I am trying to wade through a shoal of red herrings here.

Dave:
Since you assert that "I have never made the distinction. As far as I am concerned all music is folk music." then plainly it's no use arguing with you. I concede that Freddie and the Dreamers were indeed paid to perform. BTW you should have finished your sentence with "I never heard no........."

Don:
You are suffering from that malady known as 'inverse ploughboys syndrome' whereby any suggestion that rural folk "clustered together in their cottages, but oftener at the road side, or in some favourite alehouse" - (Edwin Waugh, writing before Cecil Sharp had been born) and sang, for the sheer hell of it, is regarded as some kind of mythical romantic fantasy. If you read the eye-witnesses eg the Coppers, Thomas Hardy, Waugh here and here, you will find that country people did actually do that. And, in pre-Industrial Revolution UK, the vast majority of people were country people.

You look at folk music through 21st century eyes. If you were a villager living in 1723 where would you go to listen to/sing folk songs each night - a 'concert' in town (no railways, remember) or your local alehouse? And how much would it cost you? And on how many days of the year would you likely see a minstrel?

Grab:
"Servant=paid." Yes, and servant=employee. Not my idea of a folkie.

YES there were minstrels (the buskers of today), but I repeat - they were peripheral at best (as, indeed, are buskers).