Geoffrey Chaucer - An Introduction
Geoffrey Chaucer lived during the reign of three Kings:
Edward III - 1327–1377
Richard II (grandson of Edward III; son of
Edward, the Black Prince) 21 June 1377 – 29 September 1399
Henry IV (1399 – 1413)
Geoffrey Chaucer c. 1343 – 25 October 1400
1357: In service of a noble family
1359: Went to the war in
France; taken prisoner
On the 1st of March 1360 King Edward III contributed £16 to his ransom, and by a year or two later Chaucer must have
entered the royal service, since on the 10th of June 1367 Edward granted him a
pension of twenty marks for his past and future services. A pension of ten
marks had been granted by the king the previous September to a Philippa Chaucer
for services to the queen as one of her "domicellae" or
"damoiselles," and it seems probable that at this date Chaucer was
already married and this Philippa his wife, a conclusion which used to be
resisted on the ground of allusions in his early poems to a hopeless love-affair,
now reckoned part of his poetical outfit. Philippa is usually said to have been
one of two daughters of a Sir Payne Roet, the other being Katherine, who after
the death of her first husband, Sir Hugh de Swynford, in 1372, became governess
to John of Gaunt's children, and subsequently his mistress and (in 1396) his
wife. It is possible that Philippa was sister to Sir Hugh and sister-in-law to
Katherine. In either case the marriage helps to account for the favour
subsequently shown to Chaucer by John of Gaunt.
In June 1370 he went abroad on the king's service.
He was back probably some time before Michaelmas, and seems to have remained in
England till the 1st of December 1372, when he started, with an advance of 100
marks in his pocket, for Italy, as one of the three commissioners to treat with
the Genoese as to an English port where they might have special facilities for trade.
The accounts which he delivered on his return on the 23rd of May 1373 show that
he had also visited Florence on the king's business, and he probably went also
to Padua and there made the acquaintance of Petrarch.
In the second quarter of 1374 Chaucer lived in a
whirl of prosperity. On the 23rd of April the king granted him a pitcher of
wine daily, subsequently commuted for an annuity of 20 marks. From John of
Gaunt, who in August 1372 had granted Philippa Chaucer £10 a year, he himself
now received (June 13) a like annuity in reward for his own and his wife's
services. On the 8th of June he was appointed Comptroller of the Custom and
Subsidy of Wools, Hides and Woodfells and also of the Petty Customs of Wine in
the Port of London. A month before this appointment, and probably in
anticipation of it, he took (May 10, 1374) a lease for life from the city of
London of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate, and here he lived for
the next twelve years. His own and his wife's income now amounted to over £60,
the equivalent of upwards of £l000 in modern money. In the next two years large
windfalls came to him in the form of two wardships of Kentish heirs, one of
whom paid him £104, and a grant of £71,4s,6p; the value of some confiscated
wool. In December 1376 he was sent abroad on the king's service in the retinue
of Sir John Burley; in February 1377 he was sent to Paris and Montreuil in
connection probably with the peace negotiations between England and France, and
at the end of April (after a reward of £20 for his good services) he was again
despatched to France.
On the accession of Richard II Chaucer was
confirmed in his offices and pensions. In January 1378 he seems to have been in
France in connection with a proposed marriage between Richard and the daughter
of the French king; and on the 28th of May of the same year he was sent with
Sir Edward de Berkeley to the lord of Milan and Sir John Hawkwood to treat for
help in the king's wars, returning on the 19th of September. This was his last
diplomatic journey, and the close of a period of his life generally considered
to have been so unprolific of poetry that little beyond the Clerk's "Tale
of Grisilde," one or two other of the stories afterwards included in the
Canterbury Tales, and a few short poems, are attributed to it, though the
poet's actual absences from England during the eight years amount to little
more than eighteen months.
During the next twelve or fifteen years there is
no question that Chaucer was constantly engaged in literary work, though for
the first half of them he had no lack of official employment. Abundant favour
was shown him by the new king. He was paid £22 as a reward for his later
missions in Edward III's reign, and was allowed an annual gratuity of 10 marks
in addition to his pay of £10 as comptroller of the customs of wool. In April
1382 a new comptrollership, that of the petty customs in the Port of London,
was given him, and shortly after he was allowed to exercise it by deputy, a
similar licence being given him in February 1385, at the instance of the earl
of Oxford, as regards the comptrollership of wool.
In October 1385 Chaucer was made a justice of the
peace for Kent. In February 1386 we catch a glimpse of his wife Philippa being
admitted to the fraternity of Lincoln cathedral in the company of Henry, Earl
of Derby (afterwards Henry IV), Sir Thomas de Swynford and other distinguished
persons. In August 1386 he was elected one of the two knights of the shire for
Kent, and with this dignity, though it was one not much appreciated in those
days, his good fortune reached its climax. In December of the same year he was
superseded in both his comptrollerships, almost certainly as a result of the
absence of his patron, John of Gaunt, in Spain, and the supremacy of the Duke
of Gloucester. In the following year the cessation of Philippa's pension
suggests that she died between Midsummer and Michaelmas. In May 1388 Chaucer
surrendered to the king his two pensions of 20 marks each, and they were
re-granted at his request to one John Scalby. The transaction was unusual and
probably points to a pressing need for ready money, nor for the next fourteen
months do we know of any source of income possessed by Chaucer beyond his
annuity of £10 from John of Gaunt.
In July 1389, after John of Gaunt had returned to
England, and the king had taken the government into his own hands, Chaucer was
appointed clerk of the works at various royal palaces at a salary of two
shillings a day, or over £31 a year, worth upwards of £500 present value. To
this post was subsequently added the charge of some repairs at St George's
Chapel, Windsor. He was also made a commissioner to maintain the banks of the
Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich, and was given by the Earl of March
(grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, his old patron) a sub-forestership at
North Petherton, Devon, obviously a sinecure (‘sinecure’ is more or less an
ornamental position with some status and financial benefit). While on the
king's business, in September 1390, Chaucer was twice robbed by highwaymen,
losing £20 of the king's money. In June 1391 he was superseded in his office of
clerk of the works, and seems to have suffered another spell of misfortune, of
which the first alleviation came in January 1393 when the king made him a
present of £10.
In February 1394 he was granted a new pension of £20. It is possible, also, that about this time, or a little later, he was in the service of the Earl of Derby. In 1397 he received from King Richard a grant of a butt of wine yearly. For this he appears to have asked in terms that suggest poverty, and in May 1398 he obtained letters of protection against his creditors, a step perhaps rendered necessary by an action for debt taken against him earlier in the year. On the accession of Henry IV a new pension of 40 marks was conferred on Chaucer (13th of October 1399) and Richard II's grants were formally confirmed. Henry himself, however, was probably straitened for ready money, and no instalment of the new pension was paid during the few months of his reign that the poet lived. Nevertheless, on the strength of his expectations, on the 24th of December 1399 he leased a tenement in the garden of St Mary's Chapel, Westminster, and it was probably here that he died, on the 25th of the following October. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb became the nucleus of what is now known as Poets' Corner.
Chaucer: Works
Anelida and Arcite
House of
Fame
The Book
of the Duchess
Legend of Good Women
Parlement of Foules
Troilus and Creseyde
The Canterbury Tales
Translation:
Boethius' Consolation of
Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris
Into Technical Writing:
Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that
describes the form and use of an instrument used by
astronomers. This work is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language.
Prepared by Jacob Eapen Kunnath
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