2 12 Chaucer and Henry, Earl of Derby 



Of the five occasions enumerated above, Henry would have 

 heard of the first from Albert of Austria, and surely of the third 

 and fourth when in Prussia, or afterwards in conversation with 

 such knights as Boucicaut, whom he would meet on his foreign 

 travels. That of 1400 was too late, so that only that of 1385 

 remains — in other w^ords, Henry would probably have been 

 acquainted, through eye-witnesses, with every table of honor 

 of which we have any record previous to his return to Eng- 

 land in 1393. Is it easy to escape the presumption that it is 

 through him that Chaucer acquired the information which he 

 so deftly uses in the 'Prologue, since we can think of no other 

 historic person so likely as he to have been the medium of 

 communicating it? 



8. THE CURRENT THEORY REGARDING THE DATE 

 OF THE PROLOGUE 



The course of our inquiry, then, has led us to conclude that 

 the Prologue, or at least the description of the Knight, can not 

 well have been written before Henry's return in 1393. What 

 specific arguments are there for an earlier date? The one which 

 is commonly relied on is that of Hales in favor of 1387, printed 

 in 1893.'^ He declares that the evidence for placing the Pro- 

 logue so late is extremely slight, if indeed there is any. His 

 argument for 1387 is as follows. The merchant 



wolde the see were kept for any thing 

 Bitwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle. 



Now in 1384, and again in 1388, the w^oolstaple was at Calais, 

 but between those dates it was at Middelburgh, and at no other 

 time; 'so only just at that time could the merchant's words 

 have their full significance — have a special pointedness.' Chaucer 



Objekt fiir Heidenkampfe mehr vorhanden, und dass die Litthauer wirk- 

 lich Christen geworden waren : eine Ueberzeugung, welche zugleich mit 

 dem Erloschen des letzten aufflackernden Feuers einer ehrlich gemeinten 

 Romantik zusammenfiel und den Orden, der von diesen Bedingungen 

 abhangig war, seiner besten Hiilfsquellen beraubte. Nur noch wenige 

 "Kriegsreisen" werden wir daher zu verzeichnen haben.' Again (3. 154) 

 he characterizes these forays as savage, and now [1394] partly obsolete. 

 For the appeal made by these forays at an earlier period, cf. Voigt 

 5. 167-8, 183-4, 551. 

 ^ Athencciim, April 8; reprinted in Hales, 1893, pp. 99-101. 



