CHAUCER. 



Chaucer, as appears from the date of hi* poem, entitled, The. 



^V*^ Dream, an allegory alluding to the nuptials of .John 

 of Gaunt with Blanche heiress of Lancaster. The 

 same poem contains an allusion to the poet's own 

 tender attachment to the lady whom he afterwards 

 married. This was a daughter of Payne de Honor, 

 king at arms for the province of Guicnne. She was 

 maid of honour to Philippa, Queen of Edward III. 

 and youngest sister to Catharine de Rouet, who was 

 first the mistress, and afterwards the wife of John of 

 Gaunt, and by her marriage with that prince, an 

 ancestor of the royal family of England. The sup- 

 position of his having been early patronized at the 

 court of Edward, is countenanced by many passages 

 in his poems, describing a residence which coincides 

 with that which tradition has ascribed to him at the 

 royal abode of Woodstock, in the lodge near the 

 park gate. There is some reason to presume that 

 he accompanied his warlike monarch in the invasion 

 of France in 1859 in a military character. From the 

 record of his evidence in a military court, discovered 

 by one of his latest biographers, (Godwin,) we find 

 that he gave evidence to a fact which he had witnessed 

 in France in the capacity of a soldier. The expedi- 

 tion of 1359, however, which terminated in the peace 

 of Bretigne, gave him little opportunity of seeing 

 service, and he certainly never resumed the profession 

 of arms. 



A.D. 1367. In his thirty-ninth year he received from Edward 

 the Third a pension of twenty marks per annum, a 

 sum probably equal in effective value to two or three 

 hundred pounds of modern money. In the patent for 

 this annuity, he is styled by the king Valettus Noster. 

 Valcttus, Mr Tyrwhitt thinks, is a contraction of 

 vassalettits, the diminutive of vassallus. The name was 

 given, though not as a badge of service, to young 

 men of the highest distinction before they were 

 knighted. Chaucer, however, at the date of that 

 pension, was not young, being thirty- nine years of 

 age. How long he had served the king in that or in 

 any other station, and what particular merits were re- 

 warded by this royal bounty, are points equally un- 

 known. Chaucer, at the time of receiving his first 

 pension, must have been thirty-nine. He dtd not ac- 

 quire the rank of scutifer or esquire till five years 

 after, when he was appointed the king's envoy to 

 Genoa. So respectable an appointment seems to im- 

 ply, that he had established a personal and political 

 character of some importance; but the particular ob- 

 jects of his mission, it has puzzled all his biographers 

 to discover. Mr Godwin, whose life of the poet is a 

 scries of suppositions, supposes that it related to com- 

 mercial objects, and is decidedly of opinion that he 

 visited the northern parts of Italy, and had a con- 

 ference with Petrarch. But the reality of this inter- 

 view, pleasing as it is to the imagination, is more than 

 doubtful. It is said to be implied in a passage of one 

 of the Canterbury Tales, in which the speaker says, 

 that he learned his story from Petrarch, a learned 

 clerk of Padua. It should be noticed, in the first 

 place, that Chaucer, making one of his pilgrims de- 

 duce his tale from Petrarch, does not amount to de- 

 claration from himself as author, that he derived it 

 from that source. The story originally belongs to 

 Boccaccio, and was only translated into Latin by Pe- 

 trarch, and, like the plan of the Canterbury Tales, is 

 in all probability borrowed from the same author. 

 1 



On the- other hand, the accurate Tyrwhitt, though 

 In- doubt* whether Chaucer ever went upon hit ant- 

 lion, yet admits, that, supposing htm to have been at 

 t, it is to be presi. he would hare teen 



the first literary charat age; and it it re- 



markablc that the tin..- of this embaMjr in 1ST 

 the precise time at which he could have learned thit 

 story from Petrarch at Padua. Neither Petrarch nor 

 his biographers, however, have mentioned the fact, 

 nor did the author of Meinoirei pour la Vie tl> 

 t mnine ever fulfil his promise of proving the inter- 

 view. His genius at a poet, and, we may tuppovr 

 from the style of his wntiogg, his amenity at a cour- 

 tier, also kept him in prosperity during the whole of 

 Edward the Third's reign, and indeed during the 

 whole period of John of Gaunt's influence. In 1374, 

 the year after his appointment as envoy, he was pre- 

 sented by the crown with an allowance of a pitcher 

 of wine daily, i grant which was commuted duriag 

 the succeeding reign to an annuity ot twenty merk. 

 He was appointed in the same year to the comptrol- 

 lerahip of the customs of wool and skins in the port 

 of London. In the next year he received jfl(H for 

 the wardship of Sir Edward Staplegate's heir; and in 

 the following year, some forfeited wool to the value 

 of rf?l : 4 : 6. In the last year of Edward's reign, 

 he was sent with Sir Guichard Dangle. His situa- 

 tion in the middle part of his life must thus have been 

 opulent and honourable. It was so opuleut, he says 

 himself in his Testament of Love, as to enable him to 

 maintain a plentiful hospitality. But the picture of 

 his fortune was reversed during a considerable part 

 of the reign of Edward's successor. He wa not, it is 

 true, immediately deprived of his comptrollership on 

 the accession of Richard the Second ; his pension was 

 renewed to him, and a grant of money made to him 

 in lieu of his daily pitcher of wine. But these fa- 

 vours were obtained by the influence of John of 

 Gaunt, an influence which lasted but during a few 

 years under the new king. We find him, however, 

 in 1382, receiving a grant of comptrollership of small 

 customs in the port of London ; with the additional 

 favour, that the new office might be performed by 

 deputy. Neither is it true that he was obliged to 

 receive a royal protection from his creditors within 

 two years from Richard's accession. This error in 

 formci biographers, is one of the few things which 

 Mr Godwin proves in his voluminous biography. He 

 was certainly attached, as his patron was, (for a 

 time,) to the opinions of the reformers, which became 

 unpopular at court under Richard. The immediate 

 cause of our poet's misfortunes seems to have been 

 his interfering in a dispute between the court and the 

 city of London, in which Chaucer embraced the civic 

 side. This came to a violent crisis in 1384. John 

 of Northampton, a popular candidate for the mayor- 

 alty of London, was supposed to be attached to 

 the tenets of Wickliffe. Richard and his court, who 

 detested the Londoners, were resolved that they 

 should have a mayor of a different description. They 

 succeeded in forcing upon the city another candidate, 

 Sir Nicholas Brembar, and the contest subsided, after 

 some resistance on the part of the popular leaders, 

 which was dignified with the name of a rebellion, in 

 the death of some of them, and the imprisonment of 

 John of Northampton. There is a mystery over this 

 court as it is connected with Chaucer's life j for 



