Duke of Lancaster became unrestrained chief of the administration. It was his patron the Duke, therefore, who, towards the end of 1376, joined Chaucer with Sir John Burley, in some secret service, of which the nature is not known. They did not receive letters of protection; therefore, perhaps did not go abroad. On the 23rd of December in that year Burley was paid £13 6s. 8d., and Chaucer, half that sum (equal to £77) for the work done. In February, 1377, Chaucer was associated with Sir Thomas Percy, afterwards Earl of Worcester, in a secret mission to Flanders. He received on the 17th of February, £10 (100), towards expenses, and had letters of protection that were to be in force till Michaelmas. Froissart says that he was joined at that time with Sir Guichard d'Angle, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon, and Sir Richard Sturry, to negotiate a secret treaty of the marriage of Prince Richard of England with the Princess Mary of France, adding that the envoys met those of France at Montreuil-sur-Mer, where they remained some time; the truce with France being prolonged until the 1st of the ensuing May. But the embassy of Sir Guichard d'Angle was appointed on the 26th of April, following another embassy of the previous February, both being ostensibly to treat for peace. A fortnight before the appointment of Sir Guichard d'Angle's embassy Chaucer had returned from Flanders, and received from the exchequer £20 (£200) for divers journeys made in the king's service abroad. Nine days after he had received that money, letters of protection were issued to Geoffrey Chaucer for service abroad, the letters being in force from their date on the 20th of April to the 1st of August; and on the 30th of April, when the embassy to which Froissart refers was leaving England, Chaucer received £26 13s. 4d. (say £266) in part payment for the service. In June of that year Edward III., after a reign of half a century, died in the obscurity to which he had retired with Alice Perrers. The change of reign from that of the king worn out at sixty-five to that of the boy of eleven, still left John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the chief lord over England. John of Gaunt's age was then thirty-seven, Chaucer's perhaps about forty-five. In January, 1378, Sir Guichard d'Angle, then Earl of Huntingdon, was sent with two others on embassy to France, and this time their declared business was to treat of Richard's marriage. Chaucer received afterwards his payments for attendance on that mission. The poet's annuity of twenty marks was confirmed under the new reign, by letters patent, and on the 18th of April another annuity of twenty marks (£140) a year was granted instead of the daily pitcher of wine. Chaucer again sent to Italy. Not many weeks after his return from France—namely in May of the same year 1378- Chaucer was sent to Lombardy with Sir Edward Berkeley, to treat with Bernardo Visconti, Lord of Milan, and Sir John Hawkwood, "on certain affairs touching the expediting of the king's war." Chaucer had for this service letters of protection on the 10th of May to be in force till Christmas. Sir Edward Berkeley received £130 6s. 8d., Chaucer, £56 13s. 4d. (respectively about £1,300, and about £566) for wages and expenses. was as one of two representatives during his absence in this year 1378 (the other representative being a forgotten Richard Forrester) that Chaucer named his friend John Gower-who had not yet written either of his great extant poems to appear for him in the courts, in case of any legal proceedings being instituted against him during his absence. It At the beginning of February in the next year, 1379, Chaucer was in town, drawing his pension with his own hands. In May he was out of town; in December he drew his money again personally. On the 1st of May, 1380, Cecilia Chaumpaigne executed a deed of release to Geoffrey Chaucer for herself and her heirs from all suits and grounds of action arising since the beginning of the world to that present time "tam de raptu meo, tam de aliqua alia re vel causa."* Chaucer's wife was then living. The release was full and friendly, witnessed by persons of rank higher than Chaucer's; and his offence may have been a supposed privity to one of those carryings off which had been attempted in the case of John Chaucer, and in which Cecilia Chaumpaigne may have found that Chaucer had given her no just cause of accusation against him. In July, 1380, Chaucer was out of town. In the following November he drew personally his pensions, besides wages and expenses for his mission in Lombardy. In the following March (1381) he received also wages and expenses on account of his mission to France in 1377. The delayed payments perhaps indicate the state of the exchequer in the years before the poll-tax which produced the Wat Tyler insurrection of this year 1381. On the 28th of November, 1381, and again on the 23rd of November, 1383, there was payment of a gratuity of £46 13s. 4d. "to Nicholas Brembre and John Philipot, Collectors of Customs and Subsidies of the King in the Port of London, and Geoffrey Chaucer, Comptroller of the same in the aforesaid port,† money delivered to them this * This document was found in 1873 by Mr. Floyd, in the Close Roll, 3 Ric. II. (22nd June, 1379, to 21st June, 1380). Dr. F. J. Furnivall printed it in his "Further Additions and Corrections," dated 20th December, 1873, to his "Trial-Forewords to Chaucer's Minor Poems" for the Chaucer Society. The Additions made by Dr. Furnivall in that year to Chaucer records were numerous and important. + Issue Roll, Michaelmas 5 and 6 Richard II., pointed out in Notes and Queries, 3rd series, vol. viii., p. 367. day in regard of the assiduity, labour, and diligence brought to bear by them on the duties of their office for the year late elapsed." On the 8th of May, 1382, while still holding his office of Comptroller of Wool Customs, Chaucer was appointed also Comptroller of the Petty Customs in the Port of London, during pleasure, with the accustomed wages, and a liberty to execute the office by sufficient deputy. Made Comptroller of Petty toms. Cus Allowed to serve by Deputy. In November, 1384, he was allowed to absent himself for a month, and serve for that time by deputy also in the Wool Customs, on account of his own urgent affairs; and on the 17th of February, 1385, he was released from all the bondage in connection with his salaries, by being allowed to nominate a permanent deputy in the office, to which he had been tied so closely, of Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wool, Skins, and Tanned Hides in the Port of London. John Wyclif was then newly dead, and Gower had just written his "Vox Clamantis." I-VOL. V. CHAPTER VII. CHAUCER'S EARLIER POEMS. Now we have reached the time when local accidents of form lost prominence, and the foundations were laid of an English for all England, in prose by Wyclif and in verse by Chaucer. Close of the of the Language. John Wyclif was a man of highest culture, who wrote his mother tongue with homely clearness as becomes a scholar. His English answered to John Gower's happy definition of good writing, implied in the prayer for his Latin verse in the opening of the third book of the "Vox Clamantis," that it might not be turgid, that there might be in it no word of untruth, that each word might answer to the thing it spoke of pleasantly and fitly, that it might flatter no one, and that he might seek in it no praise above the praise of God.* Give me, Gower added, that there shall be less vice and more virtue for my speaking. In that spirit Wyclif shaped the matter and the manner of his English prose. Companion of the best men of his time, at Oxford and at Court, he fixed the standard of the purest English of his day by using it in a translation of the Bible which was copied and re-copied, and not read merely, but devoutly studied in all parts of England. His friend John Purvey, trained in fellowship of work, did his part in the fixing of the language when he freed Nicholas of Hereford's Old Testament translation from * "E. W." iv., 183. |