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CHAUCER'S LIFE 1er­ >nd Chaucer's Life was written for The River­ some seventy miles northeast of London. 'ho side Chaucer by Martin M Crow and Vir­ The city exported wool to Flanders and nd ' ginia E. Leland. It has been slightly imported wine from France. The family ed condensed and occasionally revised for were vintners, wholesale dealers in wine, e. use in this volume. and also held positions in the customs le serviqe. As. often happened in medieval ,t IN COMPARISON with other major English families, _they ·did not always use the same n writers of his time, Chaucer left abundant · surname. Geoffrey Chaucer's paternal records of his life. We have no official documents for great-grandfather was. called Andrew de Dinnington; the life of the author of Piers Plowman or for the Andrew's son, Robert Malyn le Chaucer; Robert's Gawain-poet; records of Gower's life are few and son, John Chaucer. The. name Chaucer, from the confused. But Chaucer, because he was a public ser­ French, meant maker of shoes or hose; but none of vant, can be traced in the records of his offices. Pub­ Chaucer's ancestors was, so far as is known, was a lication of Chaucer Life-Records in 1966 brought shoemaker or a hosier. , together the 493 known items and provided a s.ub­ By the late thirteenth century Robert Chaucer, the stantial basis for a Chaucer biography. These records grandfather, and his wife Mary had settled in Lon­ of official acts rarely touch on his personal affairs and don. Prosperous people, they continued to hold prop­ never mention his poetry; they do not give the year of erty in Ipswich. In 1324, John, son of Robert and his birth or the e~act date of his marriage or death. Mary, was kidnapped by an aunt, who intended to But they do document a useful and eventful life. marry him to her daughter in order to keep the Chaucer was a soldier, an esquire of the king's Ipswich holdings in the family. Instead, the twelve­ household, a member of diplomatic missions, a con­ year-old boy was freed; the aunt and her accomplices troller of customs, a justice of the peace, a member of went to prison and paid a heavy fine, proof that they Parliament, the clerk of the king's works in charge of were wealthy. building and repair at ten royal residences, and a for­ John later married Agnes, daughter of one John est official. On the king's business he traveled over Copton and niece of Ramo de Copton, "moneyer" at much of southeast England, to France a number of the mint in the Tower of London. The couple contin­ times, to Spain, and at least twice to Italy. Chaucer ued to accumulate property. After Ramo's death in yet found time to write thousands of lines, among 1349, a plague year, Agnes inherited, with Ramo's them some c;,fthe best poetry in English. other London property, twenty-four shops and two gardens. In the same year, John Chaucer inherited The Chaucer Family property from his half brother, Thomas Reyron. John and Agnes were, then, owners of substantial London Chaucer came from a well-to-do merchant family property. John Chaucer was a vintner, as his father, that had lived for several generations in Ipswich, stepfather, and half brother had been; like his father, XIII XIV INTRODUCTION stepfather, and cousins, he also held positions in the tively ended the possibility that a nephew of his could customs service. gain the crown. But John de la Pole and, after him, Geoffrey Chaucer's parentage is clearly estab­ three of his brothers continued to assert the claim lished; he described himself in a deed of 19 June until the last of them died in about 1539, a prisoner in 1381 as "son of John Chaucer, vintner, of London." the Tower of London, thus ending the line of But the date and place of his birth are not precisely Chaucer's male descendants. known. For the date, the clearest evidence comes from his deposition of 15 October 1386 in the famous Chaucer.'s Early Home and Youth Scrope-Grosvenor trial (discussed below). There he testified that he was forty years old "et plus" (and Though Chaucer's birthplace is unknown, it is known more), making the date of his birth no later than that his parents, Agnes and John Chaucer, held prop­ 1345. Some witnesses in that case guessed inaccu­ erty in Vintry Ward, one of the two wealthiest wards rately at their ages; but Chaucer added a verifiable in medieval London, and in what the sixteenth-cen­ statement that supports his testimony. He said that tury antiquary John Stow called "the middes and hart he had borne arms twenty-seven years; he had in fact of the city." One Chaucer "tenement" (property hold­ served in France in the campaign of 1359. It is usual, ing, not tenement in the modern sense) lay on then, to accept a birth date in the early 1340s. Thames Street, which ran parallel to the river and a Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century records tell · block north. It was largely inhabited by vintners, something of Chaucer's descendants. A London law­ since wine landed at the quays on the Thames could suit of Michaelmas term, 1396, identified "Thomas easily be brought to their cellars for storage. Some Chaucer, esquire~ son of Geoffrey Chaucer, esquire." of London's leading merchants, among the richest Additional evidence that Thomas was the son of men in the city, lived 'in the ward as well. Two of Geoffrey rests upon a statement by Dr. Gascoigne, them, John Stodeye and Henry Picard, served as may­ . chancellor of Oxford and a neighbor of Thomas, and ors and lent thousands of pounds to the king. John on the use by Thomas of a seal with Geoffrey Chaucer's name is associated with theirs in such I,. Chaucer's coat ofarms and name. A retinue roll com­ records as wills and deeds. Nobles as well as mer­ piled at Carmarthen Castle in 1403 lists Thomas chants lived in Vintry Ward. Queen Philippa owned Chaucer with Lewis Chaucer. Lewis seems to have a dwelling there c:alled Tower Royal; after her death it been the lyte Lowys my sane of the tendir age of ten passed to her daughter-in-law, mother of Richard II, year for whom in 1391 the poet composed A Trea­ Joan of Kent, who took refuge there in 1381. Among tise on the Astrolabe. Two presumed daughters of the people living nearby were Gascon wine mer-~ Geoffrey Chaucer are also sometimes m_entioned, chants, an Italian family, and Flemings; London in Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking in 1381, and Chaucer's boyhood was a cosmopolitan city. Agnes, ati attendant at the coronation of Henry IV; Wills of neighbors, deeds, and inventories give but the records do not clearly identify them as daugh­ some idea of the probable plan and furnishings of ters of the poet. the Chaucer home. Above the cellars were the hall Nothing more is known of Lewis, Agnes, or Eliz­ (not a passageway, but the principal room), the abeth, but many records attest to the distinguished kitchen, a latrine, and upper rooms called ,"solars." career ofThomas Chaucer, as he became one of the They were furnished comfortably with hangings for wealthiest and most influential men in England. the walls and cushions for the benches, and such lux­ Enriched by marriage to a great heiress and by annu­ uries as heavy silver pitchers and cups engraved with ities from John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Henry IV, the owners' coats of arms. he served as chief butler to four kings, envoy to No school records for Chaucer have survived, but France, and, often, speaker of the House of Com­ it is possible to account for some of the knowledge of mons. His daughter Alice married as her third hus­ Latin classics shown in his works. London merchants' band William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk; their sons in his time could receive a good education. Near grandson John, Earl of Lincoln, was designated heir the Chaucer home on Thames Street. were three to the throne of his uncle, Richard III. Richard's schools, among them the almonry school of St. Paul's defeat and death at Bosworth Field in 1485 effec- Cathedral, which has preserved the inventory of books CHAUCER'S LIFE ·,xv left in 1358 by a schoolmaster, William de Ravenstone, prisoner, hoped to take the city ofReims and to be for the use of the pupils. As.well as Latin grammars, crowned king of France in Reims Cathedral, tradi­ treatises on theology, and a few music textbooks, there tional site of the coronation of French.