Although not conclusive, it is better evidence than has yet been found to justify belief that any other person was the poet's father. Now we have seen that John Chaucer was, before the age of fourteen, forcibly carried off to be married to a Joan de Westhale, but that he was recovered before he had married her, and was still unmarried in 1328. His abductors, who were fined and imprisoned, pleaded for release in 1331, on the ground that John Chaucer had forgiven them the fine, a plea that would have been very different if John Chaucer had married Joan de Westhale. There is no reason to think that he had any other wife than Agnes, kinswoman of the moneyer, Hamo de Compton. The date of that marriage is not known. It could not have been before the end of 1328. If the poet was John Chaucer's son, he could not have been born before the end I will take as a conjectural birth-date 1332. We shall then find his age to be fifty when he is calling himself old in his "House of Fame," and we cannot well think him younger than that in 1382. The conjectural date based on the belief that trust was to be put in the “xl. ans et plus" of the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll (which would make the birth-date 1346, less any amount that "et plus" may be supposed to stand for), is 1342, a date contradicted by much evidence that Chaucer died an old man in the year 1400, and called himself old seventeen or eighteen years before that date.

of 1329.

Education.

It is evident from his works that Geoffrey Chaucer had been liberally educated, and throughout life he was studious of books. There is no certain evidence that he studied either at Oxford or Cambridge. If he wrote the "Court of Love," he there calls himself Philogenet of Cambridge, clerk. Philogenet is a poetical name, taken in the telling of a lover's dream, where it is coupled with that of a lady Philobone. But "of Cambridge, clerk," is a precise description, less likely to have arisen from the

simple exercise of fancy; and probably it did point to the individual position of the writer, whoever he may have been. Observation has been made also upon the accuracy of Chaucer's reference to brook, bridge, and mill, described in the opening of the "Reve's Tale":

"At Trompyngton, not fer fro Cantebrigge,
Ther goth a brook, and over that a brigge,
Upon the whiché brook there stant a melle."

Leland claimed Chaucer for both Universities, and said that at Oxford, besides his private study, he frequented with great diligence the public schools and disputations, thereupon becoming "a witty logician, a sweet rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a grave philosopher, and a holy divine. Moreover he was a skilful mathematician, instructed therein by John Some and Nicholas Lynne, friars Carmelites and reverend clerks, whom in his book on the Astrolabe Chaucer greatly commends." He is said also to have visited France and Flanders in his youth, and to have been fellow-student with Gower among the lawyers of the Inner Temple.* "For," says Speght, "not many years. since, Master Buckley did see a record in the same house, where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. † Study for a year or two in one of the Inns of Court was of old time no unusual part of the education of an English gentleman who might one day have to administer or perhaps help in amending some of the laws of his country. But upon the story of Chaucer as a student in the. Temple, Francis Thynne observed, that "the lawyers were not of the Temple till the latter part of the reign of King Edward III., at which time Chaucer was

* Leland says that in his later life, after the travel in France "collegia leguleiorum frequentavit."

covered.

This was published in 1598. No such record is now to be dis

a grave man, holden in great credit and employed in embassy." Dugdale gives the tradition that the Temple having passed to the Knights Hospitallers in the reign of Edward III., came to the lawyers by demise from them.

In service of
Prince

Lionel.

In 1886, Dr. Edward Augustus Bond, then Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, discovered that upon two leaves of a household account for 1357, Geoffrey Chaucer was twice mentioned in connection with the household of Prince Lionel.* In rebinding Additional MS. 18,632 it was found that the old binding had been lined with two parchment leaves of a short Household Account, which Dr. Bond rightly inferred, from various points of evidence well pieced together, to record expenses for the years 1356-59 of Elizabeth, wife of Edward III.'s second son, Prince Lionel, who was within those years sometimes at London, Reading, Windsor, and elsewhere, but chiefly resident at Hatfield, in Yorkshire. Among the entries on these leaves is one for April, 1357-when the Countess was equipping herself for a celebration of the Feast of St. George, at Windsor-of a pattock or short cloak, a pair of red and black breeches, with shoes, for Geoffrey Chaucer; also articles of dress for Philippa Pan', that syllable being interpreted by Dr. Bond as, perhaps, Panetaria, or Mistress of the Pantry. On the 20th of May, 1357, some article of dress, of which the name is lost by defect in the leaf, was bought for Chaucer. In December, 1357, a man received money for accompanying Philippa Pan' from Pollesdon (whatever that may mean) to Hatfield, and immediately afterwards there is an entry of three shillings and sixpence to Geoffrey Chaucer for necessaries. At this time an entry shows that Prince John of Gaunt was a visitor at Hatfield. That is all that concerns Chaucer.

In April, 1358, at the equipping of the Countess for the Feast of St. George, at Windsor, there is entry of payment * Fortnightly Review, No. xxxi., for August 15th, 1866.

H-VOL. V.

for a bodice lined with fur, for Philippa Pan', but no entry for Chaucer, nor does Chaucer's name appear among the other entries.

It is clear, therefore, that in 1357 Chaucer had obtained his position as a page to one of the king's sons, and was in the household of Prince Lionel. Lionel lived till 1368, but we shall find that in and after 1358 Chaucer's relations are with John of Gaunt, and the entries in the household of the Countess Elizabeth might imply no more than that Chaucer, page to John of Gaunt, was detached for service of the Countess upon her coming to London, and preparing for St. George's Day at Windsor.

Bears arms in Brittany. Is taken prisoner.

He

In his evidence, given in 1386, upon the question of arms-bearing between Sir Richard le Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, the nature of his testimony makes the fact material that Chaucer had borne arms for twenty-seven years. This would place his first service with the army in the year 1359. does, in fact, testify to the arms he saw Scrope using before the town of Retiers in Brittany, when, in the autumn of 1359, he was with Edward III.'s army of invasion, and says that he saw Scrope always bearing the same arms, until the said Geoffrey Chaucer was taken prisoner. Thus we learn incidentally, on his own testimony, what happened to him three years after the battle of Poitiers, at a date when, if born in 1332, he was twenty-seven years old. The English king had then, while the French king was still his prisoner, at the end of October sailed again to France, with the largest and best army raised in England for more than a century. No able-bodied gentleman in service of the Court could easily stay at home, and in that army Geoffrey Chaucer first served as a soldier.

The English made their way to Rheims. After seven weeks of unsuccessful siege they left Rheims, and marched into Burgundy, where the Duke paid for a three years'

truce fifty thousand marks. Edward marched next upon Paris, where he burnt the suburbs, and would make no peace, although his troops were suffering from famine. Famine compelled a withdrawal into Brittany, hasty as flight, and with its track marked by dead bodies of men and horses that dropped on the way. Near Chartres a great storm added its terrors to the misery of Edward's army, and the king, stretching his arms towards the cathedral, vowed to God and the Virgin that he would make peace. The treaty called the "Great Peace" was signed accordingly, on the 8th of May, 1360, at Bretigni, and in the following October solemnly ratified at Calais. It was in Brittany, during the disastrous days of the campaign, that Chaucer was made prisoner. But there can be little doubt that the treaty of peace, which very soon followed, procured in a short time his release.

Valet of the

Household.

Before the expedition into France, Chaucer was in the service of the Court, and after his return from his imprisonment in France, the course of his life passed without record known to us until, in the year 1367, King's he, being then thirty-five years old, if born in 1332, was described as a valet of the King's Household, "dilectus valettus noster," and in consideration of his former and future services there was granted to him a salary of twenty marks for life, or until he should be otherwise provided for. A mark was thirteen shillings and fourpence of the money of that time. There went, in those days, only £15 to a pound weight of gold, instead of, as now, £46 and a fraction; the pound weight also of silver was made into twenty-five instead of sixty-six shillings. Prices too have changed. In relation to the average cost of the

*Rot. Pat. 41 Edw. III. Foedera, N.E., vol. iii. p. 829, quoted by Godwin. Sir Harris Nicolas adds, that the payment of this pension, Nov. 6, 1367, is the first notice of Chaucer on the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer.