1 86 Chaucer and Henry, Earl of Derby 



(8) In the Legend of Good Women (A 354-5) we are told 

 that a lord should 



nat be lyk tiraunts of Lumbardye, 

 That usen wilfulhed and tirannye, 



an evident allusion to the Visconti. This feeling may have in some 

 degree been prompted or intensified by the feud between Galeazzo 

 and the English after the death of Lionel in October, 1368, when 

 they refused to give up the Piedmontese towns which constituted 

 part of Violante's dowry, and Galeazzo attempted to take the 

 towns by force. If this were the case, it might imply that 

 Chaucer had remained in Italy till late in the year (and indeed 

 there is no indication that he received his pension on October 

 31 with his own hands) ; on the other hand, the tyranny of the 

 Visconti was a matter of common knowledge, and Chaucer 

 would have had other opportunities — in 1372 and 1378 — to 

 acquaint himself with the condition of things in Italy. The 

 passage on Bernabo in the Monk's Tale (409-16) could not, of 

 course, have been written till after 1385, when Bernabo died; 

 and one naturally associates that with the couplet from the 

 Legend of Good Women. 



It may be objected that, as we have the name of Philippa 

 Chaucer, the poet's wufe, in a document of Sept. 12, 1366,^ this 



that Chaucer's knight (Lionel?) recites a message (1. no) from 'the 

 King of Arabic and Inde' (Inde, as in K. T. 1298, = England?), and 

 afterwards dances (1. 277) with Canacee (Violante?) ; that Lionel is 

 alluded to, by the name Leon (so in four manuscripts of Murimuth 

 (Rolls Series, p. 87) ; cf. Hardyng: 'And in the feld a Lyon marmorike'), 

 in the mention of a sign of the zodiac (1. 265) ; that there was plenty, 

 for the most and least (I. 300), as we know there was at the banquet 

 in Milan, where, Paulus Jovius assures us, the food carried away from the 

 table would have sufficed for ten thousand men; that Canacee (1. 392) 

 walks in the park (at Pavia, whither Lionel and Violante betook them- 

 selves after the wedding; see the map in Magenta, opp. p. 118), where 

 (perhaps near the country-house of Mirabello; cf. Magenta i. 124) she 

 finds a falcon (1. 411), such as Galeazzo prided himself on keeping in 

 the park (Magenta i. 120-2) ; and that Cambinskan won many a city 

 in his time (1. 662), as did members of the Visconti family — 

 But al that thing I moot as now forbere ; 

 I have, God woot, a large feeld to ere, 

 And wayke been the oxen in my plough. 

 ' Kirk, p. 158. 



