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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES
BY GRACE E. HADOW
LONDON
WILLIAMS & NORGATE
HENRY HOLT & Co., NEW YORK
CANADA: WM. BRIGGS, TORONTO
INDIA: R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.
1914
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
_Editors_:
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A, LL.D.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT., LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
(Columbia University, U.S.A.)
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES
BY GRACE E. HADOW
LECTURER IN ENGLISH, LADY MARGARET
HALL, OXFORD; LATE READER IN ENGLISH,
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, U.S.A.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
_The following volumes of kindred interest have already been published in
this Library_:
43. English Literature: Mediæval. By Prof. W. P. Ker.
13. Mediæval Europe. By H. W. C. Davis, M.A.
45. The English Language. By L. Pearsall Smith, M.A.
35. Landmarks in French Literature. By G. L. Strachey.
_First Printed April 1914_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
NOTES ON CHAUCER'S USE OF 'E' vi
I CHAUCER'S LIFE AND TIMES 7
II CHAUCER'S WORKS 32
III CHAUCER'S TREATMENT OF HIS SOURCES 69
IV CHAUCER'S CHARACTER-DRAWING 106
V CHAUCER'S HUMOUR 143
VI CHAUCER'S DESCRIPTIVE POWER 173
VII SOME VIEWS OF CHAUCER'S ON MEN AND THINGS 196
VIII CHAUCER'S INFLUENCE 229
BIBLIOGRAPHY 254
INDEX 255
NOTES ON CHAUCER'S USE OF 'E'
1. Final _e_ is usually sounded in Chaucerian verse, but
(_a_) it is slurred over before a word beginning with a vowel, e.g. I
noldë sette [slur] at al that noyse [slur] a grote; before certain
words beginning with _h_, such as _he_; any part of the verb to
_have_; the adverbs _heer_, _how_, and a mute _h_ as in _honour_--e.g.
Tho redde [slur] he me how Sampson loste [slur] his heres:
(_b_) it is sometimes dropped in certain words in common use such as
_were_, _hadde_, _wolde_, etc.--e.g. Wolde [slur] go to bedde,
[slur] he wolde [slur] no lenger tarie.
2. Middle _e_ is sometimes dropped: e.g. hav(e)nes.
3. Final _e_ should always be sounded at the end of a line.
These notes are based on the grammatical hints given in Professor Skeat's
Introduction to his single-volume edition of Chaucer's complete works
(Clarendon Press, 1901), from which the illustrations in this book are
also drawn. To his researches and to those of Professors Lounsbury and Ten
Brink, and of the members of the Chaucer Society, all students of Chaucer
must gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness. In quoting from Chaucer I
have kept to Professor Skeat's spelling. All attempts to modernise
Chaucerian verse inevitably result in destroying something of the charm
and melody of the original. Readers whose eyes are not accustomed to the
forms of Middle English will find practically all difficulty disappear if
they read the passages aloud with modern pronunciation. With other Middle
English and Scottish poets I have reluctantly taken greater liberties,
since their language is often more remote from the speech of to-day. An
example of the original Scottish forms will be found on p. 240.
G. E. H.
CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES
CHAPTER I
CHAUCER'S LIFE AND TIMES
"The biography of Chaucer is built upon doubts and thrives upon
perplexities" according to one of the most famous of Chaucer scholars, and
the more carefully we consider the evidence upon which this statement is
based, the more fully do we find it endorsed. The name Chaucer itself has
been variously derived from the Latin _calcearius_, a shoemaker, the
French _chaussier_, a maker of long hose, and the French _chaufecire_,
chafe-wax (_i. e._ a clerk of the court of Chancery whose duty consisted
in affixing seals to royal documents). The one point of agreement seems to
be that the family was undoubtedly of French origin, though whether the
founder of the English branch came over with the Conqueror or in Henry
III's reign, cannot be decided. Most scholars are now agreed that Geoffrey
Chaucer was born about 1340, and that his father was John Chaucer, a
vintner of Thames Street, London, though at one time his birth was dated
as early as 1328, and Mr. Snell, in his _Age of Chaucer_, endeavours
further to darken counsel--already sufficiently obscure--by suggesting
that there may have been two contemporary Geoffreys, and that the facts
which are usually accepted as throwing light on the history of the poet
may really apply to his unknown namesake. This theory, however, has at
present no evidence to support it, and it is reasonable to assume that
Chaucer was a native of London. Possibly it was his early association with
the wine-trade that gave him such insight into its mysteries, and called
forth the Pardoner's warning:--
Now kepe yow fro the whyte and fro the rede,
And namely fro the whyte wyn of Lepe,
That is to selle in Fish-strete or in Chepe.
This wyn of Spayne crepeth subtilly
In othere wynes, growing faste by,
Of which there ryseth swich fumositee
That when a man hath dronken draughtes three
And weneth that he be at hoom in Chepe,
He is in Spayne, right at the toune of Lepe.
(_Pardoners Tale_, l. 562, etc.)
And it is noteworthy that more than once Chaucer goes out of his way to
inveigh against drunkenness:--
A lecherous thing is wyn, and dronkenesse
Is ful of stryving and of wrecchednesse
* * * * *
For dronkenesse is verray sepulture
Of mannes wit and his discrecioun.
(_Pardoners Tale_, l. 549-559.)
Of his early years we know nothing. Probably he lived the life of other
boys of that time: Lydgate's portrait of the mediæval school-boy may well
stand for a type:--
I had in custom to come to school late
Not for to learn but for a countenance,
With my fellows ready to debate,
To jangle and jape was set all my pleasaunce.
Whereof rebuked was my Chevisaunce[1]
To forge a lesyng and thereupon to muse
When I trespassed myselfe to excuse.
* * * * *
Loth to rise, lother to bed at eve;
With unwashed handes ready aye to dinner;
My Paternoster, my Creed, or my Believe
Cast at the Cook; lo! this was my manner;
Waved with each wind, as doth a reede-spear;
Snibbed[2] of my friends such taches[3] for to amend
Made deaf eare list nat to them attend.
(_Testament._)
Leland, with that sublime disregard for anything so prosaic as evidence
which characterises sixteenth-century biographers, declares that "Geoffrey
Chaucer, a youth of noble birth and highest promise, studied at Oxford
University with all the earnestness of those who have applied themselves
most diligently to learning.... He left the University an acute logician,
a delightful orator, an elegant poet, a profound philosopher, and an able
mathematician"; and to this list of accomplishments he afterwards adds,
"and a devout theologian." Fifty years later, Speght--to whom lovers of
Chaucer are deeply indebted in other respects--equally authoritatively
asserts that he was at Cambridge, but as he bases this assertion on a
remark--
Philogenet I called am far and near
Of Cambridge clerk--
made by one of the characters in the _Court of Love_, a poem which
scholars are now universally of opinion is not Chaucer's work, it has
little weight. As a matter of fact Chaucer's name does not appear in the
records of any college at either university, and, as Professor Lounsbury
has conclusively shown, wide as are the poet's interests, and great as
his knowledge undoubtedly is, the scholarship shown by his works is not so
remarkable as necessarily to imply close and protracted study. Classical
legends were frequently embodied in the romances of an age in which, if we
may believe Jean Bodel, himself a poet,
Ne sont que trois matières à nul homme entendant,
De France, et de Bretagne, et de Rome la grant,[4]
and the habit of treating Alexander the Great as if he were
brother-in-arms to Roland and Oliver naturally opened the door to all
sorts of embellishments and modifications. A veil of romance covers and
colours the history of Greece and Rome. To Chaucer, Cleopatra is akin to
the Lady of the Hideous Pass, or Morgan le Fay. The account of her death
given in the _Legend of Good Women_ (l. 671, etc.) is purely mediæval:--
(She) made her subtil workmen make a shryne
Of alle the rubies and the stones fyne
In all Egipte that she coude espye;
And putte ful the shryne of spycerye,
And leet the cors embaume;[5] and forth she fette
This dede cors, and in the shryne hit shette.[6]
And next the shryne a pit than doth she grave;
And alle the serpents that she mighte have
She putte hem in that grave....
* * * * *
And with that word, naked, with ful good herte,
Among the serpents in the pit she sterte.[7]
Nor is this devout theologian always accurate in his references to Bible
history. His allusions to Old Testament stories are full of mistakes, as,
for instance, when he speaks (in _Book of Duchesse_, l. 738) of Samson
slaying himself with a pillar for love of Delila. It was not an age of
nice scholarship, or care for detail. Men used stories as they found them,
and repeated them as they happened to remember them, and no one was
hyper-critical enough to refer to the original. More than half a century
after Chaucer's death Caxton translates the _Æneid_, not from the Latin of
Virgil, but from "a little book in French," and Gawain Douglas, the most
scholarly of all the Scottish poets of the early sixteenth century,
regards it as a moral allegory of the soul's progress, cast in the form
of an epic. But while Chaucer's occasional mistranslations of Latin words
and misrenderings of classical legends cannot be said to disprove his
residence at one of the universities, they certainly cannot be said to
support Leland's statement, and the probability is that he early became
attached to the court. The reign of Edward III witnessed a marked increase
in the prosperity of the merchant class. The members of the great trade
guilds were men of wealth and importance and there is nothing surprising
in finding a vintner's son one of the household of Elizabeth, wife of the
king's son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. In fact the seals of John Chaucer
and Agnes his wife show that both bore arms. In 1357 we find, from the
royal accounts, that Geoffrey Chaucer was provided with a paltok (cloak)
costing four shillings, and a pair of red and black breeches and a pair of
shoes, valued at three shillings, and in December of the same year he
received a grant of 2_s._ 6_d._ "for necessaries against the feast of the
Nativity" (Chaucer Soc., _Life Records of Chaucer_, p. xiv). The
_Canterbury Tales_ give abundant proof that their author had a keen eye
for the niceties of dress, and at seventeen he had doubtless a proper
appreciation of new shoes and red and black breeches.
Two years later (1359) he served in the French wars and was taken prisoner
at "Retters," a place which has been variously identified as Retiers, near
Rennes, and Rethel, near Reims. He was liberated in March 1360, Edward III
paying £16 (over £200 of our money) towards his ransom, which looks as if
he were considered a person of some importance. Apparently he returned to
court life in England, and to the duties of _valettus camerae regis_. A
valet of the King's Chamber had to "make beddis, to beare or hold torches,
to sett boardis, to apparell all chambres, and such othir seruices as the
Chamberlain, or Vshers of the Chambre, comaunde or assigne, to attend the
Chambre, to watch the King by course, to go in messages, etc." (_Life
Records_, Pt. II, p. xi), and holders of the office must have had ample
opportunity of acquiring the wisdom of Placebo:--
I have now been a court-man al my lyf.
And god it woot,[8] though I unworthy be,
I have stonden in ful greet degree
Abouten lordes of ful heigh estaat;
Yet hadde I never with noon of hem debaat.
I never hem contraried,[9] trewely;
I woot wel that my lord can[10] more than I.
What that he seith, I holde it ferme and stable;
I say the same, or elles thing semblable.[11]
A ful gret fool is any conseillour,
That serveth any lord of heigh honour,
That dar presume, or elles thenken it,
That his conseil sholde passe his lordes wit.
Nay, lordes been no foles,[12] by my fay.
(_Marchantes Tale_, l. 1492, etc.)
In 1366 a pension was granted to Philippa Chaucer, one of the damsels of
the Queen's Chamber, and it is usually thought that this indicates
Chaucer's marriage about this time, since in 1381 the money was paid "to
Geoffrey Chaucer, her husband." Philippa seems to have been the
sister--the Chaucer Society suggests, the sister-in-law--of Katherine
Swynford, who became John of Gaunt's third wife, and this connection
possibly helps to explain the consistent kindness shown to Chaucer by the
House of Lancaster. Various attempts have been made to show that the
marriage was an unhappy one. Some of these will be noticed later in
treating of Chaucer's women, here it may suffice to say that although it
is true that he paints a sufficiently gloomy picture of married life in
the _Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton_, that neither the host nor the merchant
are happy in their choice, and that the _Lenvoy_ which concludes the
_Clerkes Tale_ warns husbands that if they expect to find their wives
patient Griseldas they will certainly be disappointed, we have to remember
that the shrewish wife was as stock a comic convention of those days as
the shrewish mother-in-law of later times, and when it comes to taking
away the character of Philippa Chaucer on the ground that her husband
complains in the _Hous of Fame_ that he is unaccustomed to be awakened
gently, it is impossible not to feel that she is receiving unnecessarily
harsh treatment. Equally slight is the evidence for his suffering from an
unhappy love affair. In the _Parlement of Foules_ (ll. 89, 90) he speaks
of himself as
Fulfild of thought and besy hevinesse;
For bothe I hadde thing which that I nolde,[13]
And eek I ne hadde that thing that I wolde,
and commentators have leaped to the conclusion that he is here referring
to his wife and a lady of high rank for whom he sighed in vain. In the
same way when, in the _Book of the Duchesse_, he speaks of having suffered
for eight years from a sickness which one physician alone can cure, this
is taken as an unmistakable reference to the same unrequited passion. But
we have nothing to show that in these passages Chaucer is revealing his
actual feelings. To be crossed in love is proper to every poet, and if his
wife might have been justly annoyed when in 1382--at least sixteen years
after his marriage--he wrote
... I knowe not love in dede
Ne wot how that he quyteth folk hir hyre,[14]
(_Parlement of Foules_, ll. 8, 9.)
"Rosemounde"--if she had any real existence--can hardly have felt
complimented by the affection of a poet who told her--and the world at
large--
Nas never pyk walwed in galauntyne
As I in love am walwed and y-wounde.[15]
There is no proof one way or the other.
We know nothing of his children, except that in 1391 he wrote a treatise
on the astrolabe for his little son Lewis, then ten years of age.
Gascoigne, a generation after Chaucer's death, speaks of Thomas Chaucer, a
well-known man of wealth and position in the early fifteenth century,
more than once Speaker of the House of Commons, as Geoffrey's son, but no
mention is made of him by Chaucer himself or by any of his contemporaries
or immediate successors. John of Gaunt paid a considerable sum of money to
place a certain Elizabeth Chaucer in the nunnery of Barking in 1381, but
she is usually considered to have been the poet's sister.
In 1367 Chaucer himself was granted a pension of twenty marks a year for
life, in recognition of his services, and in 1368 (or, according to Mr. G.
C. Coulton, 1372) he was promoted to be an Esquire of the royal household.
The duties of an esquire seem better suited to a poet than those of a
valet: "These Esquires of houshold of old be accustumed winter & summer in
afternoons & in eunings to drawe to Lordes Chambres within Court, there to
keep honest company after there Cunninge, in talking of Cronicles of
Kinges & of others pollicies, & in pipeing or harpinge, songinges or other
actes marcealls, to helpe to occupie the Court, & accompanie estraingers
till the time require of departing."
In 1369 a Geoffrey Chaucer was again with the army in France, but no
particular adventures seem to have befallen him.
At this time John of Gaunt's influence was paramount at the English court,
which may partly account for Chaucer's steady and rapid promotion. In 1370
he was sent abroad on an important mission--the exact nature of which we
do not know--and two years later he went to Genoa to arrange which English
port should become the headquarters of the Genoese trade. From Genoa he
went to Florence, and by November 1373 he was back in England again.
When Chaucer went to Italy, Dante had already been dead for over fifty
years, but Petrarch and Boccaccio, the other members of that great trilogy
of the earlier Renaissance, were both alive. Chaucer makes his clerk
declare that he learned the tale of Griselda
... at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
* * * * *
Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete,
Highte this clerk, whos rethoryke sweete
Enlumined al Itaille of poetrye,[16]
(_Clerkes Prologue_, ll. 31-33.)
but it is impossible to say whether this is autobiographical or not. The
two poets may well have met, but in this, as in so many other cases, we
cannot be certain. It is improbable that he ever met Boccaccio, since,
largely as he borrows from the _Filostrato_ and the _Teseide_, he never
once mentions Boccaccio's name, and when, in _Troilus and Criseyde_, he
confesses that he is indebted to an earlier poet for his story, he gives
him the apparently fictitious name of Lollius. Mr. Coulton suggests that
Boccaccio's works may have been published anonymously and that Chaucer may
have been ignorant of their real author, and this could hardly have been
the case if the two had met. But whether Chaucer had, or had not, any
personal intercourse with Petrarch and Boccaccio, both their work and
Dante's exercised marked influence upon him. More of this will be said in
the next chapter; here it is sufficient to note that the Italian mission
affected not only his material prosperity but also his literary
development.
Meanwhile he continued to grow in favour at court. On St. George's Day,
1374, he was granted a daily pitcher of wine from the royal cellars--later
commuted for a payment in money. In the following May he rented the
gate-house of Aldgate from the corporation of London. A month later he was
appointed controller of customs for wool, etc., in the port of London,
receiving a few days afterwards an additional pension of £10 a year from
John of Gaunt and his wife. Office work seems to have weighed heavily on
the poet, and there may well be truth in the complaint of the _Hous of
Fame_ (Bk. II, l. 644, etc.) that it cut him off from all intercourse with
the world:--
... thou hast no tydinges
Of Loves folk, if they be glade,
Ne of noght elles that god made;
And noght only fro fer contree
That ther no tyding comth to thee,
But of thy verray neyghebores,
That dwellen almost at thy dores,
Thou herest neither that ne this;
For whan thy labour doon al is,
And hast y-maad thy rekeninges,
In stede of reste and newe thinges,
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon;
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke,
Til fully daswed is thy loke,[17]
And livest thus as an hermyte
Although thyn abstinence is lyte.
In November 1375 Chaucer was granted the wardship of Edmund Staplegate of
Kent. Few persons nowadays would welcome such a charge, but in the
fourteenth century the position of guardian was highly coveted, and not
infrequently bought for a good round sum, since the holder had a right to
a certain percentage (sometimes amounting to as much as 10%) of the ward's
property, to say nothing of the power of selling him (or her) in marriage.
This particular wardship brought in £103.
In 1376-7 Chaucer was again employed on various secret missions abroad. In
April 1377 he was sent to France to treat for peace with Charles V, for
which service he received £48 13_s._ 4_d._ In June of this year Edward III
died, but for a time John of Gaunt still retained his power, and soon
after the accession of the boy king, Richard II, we find Chaucer sent on
an embassy to
Barnabo Viscounte,
God of delyt, and scourge of Lumbardye.
(_Monkes Tale_, ll. 408-409.)
Amongst those whom he appointed to act for him during his absence, was his
friend and fellow-poet, John Gower.
In May 1380 occurred a curious incident, of which no full and satisfactory
explanation has yet been found. By a deed dated May 1st, one Cecilia de
Chaumpaigne releases Geoffrey Chaucer from a charge which she had brought
against him _de raptu meo_. It has been suggested (_Camb. Hist. Lit._,
Vol. II) that this may refer to one of those attempts to carry off an heir
or heiress and marry them forcibly to some relation of the abductor, which
were not infrequent at the time. Chaucer's own father had been the victim
of such an attempt, being kidnapped in order that he might be married to
Joan de Westhale. The case had come before the courts and the jury found
that "the defendants had by night forcibly abducted John le Chaucer from
the plaintiff's custody, but did not marry him," and assessed the damages
at £250. John Chaucer was under fourteen at the time, and there are
instances of mere babies of four and five being carried off in the same
way. One poor little lady was twice widowed and thrice married before she
was nine. Whatever the facts may have been in connection with Cecilia de
Chaumpaigne it is evident that Chaucer's influence at court was sufficient
to protect him from any unpleasant consequences.
A year later (May 1382) to his controllership of wool was added that of
petty customs. This probably meant a substantial increase of income, but
the poet, who found his original duties sufficiently irksome, does not
seem to have looked with favour upon a corresponding increase in office
hours. In February 1385 he was granted the privilege of appointing a
permanent deputy to perform his official duties. Professor Skeat suggests
that the expressions of gratitude towards the queen which are inserted in
the later version of the prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_, point to
the probability that he owed this unusual concession to her intervention.
About this time Chaucer seems to have given up his house over Aldgate and
to have moved to Greenwich. The lease of the Aldgate house was made over
to a certain Richard Foster in 1386, and in the _Lenvoy a Scogan_ (written
probably about 1393) Chaucer contrasts the lot of his friend,
... that knelest at the stremes heed
Of grace, of alle honour and worthinesse,
with his own fate at the other end of the same stream,
Forgete in solitarie wildernesse,
and adds two footnotes to explain that he is referring in the first place
to Windsor and in the second to Greenwich. If the description in the
prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_ is not mere poetic fiction, it
would seem that the poet had a pleasant country house and garden in his
"solitarie wildernesse," and that he cultivated the excellent habit of
sleeping out of doors in the summer.
Meanwhile his activity found scope in various directions. He had been
appointed a Justice of the Peace for Kent in 1381, and in 1386 he entered
Parliament as one of the Knights of the Shire for the same county. In
August of this year Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt, went to Spain, and
during his absence his brother and rival, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester,
succeeded in establishing his ascendancy over the king. Chaucer felt the
change at once. He was deprived of both his controllerships, and the money
loss must have been considerable. In 1387 his wife died, so that her
pension must also have lapsed. Evidently the poet was in straits, for in
1388 he was driven to raising money on his pensions and allowances, making
them over to John Scalby of Lincolnshire. His abstinence, as we have seen,
was "lyte," and the necessity for retrenchment must have been extremely
galling.
The fall of Gloucester in 1389 swept away the clouds which had darkened
the poet's sky. Once more we find him filling one office after another,
and engaged in such useful and prosaic occupations as superintending the
repairs done to the banks of the Thames or the erection of scaffolds in
Smithfield for the king and queen to view the tournament held there in May
1390. One of his appointments was that of Clerk of the Works to his
Majesty, which gave him charge of the fabric of the Tower, Westminster
Palace, Windsor Castle, and other royal residences. He was commissioner of
the roads between Greenwich and Woolwich, and the post of sub-forester of
North Pemberton Park (in Somerset) must have given him ample opportunity
for studying
The bilder ook, and eek the hardy asshe;
The piler elm, the cofre unto careyne;[18]
The boxtree piper;[19] holm[20] to whippes lasshe;
The sayling firr;[21] the cipres, deth to pleyne;[22]
The sheter ew,[23] the asp for shaftes pleyne,[24]
if not--
The olyve of pees, and eek the drunken vyne
or--
The victor palm.
(_Parlement of Foules_, l. 176, etc.
The whole passage is taken from Boccaccio's _Teseide_.)
The commissionership of roads can have been no sinecure. In 1499--after
nearly a century more of development and civilisation--"a glover from
Leighton Buzzard travelled with his wares to Aylesbury for the market
before Christmas Day. It happened that an Aylesbury miller, Richard Boose,
finding that his mill needed repairs, sent a couple of servants to dig
clay called 'Ramming clay' for him on the highway, and was in no way
dismayed because the digging of this clay made a great pit in the middle
of the road ten feet wide, eight feet broad, and eight feet deep, which
was quickly filled with water by the winter rains. But the unhappy glover,
making his way from the town in the dusk, with his horse laden with
paniers full of gloves, straightway fell into the pit, and man and horse
were drowned. The miller was charged with his death, but was acquitted by
the court on the ground that he had no malicious intent and had only dug
the pit to repair his mill, and because he really did not know of any
other place to get the kind of clay he wanted save the highroad" (Mrs.
Green, _Town Life in the Fifteenth Century_, Vol. II, pp. 31-2). The
modern traveller in the United States is sometimes surprised at dusk by
finding the highway temporarily blocked by a house which is being moved
from one side to the other and has been dumped down at the end of the
day's work, but this is nothing to finding that the road itself has been
removed bodily. It is true that the corporation of Nottingham issued an
order in 1507 forbidding people to dig holes in the market-place without
leave, but this was long after Chaucer's day, and if such ordinances were
necessary to protect the actual market-place of a busy commercial city, it
is not difficult to imagine the condition of country roads. The keeping of
bridges in repair was looked upon, not as a matter of ordinary business,
but as an act of piety, so that on the Continent special "Bridge Friars"
existed, part of whose religious duties consisted in such work. In 1311-16
Richard of Kellawe, Bishop of Durham, offered forty days' indulgence to
all those "who shall help by their charitable gifts, or by their bodily
labour" in repairing various roads and bridges (Jusserand, _English
Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_, p. 4). And in 1353 a patent of Edward
III had ordered the paving of the highroad from Temple Bar to Westminster,
since "it is so full of holes and bogs ... and the pavement is so damaged
and broken" that traffic has become dangerous to man and beast. No wonder
that robbers abounded, and that pilgrims found safety in numbers.
In 1390 highwaymen seem to have been particularly active, and the
commissioner of roads himself was robbed more than once. Richard Brerelay
was indicted for having "with others unknown" robbed Geoffrey Chaucer at
Westminster of the sum of £10, on the Tuesday after the Nativity of the
Virgin Mary (_i. e._ September 6); and in the same year "near the Fowle
Ok" at Hatcham, in Surrey, Chaucer was robbed of a horse worth £10, goods
worth 100 shillings, and £20 6_s._ 8_d._ in cash. Some, at least, of this
seems to have been public money, for he was granted a royal pardon for the
loss of £20 of the King's money taken from him "by some notable robbers."
In 1391 he lost his post as Clerk of the Works, but this does not seem to
imply any serious loss of the royal favour, for three years later the
king granted him a pension of £20 (about £300 of our money) a year for
life. During the interval he seems to have got into money difficulties,
for no sooner was this grant made than his creditors promptly sued him for
debt.
In 1398 he received an additional grant of wine--a tun a year for
life--and was also promoted to be sole, instead of sub-, forester of North
Pemberton. In 1399 the son of his earliest and most powerful patron came
to the throne, and Chaucer, who was still struggling with his creditors,
addressed an impassioned appeal to him. Already, in 1398, the poet had
been threatened with legal proceedings, and although the king had
entrusted him with various commissions in the country, he had not dared to
leave his house for fear of arrest (Ten Brink, _History of English
Literature_, Vol. II, p. 198). No wonder he sang:--
To you, my purse, and to non other wight
Compleyne I, for ye be my lady dere!
I am so sory, now that ye be light;
For certes, but ye make me hevy chere.
(_The Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse._
Professor Ten Brink believes this poem to have been
addressed to King Richard, but Professor Skeat has
no doubt that it was addressed to Henry.)
It is consoling to learn that Henry IV added forty marks a year to the
pension granted by King Richard, thus bringing Chaucer's income up to £600
or £700 of our money. This new outburst of good fortune promised well for
the future, and Chaucer evidently looked forward to a prosperous and
comfortable old age, for, on December 24, 1399, he took the lease of a
house in the garden of St. Mary's, Westminster, for fifty-four years. He
was not, however, to make long use of his new possession, for on October
25, 1400, he died, and his grave was the first to mark the Poets' Corner
of Westminster Abbey. One of his later ballades, _Truth_ may well serve as
epitaph for the poet whom court life could never corrupt into a courtier,
and whose clear sight and sharp wit never led him into bitterness or
cynicism:--
That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,[25]
The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal.
Her nis non hoom,[26] her nis but wildernesse:
Forth pilgrim, forth! Forth beste out of thy stal!
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;
Hold the hye way, and lat thygost thee lede:[27].
And trouthe shal delivre, hit is no drede.[28]