the mayor's house. Joseph Turnbull (d. 1775) was a player of the Northumbrian smallpipes; a portrait of him survives, in the collection at Alnwick Castle (in this portrait, he is wearing a blue coat, which is known to have been the uniform of the Alnwick Town Waits). In Elizabethan times the Court Leet of the manor of Manchester appointed town waits to undertake certain duties, one of which was of "playing morning and evening together, according as others have been heretofore accustomed to do". In 1603 they welcomed into their company a more skilful musician and it was then ordered that "the said waits shall hereafter be received to play music at all and every wedding and dinners in this town". As a result of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, waits were abolished, though their name lingered on as Christmas waits, who could be any group of singers or musicians who formed a band in order to sing and play carols for money around their town or village at night over the Christmas period. It is these largely amateur musicians who have today become associated with the name 'waits', rather than the historical civic officers and accomplished musicians who represented the original waits. See also List of Christmas carols Notes External links Scholarly research The Waits Website (designed to accumulate and disseminate historical information on Waits, and to advertise the growing number of revival bands, as well as their equivalents throughout Europe). Professor Richard Rastall Professor of Historical Musicology, University of Leeds. Includes downloadable copy of his thesis "Minstrels and minstrelsy in medieval Britain". City of Lincoln Waites : A history of the Waites of Lincoln. Extant bands Baggshotte Waytes Canterbury Waits City of Lincoln Waites The City Musick (London) City Waites Colchester Waits Doncaster Waites Dresdner Stadtpfeifer Waits in Dresden, Germany Faversham Waytes Gloucester Waites Leicester City Waites (The Longslade Consort) Ludlow Waites Joch de Ministrils del Consell de Mallorca King's Lynn Waites Leeds Waits Norwich Waits Oxford Waits Stadspijpers van 's-Hertogenbosch Re-creation of a Dutch Renaissance Town Band Winchester Waytes York Waits Renaissance music Christmas in the United Kingdom Christmas music British traditions