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CHAP which he took possession at the death of the duchess Matilda), is estimated at little less than £. 3000 per annum. Lastly, the ransom of Bruce, husband to queen Joan, after eleven years imprisonment, during which he was constantly attended by the royal matron, was fixed at one hundred thousand marks, and that of John king of France at three millions of crowns, each crown, by the conditions of treaty, to be equal to the fourth part of a mark, English money. To complete our view of this subject, let us add that the ordinary revenue of the crown, from the time of Henry III. to Henry V, a period of about two hundred years, appears from an authentic document, taken at the close of this period, to have been nearly . 55,714 10: 10 per annum.

Rot. Fin. 35 Edv. 3, m. 23, apud Collins, History of John of Gaunt.

• Hollinshed, Scotland, A. D. 1358.

d Rymer, Tom. VI, 31 Edv. 3, Oct. 3.

Rymer, 34 Edv. 3, May 8.

Hume, Chap. XIX.

Rymer, Tom. X, 9 Hen. 5.

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The result of these documents, and of CHAP. others which will hereafter be produced, tends to confirm us in the opinion, that the different ranks of society were treated with somewhat more inequality in Chaucer's time than at present. The pension granted to sir Edward Montagu the younger son of a noble family is of nearly eight times, and that granted to his elder brother seventy-five times, the amount of that bestowed upon Chaucer; while the salaries of the judges only double his annuity. The pension granted to lord Montagu, which, estimated according to the proportion above laid down, is worth £. 18,000 per annum of our money, and that to the titular king of Scots, worth £.36,000, would undoubtedly in the present times be admitted to be princely; lord Montagu's was so much clear addition to his hereditary estate. The fragment of John of Gaunt's inheritance abovementioned, was equivalent to £. 54,000 per annum of our money. The disbursements of Thomas earl of Lancaster, great-uncle to the princess Blanche, for one year (the year 1313), are

"

CHAP are stated to have amounted, on the score

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of his houshold establishment alone, to £ 7957: 13: 4, making of our money L. 143,238, His wealth therefore must be supposed to have been at least equal to that of the late duke of Orleans, whose annual income was computed at £. 300,000 sterling. The whole revenue of the kingdom however, estimated according to the same rule, scarcely exceeded the present value of one million sterling. From these premises we may form some judgment, how formidable opponents the great barons of the realm must have been found, when they set themselves in hostility to the sovereign.

Thomas earl of Lancaster, the occupier of this immense wealth, was dissatisfied with his lot, and became the head of the barons who took advantage of the imbecility of Ed

↳ Stow, Survey of London: of orders and customs.

This was erroneously stated in a former chapter (Chapter VII, p. 166), upon the authority of Anderson's History of Commerce. A similar misstatement occurs, Chap. XVIII,

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ward II. At length he was conveyed pri- CHAP, soner to his own castle of Pomfret; and, having been summarily adjudged to death, was placed upon a lean jade without a bridle, with a rusty and torn hat on his head, and thus conveyed, amidst the insults and peltings of a brutish multitude, to a hill without the town, where his head was struck off by the executioner. Many miracles were afterward wrought at his tomb'; and he was nearly created a saint by the Roman pontiff,

It is sufficiently observable that this first Conclusion, court-favour of a pecuniary sort, which has come to our knowledge as having been conferred upon Chaucer, was granted during the absence of his patron, John of Gaunt, on the continent: he sailed from England in the beginning of January, and did not return till the decline of the year. Thus we have Edward III. himself, in the first page, as it were, of our official documents for the life

* Pakington, apud Leland, Collectanea, Tom. I, p. 669. 1 Ditto, p. 670.

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CHAP. of Chaucer, refuting the invidious insinuation of certain modern critics, that not he, but John of Gaunt, was the original patron and encourager of the singular talents and admirable genius of the father of English poetry.

The year, the events of which have formed the principal subject of this chapter, is rendered further remarkable by having given birth to two English sovereigns, Richard II. son of the Black Prince, and Henry IV. son and heir to John of Gaunt and the duchess Blanche.