the fortunes of the poet. On the 8th of June, 1374, only a few months
after his return, Edward conferred upon him the lucrative and
distinguished office of comptroller of the customs for wool, &c. But the
king had not waited until that time to show what he thought of Chaucer's
conduct; he had already conferred upon him a marked testimony of his
approbation; and at a time and under circumstances that make the blood
stir, and the imagination busy itself in a thousand vain attempts to
picture what might have been from the knowledge of what was. On St.
George's day, the 23rd of April, 1374, when the king would be sitting in
high and solemn festival, surrounded by all the chief nobility of the
land, and when Chaucer, as one of his own squires, would, as a matter of
duty and office, be in attendance on him, Edward conferred upon the poet
the grant of a pitcher of wine to be supplied to him daily for life. In
the very same year, and after the appointment to the customs, John of
Gaunt, as if desiring to show how deeply he sympathised in the poet's
prosperity, still further swelled his income by a grant of ten pounds
for life. The following year, 1375, brought also its own good gifts, in
the shape of two wardships, granted by Edward; from one of which Chaucer
received 104_l._, equivalent, according to Godwin's estimate of the
comparative value of money then and now, to about some eighteen hundred
pounds of the nineteenth century.
And now for some years the poet's life appears to have rolled on
smoothly, usefully, happily. And although it was a condition expressly
made by Edward, that the poet should keep the accounts of the
comptrollership with his own hand, and not put off his duties upon a
deputy (a wise provision, and fitly made by a king who knew so well how
to pay for real services), it is supposed that it was during these busy
years that Chaucer produced some of his best miscellaneous poems. The
'Romaunt of the Rose,' a translation from the French work that enjoyed
so long a period of popularity, had probably been written long before,
in the days when the poet imitated previous writers rather than drew
from himself; the dates of the 'Cuckoo and the Nightingale' and some
others are unknown; but the 'House of Fame,' a noble poem, and worthy of
its suggestive title, bears internal evidence that it was written while
its author held the office of comptroller: and some very agreeable
information it gives to us of the poet's habits. Jupiter, who addresses
the poet personally, tells him he is aware he attends nothing now to
tidings of love, nor of nothing else--not even
"of thy very neighebours
That dwellen almost at thy doors,
Thou hearest neither that nor this
_For when thy labour all done is,
And hast made all thy reckonings_,
Instead of rest, and of new things,
Thou goest home to thine house anon,
And all so dumbe as a stone
Thou sittest at another book,
Till fully dazed is thy look,
And livest thus as a hermite,
Although thine abstinence is lite,"[32] &c.
In the love of good living, here acknowledged, we may see the origin of
that goodly bulk upon which Harry Bailley, in the 'Canterbury Tales,'
banters the poet. "Now," he calls out to the pilgrims,
"'Ware yon, sirs, and let this man have place;
He in the waist is shapen as well as I:
This were a poppet in an arme to embrace
For any woman."
Through the same medium the poet describes himself as accustomed to look
on the ground, to be "elvish" of countenance, silent, and reserved. We
need only add to these traits another, also on the best of
authorities--his own--namely, the love of walking, and enjoyment of all
the sights and sounds of natural phenomena. In his 'Legend of Good
Women' he writes--
"And as for me, though that I can but lite,[33]
On bookes for to read, I me delight,
And to them give I faith and full credence
And in mine heart have them in reverence,
So heartily, that there is game none
That from my bookes maketh me to gone;
But it be seldom on the holyday,
Save certainly when that the month of May
Is comen, and that I hear the fowles[34] sing,
And that the flowres 'ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my book and my devotion."
In 1386 the people emphatically marked their approbation of him whom
kings had delighted to honour, by electing Chaucer to parliament as a
knight of the shire for Kent. But, in all probability, that honour
destroyed the poet's peace. Misfortunes began from this time to fall
thickly upon him. Within two months after the meeting of parliament he
was deprived of the comptrollership, as well as the comptrollership of
the petty customs, that had been conferred by Richard II. four years
before; and we are utterly in the dark as to the cause. Tyrwhitt,
Godwin, and others have built up an elaborate hypothesis, as to his
connexion with the civic commotion in London in 1384, when John of
Northampton stood for the office of mayor in opposition to the court
candidate; and which ended, they say, as concerned the poet, in his
expatriation to Zealand, in his enduring great sufferings there, in his
return to England in 1386, and in his committal to the Tower, until
1389. All these presumptions, founded on various passages of the
'Testament of Love,' the right key to which has evidently not yet been
found, have been utterly set at rest by Sir Harris Nicholas's discovery
of records showing that from 1380 to 1388 Chaucer received his pension
regularly as it became due, in London, _with his own hands_. And,
indeed, we have only to weigh for a moment the character and doings of
the parliament to which he was elected, to satisfy us that there need be
no surprise excited at the treatment experienced by Chaucer.
Legislation, in the dictionary of the leading politicians of the day,
meant intrigues for the possession of power. The parliament was divided
into two parties; one supporting the king, and the king's favourites, De
la Pole and De Vere, and the other determined to drive those favourites
from power. The opposition was headed by the Duke of Gloucester, a
brother of John of Gaunt, and it succeeded; De la Pole was dismissed,
impeached, and imprisoned; and, finally, the successful party demanded
and obtained from Richard a council for the government of the nation.
There would be little relish then for the advice, little sympathy with
the conduct of a man who in his writings was accustomed, whilst bidding
the people to obey the king and the law, also to say to their
governors--
"Knight, let thy _deedes worship determine_,"
and
"Go forth, king, and rule thee by sapience;"
and who was in religion a Wickliffite.
In struggles between ambitious nobles and a king who desired to be
despotic, a man of independent character might easily give deep offence
to those against whom he acted, and without particularly pleasing those
who might look upon him generally as their supporter; and that Chaucer
appears to have done. He was made the victim of the one, and received no
compensating benefits from the other. So, in 1388, he was compelled to
sell two of his pensions, which were accordingly assigned to John
Scalby. His wife's pension had ceased with the life of her to whom it
had been granted. The last payment to Philippa Chaucer took place in
June, 1387. She died therefore within a twelvemonth after the events
that plunged them both in adversity.
In 1389, Richard, then in his twenty-second year, suddenly dismissed
Gloucester, and confided the administration to another uncle, the Duke
of York, and to a cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of
Gaunt, who during all these changes was on the Continent endeavouring to
establish for himself a Spanish sovereignty. Within two months after
that change, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the Works at the king's
chief palaces, at a salary of two shillings a day, and in the course of
his duties he had to superintend the onerous but honourable and
gratifying task of repairing St. George's Chapel, Windsor. But again he
was dismissed, after about two years' service; unless, indeed, which is
possible rather than probable, that he, in order to carry out his
literary views, had himself determined to retire finally from all public
employment. He was now sixty-three years old; the "Comedy" over which he
had so long pondered, and which was to contain the accumulated wealth of
his genius, wisdom, and experience, was still unwritten, except in
parts, and he had evidently long desired to abstract himself from mere
worldly avocation. Thus in 1384 he had obtained from Richard a
relaxation of Edward's stringent regulation, that he should not nominate
a deputy, and in the very year that he ceased to hold his architectural
appointments he had caused John Elmhurst to officiate for him. At all
events, the years 1393, 1394, 1395, are supposed to have been those of
the production of the 'Canterbury Tales' (which are known to have been
produced after Jack Straw's insurrection, as that occurrence is
mentioned in them), and we see no reason to disturb the supposition.
Woodstock, a royal seat, was, according to tradition, the scene of the
poet's labours on this his greatest work, as well as of others of an
earlier date. In the scientific treatise addressed by Chaucer to one of
his two sons, Lewis, who appears to have died young, there does appear
something like evidence that Chaucer was living in the neighbourhood of
Oxford when he composed that piece, which contains the date of 1391.
Chaucer there speaks of the astrolabe he has "compounded after the
latitude of Oxford." But there is really so little tangible knowledge
concerning the poet's residence either at Woodstock or at Donnington
Castle, that it is best to rest content with the fact that tradition
does say Chaucer resided at both, and that at Donnington he planted the
three oaks known respectively as Chaucer's oak, the king's oak, and the
queen's. But then tradition must not be too exacting--must not also ask
us to believe that the poet wrote several of his poems beneath the shade
of one of the trees he had planted. It must have been a most precocious
tree else.
In deep gloom, much we fear, the poet spent the latter hours of his day
of life, though not without a sudden lighting up of the horizon ere the
close, as if to surround his passage into the grave with something of
the glory that should attend the sunset of such a life. Sir Harris
Nicholas has collected together in his work (to which we must refer for
the particulars) facts of the deepest interest, as showing that he was
in poverty, sheer unmistakeable poverty, from 1394 to 1398. And yet John
of Gaunt had not only returned to England, but had married the sister of
the poet's wife, through which marriage therefore Chaucer became
connected with the royal family of England. Was the poet too proud to
make known the real state of his affairs? In 1398 Richard, with whom
sympathy and admiration for Chaucer seem to have been the mere
occasionally recurring whim of the moment, did again so far remember the
poet as to confer on him another grant of wine, more valuable than the
first, to be delivered by the poet's own son, Thomas, who had then risen
to the rank of chief butler. In 1399 Richard was deposed, and
Bolingbroke became king of England; and within _four_ days the pension
of twenty marks that Richard had granted to Chaucer in 1394 (six years
after the sale of the two pensions formerly possessed by him) was
_doubled_, leaving him, on the whole, the recipient of an income from
the crown amply sufficient for all his wants. He now took a lease of a
house situated in a garden adjoining Westminster Abbey, and there
probably he died, on the 25th of October, 1400. He was buried in
Westminster Abbey, and it is only fitting that Poets' Corner, like
English poetry itself, should date its foundation from Geoffrey Chaucer.
As a poet, he needs no epitaph, but whenever we do--what has been often
talked of--rebuild his monument in the Abbey, we need desire no nobler
testimony of his character as a man to be inscribed on it, than the
ballad with which we conclude, and which was written by him, as the
affecting title states, when he lay upon his death-bed in "great
anguish:"--
"Fly from the press,[35] and dwell with soothfastness,[36]
Suffice unto thy good, though it be small,
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness;
Praise hath envy, and weal is blent over all;
Savour[37] no more than thee behove shall;
Rede[38] well thyself that other folk canst rede
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.
Paine thee not each crooked to redress,
In trust of her that turneth as a ball,
Great rest standeth in little business;
Beware also to spurn against a nall,[39]
Strive not as doth a crocke with a wall;
Doome thyself that doomest others dede,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.
That[40] thee is sent, receive in buxomness,[41]
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness;
Forthe pilgrim, forthe beast out of thy stall,
Look up on high, and thanke God of all,
Waive thy lusts, and let thy ghost[42] thee lead,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede."
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
There is an old tradition, perhaps not worthy of much credit, that upon
the wall of a tower in Windsor Castle, known as the Winchester Tower,
was inscribed "This made Wykeham." The great churchman raised this tower
as the architect of Windsor Castle, working under the commands of his
patron Edward III. It is further said, that the king being offended at
this inscription, its more obvious meaning was dexterously explained
away, seeing that it should be interpreted to record that the building
of the castle was "the making" of the architect. There are other proud
edifices still remaining upon which might be inserted "This made
Wykeham" in the most complete sense. No man ever left more permanent
traces of his course and character. The founder of Winchester College,
and of New College, Oxford,--the builder of the noblest part of
Winchester Cathedral,--had a title to be called their "maker," with no
king or subject to dispute his pretensions. He was one of the very few
men who, having raised themselves by their abilities and integrity to
riches and honour, worked not sordidly for themselves to heap up
treasure, but nobly employed their wealth in works of the highest public
utility. The life of such a man is for example. William De Wykeham, or
Of Wykeham, was born at Wykeham or Wickham, in Hampshire, in the year
1324, and, as his biographer Bishop Lowth has shown, some time between
the 7th of July and the 27th of September. There is reason to believe
that he did not take his name from his native village, the same name
being borne by several of his relations living in his own day, who do
not appear to have been born there. All that is certainly known about
his father and mother is that their Christian names were John and Sybil:
if his father bore the name of Wykeham, he appears to have also passed
by that of Long or Longe, and to have had an elder brother who was
called Henry Aas.
Lowth thus sensibly remarks upon this obscurity of the name of so
distinguished a man:--"If we consider the uncertain state of
family-names at the time of the birth of Wykeham, we shall not think it
strange that there should be such doubt with regard to the surname of
his family; or even if it should appear that he had properly no
family-name at all. Surnames were introduced into England by the Normans
at the Conquest: 'But certain it is,' says Camden, 'that as the better
sort, even from the Conquest, by little and little, took surnames; so
they were not settled among the common people fully until about the time
of Edward the Second.'"
The parents of Wykeham are held to have been poor, but of creditable
descent and reputable character. When their son became a dignitary of
the church, he employed a seal with heraldic bearings and a quaint
motto; but it is believed that these honours were not hereditary. Lowth
holds that his relations were of the common people, and adds, "I am even
inclined to think that he himself disclaimed all farther pretensions.
The celebrated motto which he added to his arms (of which probably he
might have received a grant when he began to rise in the world) I
imagine was intended by him to intimate something of this kind: _Manners
makyth Man_: the true meaning of which, as he designed it, I presume to
be, though it has commonly been understood otherwise, that a man's real
worth is to be estimated not from the outward and accidental advantages
of birth, rank, and fortune, but from the endowments of his mind and his
moral qualifications. In this sense it bears a proper relation to his
arms, and contains a just apology for those ensigns of his newly
acquired dignity. Conscious to himself that his claim to honour is
unexceptionable, as founded upon truth and reason, he in a manner makes
his appeal to the world; alleging that neither high birth, to which he
makes no pretensions, nor high station, upon which he does not value
himself, but
"'Virtue alone is true nobility.'"
He was put to school at Winchester, not by his father, who had not the
means, but by some wealthy patron, who is traditionally said to have
been Nicholas Uvedale, lord of the manor of Wykeham and governor of
Winchester Castle. The tradition further asserts that, after leaving
school, he became secretary to Uvedale; and that he was secretary to the
constable of Winchester Castle is stated in a written account compiled
in his own time. Afterwards he is said to have been recommended by
Uvedale to Edyngton, bishop of Winchester, and then by those two friends
to have been made known to King Edward III. There seems to be no reason
for supposing that he ever studied at Oxford, as has been affirmed by
some of the later writers of his life. It is evident, indeed, that he
had not had a university education, and that he never pretended to any
skill in the favourite scholastic learning of his age. His strength lay
in his natural genius, in his knowledge of mankind and talent for
business; and probably the only art or science he had much cultivated
was architecture.
He is said in an ancient contemporary account to have been brought to
court when he was no more than three or four and twenty, which would be
about the year 1348; but the earliest office which there is the evidence
of records for his having held, is that of clerk of all the king's works
in his manors of Henle and Yesthampsted, his patent for which is dated
10th of May, 1356. On the 30th of October in the same year he was made
surveyor of the king's works at the castle and in the park of Windsor.
It is affirmed by a contemporary writer to have been at his instigation
that King Edward pulled down and rebuilt great part of Windsor Castle.
Wykeham had the sole superintendence of the work. Queenborough Castle,
in the Isle of Sheppy, was also built under his direction.
The king now began to reward him bountifully. He had probably taken
deacon's orders at an early age; Lowth finds him designated 'clericus,'
or clerk, in 1352. It was not, however, till the 5th of December, 1361,
that he was admitted to the order of acolyte: he was ordained sub-deacon
on the 12th of March, 1362, and priest on the 12th of June following.
Meanwhile his first ecclesiastical preferment, the rectory of Pulham in
Norfolk, had been conferred upon him by the king's presentation on the
30th of November, 1357. On the 1st of March, 1359, he was presented by
the king to the prebend of Flixton, in the church of Lichfield. On the
16th of April following he had a grant of 200_l._ a year from the crown,
over and above all his former appointments, till he should get quiet
possession of the church of Pulham, his induction into which living had
been opposed by the court of Rome. On the 10th of July in the same year,
he was appointed chief warden and surveyor of the king's castles of
Windsor, Leeds, Dovor, and Hadham, and of the manors of Old and New
Windsor, Wichemer, and sundry other castles and manors, with the parks
belonging to them. On the 5th of May, 1360, he received the king's grant
of the deanery of the royal free chapel or collegiate church of St.
Martin-le-Grand, London. In October, 1360, he attended upon the king at
Calais, probably in quality of public notary, when the treaty of
Bretigny was solemnly confirmed by the oaths of Edward and King John of
France. Numerous additional preferments in the church were heaped upon
him in the course of the next three years. By June, 1363, moreover he
had been appointed to the office of warden and justiciary of the king's
forests on this side Trent. On the 14th of March, 1364, he had by royal
grant an assignment of twenty shillings a-day out of the exchequer. On
the 11th of May, 1364, he was made keeper of the privy seal, and soon
after he is styled secretary to the king, or what we should now call
principal secretary of state. In May, 1365, he was commissioned by the
king, with the chancellor, the treasurer, and the Earl of Arundel, to
treat of the ransom of the King of Scotland (David II., taken at the
battle of Nevil's Cross in 1346), and the prolonging of the truce with
the Scots. And not long after this he is designated, in a paper printed
in the 'Faedera,' chief of the privy council and governor of the great
council, which phrases, however, Lowth supposes do not express titles of
office, but only the great influence and authority which he had in those
assemblies. "There are several other preferments, both ecclesiastical
and civil," adds Lowth, "which he is said to have held; but I do not
mention them, because the authorities produced for them are such as I
cannot entirely depend upon. And, as to his ecclesiastical benefices
already mentioned, the practice of exchanging them was then so common,
that 'tis hard to determine precisely which of them he held altogether
at any one time." There is extant, however, an account given in by
himself on occasion of the bull of Pope Urban V. against pluralities, of
the entire number and value of his church benefices, as the matter stood
in the year 1366; and from this statement, in which Wykeham calls
himself "Sir William of Wykeham, clerk, archdeacon of Lincoln, and
secretary of our lord the illustrious King of England, and keeper of his
privy seal, it appears that the total produce of those which he had held
when the account was demanded, was 873_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._, and of those of
which he remained in possession when it was given in, 842_l._"
Froissart, speaking of the English court at this period, says, "At this
time reigned a priest called William of Wykeham. This William of Wykeham
was so much in favour with the King of England, that everything was done
by him, and nothing was done without him."
Upon the death of William de Edyngton, on the 8th of October, 1366,
Wykeham was immediately, upon the king's earnest recommendation, elected
by the prior and convent of Winchester to succeed him as bishop of that
see. He was not consecrated till the 10th of October in the year
following; but this delay, till an adjustment was effected of the
conflicting pretensions of the royal authority and the court of Rome,
was evidently occasioned, as Lowth has shown, only by a contention
between the king and the pope as to which of them should have the
largest share in Wykeham's promotion. Meanwhile he had been appointed by
the king lord high chancellor of England; he was confirmed in that
office on the 17th of September, 1367.
He continued chancellor till the 14th of March, 1371, when he delivered
back to the king both the great and the privy seals, on the change of
ministry made in compliance with a petition presented shortly before by
the Lords and Commons, complaining of the mischiefs which had resulted
from the government of the kingdom having for a long time been in the
hands of men of the church, and praying that secular men only might be
appointed to the principal offices both in the king's courts and
household. There is no appearance, however, of this complaint being
specially directed against any part of the conduct of the Bishop of
Winchester, who assisted at the ceremony of constituting his successor
in the chancellorship, and seems to have for years after this continued
to retain both the favour of the king and the goodwill of the
parliament, and even to have remained in habits of intimate and
confidential connexion with the Duke of Lancaster, to whose influence
the removal of the clergy from the offices of state is said to have been
owing.