Chaucer's Life and Works
Among all the known facts with regard to Chaucer's career the most salient is that his good fortune furnished him with an environment which was supremely well suited to develop…
From Selections from Chaucer edited by William Allan Neilson and Howard Rollin Patch, 1921.
Chaucer's Life
Among all the known facts with regard to Chaucer's career the most salient is that his good fortune furnished him with an environment which was supremely well suited to develop his particular kind of genius. He described the life and manners of all ranks of society, and he was able to do it so concretely partly because he had the opportunity of knowing them all well. He himself sprang from the middle classes. His grandfather, Robert, was a collector of the customs on wines; his father, John, was a vintner who early won a position as attendant to the king. Like many another family Chaucer's was gradually making its way upward. He was born about 1340, and by 1357 he was in the service of the Countess Elizabeth, wife of Lionel Duke of Clarence, as the Household Accounts show, referring to an expenditure for his clothes.
From then on he was in almost constant touch with royalty: in 1359-60 he traveled with an expedition to France under Edward III, and was taken prisoner near Rheims, where the king ransomed him. He earned enough confidence to be later entrusted to carry certain letters from Calais to England. In 1367 he was a "valet of the king's household," and as “dilectus valettus noster” was granted an annual salary of twenty marks (a little over £13 in the money of that time).
By 1369 he was again in military service in France. The year 1372 found him one of the king's esquires, and other royal favors came to him from time to time, such as the daily pitcher of wine granted in 1374 (later changed to an annuity of twenty marks). Through his entire life, in fact, he seems to have had opportunity to know the world at court, and yet his military service, his travels, his duties in London, brought him into contact with all social classes.
How really intimate he was with any of the royal personages it is hard to say. The question is somewhat complicated by the fact that Chaucer was subject in part to the system of literary patronage: for example, the Book of the Duchesse was written in memory of Blanche, John of Gaunt's first wife, in 1369 or 1370, though the poem itself suggests genuinely friendly feelings for the man in black. He wrote a late addition to the Monk's Tale in order to include an account of "worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne," the father of John of Gaunt's second wife, Constance. To this gentle lady the saintly Constance of the Man of Lawe's Tale may be a further allusion. Certain words of advice in the Phisicien's Tale to "maistresses " "that lordes doghtres han in governaunce" have been taken to be directed toward Katherine Swynford, who was a governess in the Duke's household and who became his third wife.
Very possibly she was Chaucer's sister-in-law; but at any rate the passage implies considerable familiarity. As to what personal allusions should be read into such poems as the Compleynte of Mars, the Hous of Fame, and the Parlement of Foules, we remain practically in ignorance as yet. Various suggestions and interpretations have been made, but none seems to be wholly satisfactory. Possibly here are to be found the results of royal patronage, as also in the Legende of Good Women. And Chaucer had some return, not only from the king but also from John of Gaunt, who gave him a pension of ten pounds in 1374, and in 1377 an annuity of twenty marks more. It is a strange fact that John of Gaunt neglected to mention Chaucer in his will, but its importance may be overestimated. We may be sure that the poet was on terms of intimacy with several figures at court; his personality, however reserved, was calculated to win him affectionate regard from high as well as low.
Chaucer's marriage, probably as early as 1366, further connected him with court life. From the position of domicella to the Queen, Philippa Chaucer went into the service of the Lancaster household, and received from that source an annual pension of ten pounds in 1372, and in 1373 six silvergilt buttons and a "botoner" (button-hook). Further gifts are recorded up until 1382. Practically nothing is known of Chaucer's wedded life; and although his allusions to his fortunes in love and his experience in wedlock do not suggest felicity, these are often conventional jokes and need not be taken too seriously. After all, the bitterness in the Envoy to Bukton and in the remarks of the Merchant in the Caunterbury Tales, even if it is read literally, is offset by the optimism of the Franklin discoursing on the theme of marriage. Philippa died about 1387; and Chaucer was left, perhaps with two sons: Lewis and Thomas. Much of Chaucer's love-poetry is, of course, based merely on the conventional themes of his time, drawn often from French literature, which may have been brought more vividly to his attention by his interest in the affairs of court, where French influence was still strong even after the days of Edward III, and by his travels.
His standing at court undoubtedly gave him the opportunities to go abroad, which meant so much for the development of his art. His early training was fostered under French influence; but later, diplomatic missions took him also to Italy, where he went just possibly as early as 1368 certainly in 1372 or 1373. The chance of meeting Petrarch on one of these journeys he may actually have enjoyed, but at any rate he certainly made an extensive acquaintance with Italian literature, bringing back with him, no doubt, plenty of manuscripts of which he later made good use. His traveling reveals a practical ability; for in 1372 he was commissioned with one James Provan and John de Mari to treat with the duke, citizens, and merchants of Genoa for the purpose of choosing an English port which the Genoese might use as a commercial base. In 1377 he went to Flanders on secret negotiations; and in 1378, with various other men, he went abroad to arrange a marriage between Richard II and a daughter of the king of France. In 1378, also, business took him again to Italy, where he visited Barnabo Visconti, Lord of Milan, and became sufficiently interested in that vivid gentleman to give his story later in the Monk's Tale.
Because of this practical ability he had the chance to associate with other classes of his time. In 1374, when he was living in a house over Aldgate (one of the city gates) , he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the Port of London. In 1376 he received from the king a grant of over £71, which was the fine imposed on a certain man who shipped wool without paying the duty for it. In 1382 he was also made Comptroller of the Petty Customs in the Port of London, and was allowed to turn over the duties of that office to a deputy. In 1385, when apparently he was living in Greenwich, he was made Justice of the Peace for Kent, and in the next year he sat in Parliament as a Knight of the Shire for the county. Although through a change in the political situation Chaucer lost his Comptrollership of the Customs in 1386, he was again favored in 1389 when he was made Clerk of the King's Works to supervise the royal properties at Westminster, the Tower of London, and various manors, with a salary of two shillings a day or about thirty-six pounds a year. For these tasks he was again allowed a deputy. In 1390 he was selected to be on a commission to repair the banks of the Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich; he managed the erection of the scaffolding for the jousts in Smithfield; he was appointed a forester of North Petherton Park, Somersetshire; and he was ordered to get workmen and materials for the repair of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Altogether his income from these duties must have been very substantial, and the variety of his work testifies to his efficiency in public employment.
The opportunity of meeting and dealing with all sorts and conditions of men would be appreciated to the full by a man of Chaucer's temperament. Fortunately the names of a few of those who were his friends have come down to us. Perhaps it may be a son of Sir Lewis Clifford that is addressed in the "Lowis" of the Astrolabe, instead of a son of Chaucer as has ordinarily been supposed. Sir Lewis's daughter Elizabeth was married to Sir Philip la Vache, to whom is dedicated Trouthe. And when the French poet Eustache Deschamps sent his verses asking Chaucer to cull some of the flowers of French rhetoric, Clifford himself brought the poem to England. To this poem, beginning "O Socrates plains de philosophic" and terming Chaucer a "grant translateur,"
Chaucer perhaps responded by borrowing heavily from Deschamps for the Legende of Good Women. There are other names linked with the English poet's in various ways for which we cannot pause: Sir John Clanvowe and Richard Morel. To Ralph Strode, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and to John Gower the poet, Chaucer dedicated his Troiliis in a manner half flippant, half serious. In 1378, when Chaucer was in Italy, Gower acted for him in the capacity of attorney; and perhaps, when he came back, Chaucer brought a fresh manuscript of the Filostrato, which aroused many a discussion between the poets as to literary technique, and as to what Criseyde was in Benoit and Boccaccio and what she ought to be. A quarrel between Chaucer and Gower has been read into the supposed disparaging allusion to the Confessio Amantis in the introduction to the Man of Lawe's prologue and into the fact that in later versions of the Confessio a passage praising Chaucer does not appear. But, at most, this exchange of courtesies reveals in the two poets a difference in sense of humor.
Other items concerning Chaucer's circle of acquaintances we must infer from his activities: In 1375 he received the responsibility of being ward to Edmond Staplegate of Kent (and for his trouble received £104); in 1380 he was somehow concerned with what appears to have been a case of abduction, and in which one Cecilia Chaumpaigne released to him all rights of action against him; in 1386 he testified in the Scrope-Grosvenor suit as to the right of Sir Richard Scrope to bear a certain coat of arms.
In the miscellaneous information of this kind that presents itself in relation to Chaucer, one fact is especially clear. The events of his life are hardly more than those of the average man,—to-day we should say, the average business man. Although he had fair financial success, he went through difficulties that forced him to make appeals for money, as in the hint at the end of the Parlement, and, again, in the Envoy to Scogan and the Compleinte to his Purs. He was thrice robbed, in Kent, at Westminster, and at Hatcham, in 1390.
How far the shifting favor of the men in power in the nineties could affect his fortunes is not entirely clear. Before that time in choosing his guildsmen for the Prologe of the Caunterbury Tales he was careful not to offend Mayor Brembre by taking any who were out of political favor. The protection of John of Gaunt does not stay by him apparently. In 1393 he was without public employment; in 1394 the king bestowed on him a grant of twenty pounds a year for life; in 1395 he was for some reason forced to make various loans; in 1398 he was sued. The Compleinte to his Purs of 1399 seems to have been responsible for the gift of a yearly sum of forty marks, and he was thus enabled to leave Greenwich and its "shrewes" to take a house in the garden of the Chapel of St. Mary, Westminster, near the Abbey. Here on the twenty-fifth of October, 1400, the poet died, and he was buried in the Abbey, where in 1556 a tomb of gray marble was erected in his memory.
All the details of his life show that Chaucer was in many respects a typical figure, occupied with the normal cares and duties of his time. Perhaps many of the official posts came his way as a kind of royal patronage, from the burdens of which he might occasionally be relieved by a deputy. But that he was versatile is evident from the manifold tasks that were imposed on him from which he was not relieved. Doubtless many people knew him simply as an unusually able man of affairs who happened to have a delightful and endearing nature. And all the while, as a spectator, Chaucer had a remarkable opportunity to observe the whole of what constituted the world of his time, giving the subjects of his attention no impression that they were specimens under the glass of an analyst, but nevertheless going about with an active step and an inquiring eye, whether on diplomatic missions or in the bustle of London. The pageant of life that moved about him was necessarily as inclusive as his own pilgrimage: knights and squires, monks and nuns, pardoners and clerks, franklins and merchants, craftsmen and ecclesiasts, men and women of all types, he could know them all, and he was undoubtedly a good ''mixer." His "companye" was the company of all mankind.
A word may be added as to his later reputation. Full appreciation of his powers from the general public naturally did not come in his own day, but it followed soon after with the testimonials of Lydgate, Hoccleve, the ''Scottish Chaucerians," and others. To these writers Chaucer was a "maister." The early printers brought out editions of his works together with certain spurious productions which were for a long time attributed to him. With the changes in the development of the English language the proper method of pronouncing Middle English was forgotten; small wonder, then, that Dryden found in Chaucer's verse merely the sweetness of a rude Scotch tune! Urry, in his edition (1721), suggested that many of the printed final e's should be pronounced; and this idea was carried further by the scholar Tyrwhitt, whose edition appeared in 1775 with a mass of useful information together with remarkably careful editing. Anything like complete understanding of Chaucer's language, however, did not come until the study of Professor Francis J. Child in 1862, "Observations upon the Language of Chaucer," extended and amplified by many other scholars of to-day.
The Chronology of Chaucer's Works
The dates assigned to Chaucer's works are only approximate. In most cases the evidence for the date is based on style, source, or assumed allusions to historical events. The following list includes only the more important works:
1369-70. Book of the Duchesse.
Many of the shorter minor poems, such as the A. B. C, the Compleynte unto Pite, part of the Romaunt of the Rose, and the Compleynte of Mars, belong to the early period.
1377-83. The translation of Boethius.
Fortune, Former Age, etc.
1378. Or possibly 1383-84. Hous of Fame.
1381. Parlement of Foules.
Anelida and Arcite.
Palamon and Arcite.
1381-84. Troilus and Criseyde.
Wordes unto Adam.
1386. Beginning of the Legende of Good Women.
1386-90. Trouthe.
1387-1400. The Canterbury Tales.
Several of the tales were earlier pieces of work: e. g. the Knight's Tale (as Palamon and Arcite), parts of the Monk's Tale, possibly the Clerk's Tale,and the Second Nun's Tale.
1391-92. Treatise on the Astrolabe.
1394. Reworking of the Legende of Good Women.
Lenvoy a Scogan.
1396. Lenvoy a Bukton.
1399. Compleinte to his Purs.
Other works of Chaucer now lost are the Book of the Leoun, the Wreched Engendring of Mankinde, and Origines upon the Maudeleyne, of which we know, in part, from the prologue of the Legende of Good Women and, in part, from the “retraccioun" at the end of the Parson's Tale.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Selections from Chaucer, edited by William Allan Neilson and Howard Rollin Patch. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
