Lancaster and Derby 237 



men of royal blood^ — the elder Earl of Derby, who died as Duke 

 of Lancaster, and his grandson, the younger Earl of Derby, who 

 died as Henry IV. Chaucer's Knight is a typical, in some sense 

 a composite, figure, to which no one contributed more noble traits 

 than did the knight whom Petrarch^ ranked with the greatest 

 worthies.^ He was a sexagenarian* when Chaucer served as 

 a subaltern in the army of which he himself was a general, but 

 the praise of his earlier achievements was doubtless still fresh 

 in men's mouths. He was one whom the king delighted to honor, 

 and in whom chivalry saw its highest ideals incarnated, so far as 

 human imperfections allow. 



If the crusading exploit by which Lancaster is best known was 

 performed in the South,^ that of his grandson belongs to the 

 far North, from which the latter doubtless brought the reports 

 of the table of honor which supplied Chaucer with an immortal 

 distich. In age, religious devotion, modesty, and variety of 

 achievement, Chaucer's Knight stands nearest to the father of 

 John of Gaunt's beloved Blanche. When Chaucer would utilize 

 the son of Blanche as a more complete model, itj is as his dashing 

 and splendid young king in the Knight's Tale.^ \ 



^Lounsbury (i. 93, note) derives an argument from Chaucer's use 

 of the word 'worthy' (Prol. 68) in favor of the poet's having had Henry 

 in mind in his portrayal of the Knight's character; and one might 

 analogically use the word 'sovereyn' (Prol. 67), which it is well known 

 was Henry's motto (Wylie 4. 115-6), for the same purpose. 



^ See above, p. 221. 



'On the authority of Capgrave (Diet. Nat. Biog. 26. 102), he is said 

 'to have gone while a young man to fight as a crusader in Prussia, 

 Rhodes, Cyprus, and Granada, to have been so renowned a captain that 

 he was known as "the father of soldiers," and the noblest youths of 

 France and Spain were anxious to learn war under his banner.' 



*This agrees with Manly's estimate of the Knight's age (Trans. Amer. 

 Phil. Assoc. 38 (1907). 104). 



"An interesting connection between the older and the younger man, 

 of whom one died five years before the other was born, is suggested 

 bv the feeling of the lords who heard Henry's sentence pronounced by 

 Richard II, that he might do well to 'faire ung voiage en Grenade et 

 sur les mescroians' (Kervyn 16. 108: Johnes' Froissart, 1839, 2. 666; 

 cf. Kervyn 16. 132: Johnes 2. 674-5). 



"Earlier scholars have thought of adK^enturous knights of less exalted 

 rank. Thus Tyrwhitt in 1775 (Cant. Tales 4. iQo) refers to Sir Matthew 



