Chapter XXIV Conclusion
“Although the style [of Chaucer] for the antiquity may distaste you, yet as under a bitter and rough rind there lieth a delicate kernel of conceit and sweet invention.”—Henry Peacham, “The Compleat Gentleman,” 1622
Into this state of things suddenly came the “Black Death” of 1348-9, the most terrible plague that ever raged in Christendom. This was at once hailed by moralists as God’s long-delayed punishment upon a society rotten to the core. At first the world was startled into seriousness. Many of the clergy fought the plague with that self-sacrificing devotion which, in all denominations, a large fraction of the Christian clergy has always shown at similar moments. But there is no evidence to show that the priests died in sensibly larger proportions than their flocks; and many contemporary chroniclers expressly record that the sick were commonly deserted even by their spiritual pastors. After the first shock was over, the multitude relapsed into a licence proportionate to their first terror—a reaction described most vividly by Boccaccio, but with equal emphasis by other chroniclers. Many good men, in their bitter disappointment, complained that the world was grown more careless and irreligious than before the Plague; but this can hardly be the verdict of most modern students who look carefully into the mass of surviving evidence.
To begin with, the Black Death dealt a fatal blow to that old vicious system of boy-rectors. Half the population perished in the plague, half the livings went suddenly begging; and in the Church, as on the farm, labour was at a sudden premium. Such curates as survived dropped naturally into the vacant rectories; and, side by side with Acts of Parliament designed to keep the labourer down to his old wages, we find archi-episcopal decrees against the “unbridled cupidity” of the clergy, who by their pernicious example encouraged this demand of the lower classes for higher wages. The incumbent, who ought to be only too thankful that God has spared his life, takes advantage of the present stress to desert his parish and run after Mass-money.287 Chaplains, again, are “not content with their competent and accustomed salaries,” which, as a matter of fact, were sometimes no higher than the wages of a common archer or a farm bailiff. But the economic movement was irresistible; and the Registers from this time forward show an extraordinary increase in the number of priests instituted to livings. In the same lists where the priests were formerly only thirty-seven per cent. of the whole, their proportion rises during and after the Pestilence to seventy-four per cent. The Black Death did in one year what the Ecumenical Council of Lyons had conspicuously failed to do, though summoned by a great reforming Pope and inspired by such zealous disciplinarians as St. Bonaventura and his fellow-Franciscan, Eudes Rigaud of Rouen.
Again, the shock of the Pestilence, the complete desertion of so many poor country benefices by the clergy, and the scandal generated by this quarrel over wages between chaplains and their employers, naturally threw the people back very much upon their own religious resources. The lay control over parish finances in 15th-century England, which, limited as it was, still excites the wonder of modern Catholicism, probably dated from this period. Men no longer gave much to monks, or even (in comparison with past times) to friars; but they now devoted their main religious energies to beautifying and endowing their own parish churches, which became far larger and more richly furnished in the 15th century than in the 13th. Moreover, Abbot Gasquet is probably right in attributing to the Black Death the rise of a new tone in orthodox religious feeling, which “was characterized by a [more] devotional and more self-reflective cast than previously.” There was every probability of such a religious change; all earnest men had seen in the plague the chastening hand of God; and in the end it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which were exercised thereby.
But this bracing process could not possibly, under the circumstances of the time, work entirely on the lines of orthodox conservatism. When we count up the forces that produced Wycliffism—the notorious corruption of the papal court, its unpopular French leanings, the vast sums drawn from England by foreign ecclesiastics, the unpopularity of the clergy at home, the growth of the English language and national spirit—among all these causes we must not forget to note that Wycliffe and his contemporaries, in their early manhood, had struggled through a year of horrors almost beyond modern conception. They had seen the multitude run wild, first with religious fanaticism and then with blasphemous despair; had watched all this volcanic matter cool rapidly down into dead lava; and were left to count one more abortive reform, and re-echo the old despairing “How long, O Lord!” “Sad to say, it seemeth to many that we are fallen into those unhappy times wherein the lights of heaven seem to be turned to darkness, and the stars of heaven are fallen upon the earth.... Our priests are now become blind, dark, and beclouded... they are now darker than the laity.... Lo, in these days there is neither shaven crown on their head, nor religious decency in their garments, nor modesty in their words, nor temperance in their food, nor shamefastness in their gestures, nor even chastity in their deeds.”288 Such is the cry of an orthodox contemporary of Wycliffe’s; and words like these explain why Wycliffe himself became unorthodox against his will. If he had died at the age of fifty or thereabouts, towards the beginning of Chaucer’s business career, posterity would have known him only as the most distinguished English philosopher of his time. The part which he played in later life was to a great extent forced upon him by the strong practical sense which underlay his speculative genius. Others saw the faults of religion as clearly, and exposed them as unmercifully, as he. But, while they were content to end with a pious “Well, God mend all!” Wycliffe was one of those in whom such thoughts lead to action: “Nay, by God, Donald, we must help Him to mend it!” No doubt there were errors in his teaching, and much more that was premature; otherwise the authorities could never have managed so nearly to exterminate Lollardy. On the other hand, it is equally certain that Wycliffe gave a voice to feelings widespread and deeply rooted in the country. Orthodox chroniclers record their amazement at the rapid spread of his doctrines. “In those days,” says Knighton, with picturesque exaggeration, “that sect was held in the greatest honour, and multiplied so that you could scarce meet two men by the way whereof one was not a disciple of Wycliffe.” Walsingham speaks of the London citizens in general as “unbelieving towards God and the traditions of their fathers, supporters of the Lollards.”289 In 1395 the Wycliffite opinions were openly pleaded before Parliament by two privy councillors, a powerful Northamptonshire landlord, and the brother of the Earl of Salisbury; the bishops had to recall Richard II. in hot haste from Ireland to deal with this open propaganda of heresy. Ten years after Chaucer’s death, again, a Bill was presented by the Commons for the wholesale disendowment of bishoprics and greater monasteries, “because of priests and clerks that now have full nigh destroyed all the houses of alms within the realm.” The petitioners pleaded that, apart from the enormous gain to the finances of the State, and to a proposed new system of almshouses, it would be a positive advantage to disendow idle and luxurious prelates and monks, “the which life and evil example of them hath been so long vicious that all the common people, both lords and simple commons, be now so vicious and infected through boldship of their sin, that scarce any man dreadeth God nor the Devil.” The King and the Prince of Wales, however, would not listen either to this proposal or to those upon which the petitioners afterwards fell back, that criminous clerks should be dealt with by the King’s courts, and that the recent Act for burning Lollards should be repealed.290
The Lollard movement in the Parliament of 1395 was led by Chaucer’s old fellow-ambassador, Sir Richard Stury, the “valiant ancient knight” of Froissart’s chronicles; and Chaucer himself has often been hailed, however falsely, as a Wycliffite. The mere fact that he speaks disparagingly of the clergy simply places him side by side with St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, and St. Catherine of Siena, whose language on this subject is sometimes far stronger than his. As a fellow-protégé of John of Gaunt, Chaucer must often have met Wycliffe in that princely household; he sympathized, as so many educated Englishmen did, with many of the reformer’s opinions; but all the evidence is against his having belonged in any sense to the Lollard sect. The testimony of the poet’s own writings has been excellently summed up in Chap. VI. of Professor Lounsbury’s “Studies in Chaucer.” In early life our hero seems to have accepted as a matter of course the popular religion of his time. His hymn to the Virgin even outbids the fervour of its French original; and in the tales of miracles which he versified he has taken no pains to soften down touches which would now be received with scepticism alike by Protestants and by the papal commissioners for the revision of the Breviary. (Tales of the “Second Nun,” “Man of Law,” and “Prioress.”) Even then he was probably among the many who disbelieved in tales of Jewish ritual murder, though not sufficiently to deter the artist in him from welcoming the exquisite pathos of the little scholar’s death. But his mind was naturally critical; and it was further widened by an acquaintance with many cities and many men. The merchants and scholars of Italy were notorious for their free-thinking; and we may see in the unpriestly priest Froissart the sceptical habit of mind which was engendered in a 14th-century “intellectual” by a life spent in courts and among men of the world. It is quite natural, therefore, to find Chaucer scoffing openly at several small superstitions, which in many less sceptical minds lived on for centuries—the belief in Arthur and Lancelot, in fairies, in magic, in Virgilian miracles, in pagan oracles and gods, in alchemy, and even in judicial astrology. These last two points, indeed, supply a very close analogy to his religious views. It is difficult to avoid concluding, from his very intimate acquaintance with the details of the pursuit, that he had himself once been bitten with the craze for the philosopher’s stone. Again, if we only looked at his frequent poetical allusions to judicial astrology, we should be driven to conclude that he was a firm believer in the superstition; but in the prose “Astrolabe,” one of his latest and most serious writings, he expressly repudiates any such belief.
The analogy from this to his expressions on religious subjects is very close. At first sight we might judge him to have accepted to the last, though with growing reserve and waning enthusiasm, the whole contemporary system of doctrines and practices which Wycliffe in later life so unreservedly condemned. But one or two passages offer startling proof to the contrary. Take the Prologue to the “Legend of Good Women”—
| A thousand timës have I heard men tell | |
| That there is joy in heaven and pain in hell, | |
| And I accordë well that it is so. | |
| But natheless yet wot I well also | |
| That there is none dwelling in this countree | |
| That either hath in heaven or hell y-be, | |
| He may of it none other wayës witen | [know |
| But as he hath heard said or found it written, | |
| For by assay there may no man it prove. |
And, again, the reflections which he adds upon the death of Arcite, without the least authority from the original of Boccaccio—
| His spirit changèd house, and wentë there, | |
| As I came never, I can not tell where: | |
| Therefore I stint, I am no divinister; | [stop |
| Of soulës find I not in this register, | |
| Nor list me those opinions to tell | |
| Of them, though that they writen where they dwell. |
It is difficult to believe that the man who gratuitously recorded those two personal impressions, without the least excuse of artistic necessity, was a perfectly orthodox Catholic. It is more than possible that he would not have accepted in cold blood all the consequences of his words; but we may see plainly in him that sceptical, mocking spirit to which the contemporary Sacchetti constantly addresses himself in his sermons. This was indeed one of the most obvious results of the growing unpopularity of the hierarchy, intensified by the shock of the Black Death. That great crisis had specially stimulated the two religious extremes. Churches grew rapidly in size and in splendour of furniture, while great lords built themselves oratories from which they could hear Mass without getting out of bed. The Pope decreed a new service for a new Saint’s Day, “full of mysteries, stuffed with indulgences,” at a time when even reasonable men began to complain that the world had too many. Richard II. presented his Holiness with an elaborate “Book of the Miracles of Edward late King of England”—that is, of the weak and vicious Edward II., whose attempted canonization was as much a political job as those of Lancaster and Arundel, Scrope and Henry VI.; and this popular canonization ran so wild that men feared lest the crowd of new saintlings should throw Christ and His Apostles into the shade. On the other side there was the “new theology,” which had grown up, with however little justification, from the impulse given by orthodox and enthusiastic friars—pantheistic doctrines, minimizing the reality of sin; denials of eternal punishment; attempts to find a heaven for good pagans and Jews.291 Even in the 13th century, willingly or unwillingly, the friars had raised similar questions; a Minister-General had been scandalized to hear them debating in their schools “whether God existed”; and Berthold of Ratisbon had felt bound to warn his hearers against the subtle sophism that souls, when once they have been thoroughly calcined, must reach a point at which anything short of hell-fire would feel uncomfortably chilly. This is the state of mind into which Chaucer, like so many of his contemporaries, seems to have drifted. He had no reasoned antagonism to the Church dogmas as a whole; on the contrary, he was keenly sensible to the beauty of much that was taught. But the humourist in him was no less tickled by many popular absurdities; and he had enough philosophy to enjoy the eternal dispute between free-will and predestination. As a boy, he had knelt unthinkingly; as a broken old man, he was equally ready to bow again before Eternal Omnipotence, and to weep bitterly for his sins. But, in his years of ripe experience and prosperity and conscious intellectual power, we must think of him neither among the devout haunters of shrines and sanctuaries nor among those who sat more austerely at the feet of Wycliffe’s Poor Priests; rather among the rich and powerful folk who scandalized both Catholics and Lollards by taking God’s name in vain among their cups, and whetting their worldly wit on sacred mysteries. We get glimpses of this in many quarters—in the “Roman de la Rose,” for instance, but still more in Sacchetti’s sermons and the poem of “Piers Plowman.” Here the poet complains, after speaking of the “gluttony and great oaths” that were then fashionable—
| “But if they carpen of Christ, these clerks and these layfolk | [discuss |
| At the meat in their mirth, when minstrels be still, | |
| Then tell they of the Trinity a tale or twain | |
| And bringen forth a bald reason, and take Bernard to witness, | |
| And put forth a presumption to prove the sooth. | |
| Thus they drivel at their dais the Deity to know, | |
| And gnawen God with the gorge when the gut is full... | |
| I have heard high men eating at the table | |
| Carpen, as they clerkës were, of Christ and His might | |
| And laid faults upon the Father that formed us all, | |
| And carpen against clerkës crabbed words:— | |
| ‘Why would our Saviour suffer such a worm in His bliss | |
| That beguiled the Woman and the Man after, | |
| Through which wiles and words they wenten to hell, | |
| And all their seed for their sin the same death suffered? | |
| Here lieth your lore,’ these lords ’gin dispute. | |
| ‘Of that ye clerks us kenneth of Christ by the Gospel... | [teach |
| Why should we, that now be, for the works of Adam | |
| Rot and be rent? reason would it never...’ | |
| Such motives they move, these masters in their glory, | |
| And maken men to misbelieve that muse much on their words.”292 |
More unorthodox still were those whom Walsingham would have made partly responsible for the horrors of the Peasants’ Revolt. “Some traced the cause of these evils to the sins of the great folk, whose faith in God was feigned; for some of them (it is said) believed that there was no God, no sacrament of the altar, no resurrection from the dead, but that as a beast dies so also there is an end of man.”
There is, of course, no such dogmatic infidelity in Chaucer. Even if he had felt it, he was too wise to put it in writing; as Professor Lounsbury justly says of the two passages quoted above, “the wonder is not that they are found so infrequently, but that they are found at all.” Yet there was also in Chaucer a true vein of religious seriousness. “Troilus and Criseyde” was written not long before the “Legend of Good Women”; and as at the outset of the later poem he goes out of his way to scoff, so at the end of the “Troilus” he is at equal pains to make a profession of faith. The last stanza of all, with its invocation to the Trinity and to the Virgin Mary, might be merely conventional; medieval literature can show similar sentiments in very strange contexts, and part of this very stanza is translated from Dante. But however Chaucer may have loved to let his wit play about sacred subjects “at meat in his mirth when minstrels were still,” we can scarcely fail to recognize another side to his mind when we come to the end of those “Troilus” stanzas which are due merely to Boccaccio, and begin upon the translator’s own epilogue—
O youngë freshë folkës, he or she
In which ay love up-groweth with your age,
Repair ye home from worldly vanitee...
“Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played out.” But, though we have nothing of the reformer in our composition; though we are for the most part only too frankly content to take the world as we find it; though, even in their faith, our fellow-Christians make us murmur, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” though we most love to write of Vanity Fair, yet at the bottom of our heart we do desire a better country, and confess sometimes with our mouth that we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Indeed, if our poet had not been keenly sensible of the beauty of holiness, then the less Chaucer he! As it is, he stands the most Shakespearian figure in English literature, after Shakespeare himself. Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety. We venerate him for his years, and he daily startles us with the eternal freshness of his youth. All springtide is here, with its green leaves and singing-birds; aptly we read him stretched at length in the summer shade, yet almost more delightfully in winter, with our feet on the fender; for he smacks of all familiar comforts—old friends, old books, old wine, and even, by a proleptic miracle, old cigars. “Here,” said Dryden, “is God’s plenty;” and Lowell inscribed the first leaf of his Chaucer with that promise which the poet himself set upon the enchanted gate of his “Parliament of Fowls”—
Through me men go into the blissful place
Of the heart’s heal and deadly woundës’ cure;
Through me men go unto the well of Grace,
Where green and lusty May doth ever endure;
This is the way to all good aventure;
Be glad, thou Reader, and thy sorrow off-cast,
All open am I, pass in, and speed thee fast!
Footnotes
1 See Jusserand, “Hist. Litt.,” L. III., ch. i., and the Preface to his “Vie Nomade”; also chap. xix. of Prof. Tout’s volume in the “Political Hist. of Engd.” It is nearly one hundred and fifty years since Tyrwhitt showed, by abundant quotations, the stages by which English fought its way to final recognition as the national language.
2 Froissart, ed. Luce, i., 359, 402. There was in 1444 a similar attempt to keep up Latin and French among the Benedictine monks, since from ignorance of one or the other language “they frequently fall into shame.” Reynerus, “De Antiq. Benedict,” p. 129.
3 “He chalenged in Englyssh tunge” (“Chronicles of London,” ed. Kingsford, p. 43, where the exact form of words used by Henry is recorded; cf. Dymock’s challenge, ibid., p. 49).
4 It is difficult to go altogether with Prof. Skeat in his repudiation of the sense commonly attached to this phrase (note on Prologue, i., 126). Chaucer seems to say that the Prioress (a) knew French, but (b) only French of Stratford, just as he explains that the parish clerk (a) could dance, but (b) only after the School of Oxenford. For this Oxford dancing, see Dr. Rashdall’s “Universities of Europe,” ii., 672.
5 For the most interesting account of this fusion, see Jusserand, “Hist. Litt.,” p. 236. (Bk. III., ch. i.)
6 “English Garner,” 15th century, ed. A. W. Pollard, p. 240; J. R. Green’s “Short History,” p. 291. “And one of them named Sheffield, a mercer, came into a house and asked for meat, and especially he asked after eggs; and the goodwife answered that she could speak no French, and the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. And then at last another said, that he would have ‘eyren’; then the goodwife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren?”
7 See the cases given in full by Thorold Rogers, “Oxford City Documents,” pp. 168, 170, 173, and H. Rashdall’s “Universities of Europe,” ii., 363, 369, 403.
8 See the articles by Prof. Maitland and Mr. A. L. Smith in vol. ii. of “Social England.”
9 Cf. Reynerus, “De Antiq. Benedict,” pp. 107, 136, 425, 468, 595. The pages in italics contain startling lists of defaulting abbeys and priories.
10 See Gower’s “Vox Clamantis,” Bk. III., c. 28, for a description of the worldly aims of the 14th-century universities.
11 It seems extremely probable, to say the least, that the poem of Piers Plowman was by more than one hand; but, in any case, the authors were contemporaries, and seem to have held very much the same views; so that it is still possible for most purposes of historical argument to quote the poem under the traditional name of Langland.
12 Bartholomæus Anglicus (Steele, “Mediæval Lore,” 1905), p. 86.
13 Besant quotes accounts recording (inter alia) a gift of wine to the “Chaucer” on the occasion of a mayoral procession, but apparently without realizing its significance. (“Mediæval London,” i., 303.)
14 Mr. V. B. Redstone, in Athenæum, No. 4087, p. 233, and East Anglian Daily Times, April 8, 1908, p. 5, col. 7. It is not my aim, in this chapter, to trouble the reader with discussions of doubtful points, but rather to present what is certainly known, or may safely be inferred about Chaucer’s life.
15 At Wycombe, too, “every citizen from twelve years old could serve on juries for the town business.” Mrs. Green, “Town Life,” i., 184. I shall have occasion in the next chapter to note how early men began life in those days.
16 Pauli, “Pictures of Old England,” chap. v.
17 “Life Records,” iv., 232. The industry of Mr. Walter Rye has collected a large number of documentary notices which establish a probable connection of some kind between Chaucer and Norfolk; but the evidence seems insufficient as yet to prove Mr. Rye’s thesis that the poet was born at Lynn; and in default of such definite evidence, it is safer to presume that he was born in the Thames Street house. (Athenæum, March 7, 1908; cf. “Life Records,” iii., 131.)
18 At Rouen, Caudebec, and Gisors, for instance, are very exact counterparts of the Walbrook, except that the overhanging houses are a century or two later, and proportionately larger.
19 The illustration on page 177 represents a similar royal banquet—the celebrated Peacock Feast of Lynn. Robert Braunche, mayor, entertained Edward there circa 1350, and caused the event to be immortalized on his funeral monument. Henry Picard himself was King’s Butler at Lynn in 1350 (Rye, l. c.).
20 Fitzstephen, in Stow, p. 119.
21 See “The Hanseatic Steelyard,” in Pauli’s “Pictures,” chap. vi.
22 “Œuvres,” ed. Buchon, vol. iii., pp. 479 ff.; cf. Lydgate’s account of his own schooldays, in “Babees Book,” E.E.T.S., p. xliii.
23 Prof. Hales, in “Dict. Nat. Biog.”
24 See the Queen’s vow before the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War, in Wright’s “Political Poems,” R.S., p. 23.
| “Alors dit la reine: ‘Je sais bien que piecha | [il y a longtemps |
| Que suis grosse d’enfant, que mon corps sentit la, | |
| Encore n’a t-il guère qu’en mon corps se tourna; | |
| Et je voue et promets à Dieu qui me créa.... | |
| Que jamais fruit de moi de mon corps n’istera, | [sortira |
| Si m’en aurez menée au pays par delà.’” |
25 “P. Plowman,” B., x., 157, and xi., 402.
26 “Chronicles of London,” ed. Kingsford, p. 13.
27 These sums should be multiplied by about fifteen to bring them into terms of modern currency.
28 The poet’s grandmother was married at least thrice. Did he find hints for the “Wife of Bath” in his own family?
29 Quoted by Dr. Furnivall on p. xv. of his introduction to “Manners and Meals” (E.E.T.S., 1868).
30 This tunic would, no doubt, be a cote-hardie, or close-fitting bodice and flowing skirt in one line from neck to feet; it may be seen, buttons and all, on the statuette of Edward III.’s eldest daughter which adorns his tomb in Westminster Abbey.
31 “La Chevalerie,” Nouvelle Edition, pp. 342, 345 ff.
32 See the author’s “From St. Francis to Dante,” 2nd ed., pp. 350 ff.
33 That tales like these were read before ladies appears even from Bédier’s judicial remarks in Petit de Juleville’s “Hist. Litt.,” vol. ii., p. 93; and I have shown elsewhere that these represent rather less than the facts. (“From St. Francis to Dante,” 2nd ed., pp. 358, 359.) For girls’ behaviour, see T. Wright’s “Womankind in Western Europe,” pp. 158, 159; “Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour,” chap. 124 ff.; or “La Tour Landry,” E.E.T.S., pp. 2, 175 ff.
34 “House of Fame,” Bk. II., l. 108; “Troilus,” Bk. III., l. 41; Prof. Hales, in “Dict. Nat. Biog.”
35 “Life Records,” IV., Doc. No. 286.
36 “Dole,” “ration.”
37 “Mess of great meat,” i.e. from one of the staple dishes, excluding such special dishes as would naturally be reserved for the King or his guests.
38 The legal tariff in the City of London at this time for shoes of cordwain (Cordova morocco) was 6d., and for boots 3s. 6d. Cowhide shoes were fixed at 5d., and boots at 3s. Riley, “Liber Albus,” p. xc.
39 This was exactly the commons of a chaplain of the King’s chapel (“Life Records,” ii., 15). The Dean of the Chapel was dignified with “two darres of bread, one pitcher of wine, two messes de grosse from the kitchen, and one mess of roast.” Some of this, no doubt, would go to his servant. All the King’s household, from the High Steward downwards (who might be a knight banneret), were allowed these messes from the kitchen as well as their dinners in hall.
40 “This same year [1359] the King held royally St. George Feast at Windsor, there being King John of France, the which King John said in scorn that he never saw so royal a feast, and so costly, made with tallies of tree, without paying of gold and silver” (“Chronicles of London,” ed. 1827, p. 63). Queen Philippa received for this tournament a dress allowance of £3000 modern money (Nicolas, “Order of the Garter,” p. 41).
41 Froissart, ed. Luce, vol. v., p. 289, ff. Walsingham (“Hist. Ang.,” an. 1389) bears equally emphatic testimony to the good natural feeling existing between the English and French gentry.
42 “Knight of La Tour-Landry,” E.E.T.S., p. 30 (written in 1371-2).
43 Eustache Deschamps, whose life and writings often throw so much light on Chaucer’s, shows us the difficulties of married men at court, and says outright—
“Dix et sept ans ai au Satan servi
Au monde aussi et à la chair pourrie,
Oublié Dieu, et mon corps asservi
A cette cour, de tout vice nourrie.”
(Sarradin, “Eustache Deschamps,” pp. 92 ff., 104, 160.)
44 Quoted by Nicolas from Rymer’s “Fœdera” new ed., iii., 964.
45 E.E.T.S., “Stacions of Rome,” etc., p. 37. (The whole English poem describes a journey to Spain; but as yet the pilgrims are not out of the Channel.)
46 Froissart (Globe ed.), pp. 83, 134; “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 206, 213.
47 Dante, “Purg.,” iii., 49.
48 Sarradin, “Deschamps,” pp. 67, 69.
49 “Hist. of Eng. Lit.,” vol. ii., p. 57, trans. W. C. Robinson.
50 “Cant. Tales,” G., 57 ff. It will be noted how ill the phrase “son of Eve” suits the Nun’s mouth. In this, as in other cases, Chaucer simply worked one of his earlier poems into the framework of the “Canterbury Tales.”
51 See a correspondence in the Athenæum, Sept. 17 to Nov. 26, 1898 (Mr. C. H. Bromby and Mr. St. Clair Baddeley), and Mr. F. J. Mather’s two articles in “Modern Language Notes” (Baltimore), vol. xi., p. 210, and vol. xii., p. 1.
52 See Dr. Koch’s paper in “Chaucer Society Essays,” Pt. IV.
53 Froissart’s great poem of Méliador thus became anonymous for nearly five centuries, and was only identified by the most romantic chance in our own generation.—Darmesteter, “Froissart,” chap. xiii.
54 Athenæum, as above.
55 Froissart, ed. Buchon, i. 546, 555; Darmesteter, p. 32.
56 C. L. Kingsford, “Chronicles of London,” p. 63.
57 Chaucer Soc., “Life Records,” iv., p. xxx.
58 “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 357: Statutes of Parliament, Ric. II., an. 6, c. 6. The preamble complains that such “malefactors and raptors of women grow more violent, and are in these days more rife than ever in almost every part of the kingdom,” and it implies that married women were sometimes so carried off. Cf. Jusserand, “Vie Nomade,” p. 85, and “Piers Plowman,” B. iv., 47—
“Then came Peace into Parliament, and put forth a bill,
How wrong against his will had his wife taken,
And how he ravished Rose, Reginald’s love,” etc., etc.
59 “Life Records,” iv., p. xxxv.
60 Riley, “Memorials,” pp. 410, 445.
61 Oman, “England, 1377-1485,” p. 100.
62 “Eulog. Hist.,” iii. 359.
63 Ibid., 360.
64 That is, they contributed to maintain the Minster, and were admitted to a share of the spiritual benefits earned by “all prayers, fastings, pilgrimages, almsdeeds, and works of mercy” connected therewith. Edward III., and at least three of his sons, were already of the fraternity of Lincoln, and Richard II., with his queen, were admitted the year after Philippa Chaucer.
65 Riley, “Memorials,” pp. 271, 285, 321. The Masons’ regulations given on p. 281 of the same book are interesting in connection with Chaucer’s work; but still more so are the documents in “York Fabric Rolls” (Surtees Soc.), pp. 172, 181.
66 “Life Records,” iv. 282, 283.
67 A well-to-do youth could be boarded at Oxford for 2s. a week, and it was reckoned that the whole expenses of a Doctor of Divinity could be defrayed for thrice that sum, or half Chaucer’s salary. (Riley, “Memorials,” p. 379; Reynerus, “de Antiq. Benedict,” pp. 200, 596.)
68 A. 3907. “Lo Grenewych, ther many a shrewe is inne.”
69 “Little Lowys my son, I aperceive well by certain evidences thine ability to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions; and as well consider I thy busy prayer in special to learn the treatise of the Astrelabie.” Excusing himself for having omitted some problems ordinarily found in such treatises, Chaucer says, “Some of them be too hard to thy tender age of X. year to conceive.”
70 “Life Records,” iv., Nos. 250, 270, 277. The great significance of this fact is obscured even by such excellent authorities as Prof. Skeat, Prof. Hales, and Mr. Pollard, who all follow Sir Harris Nicolas in misinterpreting the last of these three documents. Chaucer had not lost, as they represent, Henry’s own letters patent of only five days before, but Richard’s patents for the yearly £20 and the tun of wine. It is quite possible that Chaucer may have been obliged to leave them in pledge somewhere, or that they were momentarily mislaid; but it is natural to suspect that the poet would not so lightly have reported them as lost unless it had been to his obvious interest to do so. We must remember the trouble and expense constantly taken by public bodies, for instance, to get their charters ratified by a new king.
71 Globe ed., p. 464; Buchon, iii., 349.
72 “Complaint to his Purse,” last stanza.
73 “Life Records,” iv., p. xlv. In 1395 or 1396 Chaucer received £10 from the clerk of Henry’s great wardrobe, to be paid into Henry’s hands.
74 Though the subject-matter of this poem is mainly taken from Boethius, yet it evidently has the translator’s hearty approval, and is in tune with many more of his later verses.
75 Michelet, “Hist. de France,” Liv. VI., ad fin. A cardinal explained the extreme violence of Urban VI.’s words and actions by the report “that he could not avoid one of two things, lunacy or total collapse; for he never ceased drinking, yet ate nothing.” Baluze, “Vit. Pap. Aven.,” vol. i., col. 1270. Compare Walsingham’s tone with regard to the Pope, “Hist. Angl.,” an. 1385.
76 Chaucer’s religious belief will be more fully discussed in Chapter XXIV.
77 W. R. Lethaby, “Westminster Abbey,” 1906, p. 2.
78 Stow (Routledge, 1893, p. 414) seems to imply that the poet was first buried in the cloister, but this is an obvious error. Dr. Furnivall has pointed out a line of Hoccleve’s which certainly seems to imply that the younger poet was present at his master Chaucer’s death-bed. We may also gather from Hoccleve’s account of his own youth many glimpses which tend to throw interesting sidelights on that of Chaucer (Hoccleve’s Works, E.E.T.S., vol. i., pp. xii., xxxi.).
79 This was occasionally the case even in Normandy until the English invasion. The great city of Caen, for instance, was still unwalled in 1346. (“Froissart,” ed. Buchon, p. 223.) A piece of London Wall may still be found near the Tower at the bottom of a small passage called Trinity Place, leading out of Trinity Square. It rises about twenty-five feet from the present ground-level.
80 Riley, “Memorials,” p. 79. This was in 1310.
81 See pp. 50, 59, 79, 95, 115, 127, 136, 377, 387, 388, 489. My frequent references to this book will be simply to the name of Riley.
82 Ed. Morley, pp. 154-157.
83 Riley, p. 270.
84 From his first Italian journey Chaucer returned on May 23, 1373; but his second was during the summer and early autumn of 1378. (May 28 to Sept. 19.)
85 “Cant. Tales,” Prol. i., 400.
86 Walsingham, “Hist. Angl.,” an. 1406, ad fin.
87 “P. Plowman,” B. Prol., 216. The French words in italics were the first line of a popular song. Gower has an equally picturesque description in his “Mirour de l’Omme,” 25,285 ff.
88 “London was, in very truth, a city of Palaces. There were, in London itself, more palaces than in Venice and Florence and Verona and Genoa all together.” “Medieval London,” i., 244, where the context shows that the author refers not only to royal residences, but still more to noblemen’s houses.
89 This was at least the theoretical provision of the regulation of 1189, known as Fitz Alwyne’s Assize, which is fully summarized and annotated in the “Liber Albus,” ed. Riley (R.S.), pp. xxx. ff. We know, however, that similar decrees against roofs of thatch or wooden shingles were not always obeyed.
90 “Menagier de Paris,” i., 173; Addy, “Evolution of English House,” p. 108; cf. “Piers Plowman’s Creed,” i., 214.
91 An earthen wall is mentioned in Riley, p. 30. The slight structure of the ordinary house appears from the fact that the rioters of 1381 tore so many down, and that the great storm of 1362 unroofed them wholesale. (Walsingham, an. 1381, and Riley, p. 308.) Compare the hook with wooden handle and two ropes which was kept in each ward for the pulling down of burning houses. (“Liber Albus,” p. xxxiv.)
92 Cooper, “Annals of Cambridge,” an. 1445; Rashdall, “Universities of Europe,” ii., 413. Cf. the “common nightwalkers” and “roarers” in Riley, pp. 86 ff.
93 Riley, p. 65. See the specifications for some three-storied houses of a century later quoted by Besant. “Medieval London,” i., 250. The furs here specified may well have come to £3 or £4 more (see Rogers, “Agriculture and Prices,” pp. 536 ff.). The fur for an Oxford warden’s gown varied from 26s. 8d. to 83s.
94 Besant, loc. cit., i., 257, mistakenly calls Hugh a “craftsman,” and gives from his imagination a quite untrustworthy description of the inquest, the house, and the shop. He had evidently not seen the supplementary notice in Sharpe’s “Letter Book,” F.
95 Riley, p. 199; cf. Sharpe, “Letter Books,” F, pp. 19, 113. A list of furniture left by a richer citizen, apparently incomplete, is given in Riley, p. 123, and another on p. 283, but this is difficult to separate with certainty from his stock-in-trade. The inventory of a well-to-do Norman peasant-farmer is given by S. Luce, “Du Guesclin,” p. 51. Here the strictly domestic items are only “four frying-pans, two metal pots, four chests, three caskets, two feather-beds, three tables, a bedstead, an iron shovel, a gridiron, a [trough?], and a lantern.” This was in 1333.
96 Addy, “Evolution of English House,” pp. 112 ff. “A chamber with a chimney” was the acme of medieval comfort. “P. Plowman,” B., x., p. 98, and “Crede,” 209.
97 “Œuvres,” ed. Buchon, p. 646. A century later, Thomas Elwood’s Memoirs show that an English squire’s family needed their warm caps as much indoors as outside.
98 Cf. the affair in the hall of Wolsingham Rectory in 1370. Raine, “Auckland Castle,” p. 38.
99 A. F. Leach, “English Schools before the Reformation,” p. 10; “Dame Alice Kyteler” (Camden Soc.), introd., p. xxxix. The choir-boys, it may be noted in passing, had only half an hour of playtime daily.
100 It is interesting to note that, when Chaucer was Clerk of the Works to Richard II., he superintended the erection of scaffolds for the King and Queen on the occasion of one of these Smithfield tournaments.
101 “French Chron. of London” (Camden Soc.), p. 52; cf. Walsingham, an. 1326.
102 “C. T.,” B., 645.
103 “Chronicles of London,” ed. Kingsford, p. 15.
104 Walsingham, an. 1381.
105 “C. T.,” B., 4583.
106 “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 387.
107 Walsingham, an. 1382; Riley, p. 464.
108 “P. Plowman,” C., vii., 352 ff. For Clarice and Peronel, see Prof. Skeat’s notes, ad loc., and cf. Riley, pp. 484, 566, and note 3.
109 Newgate, Ludgate, and Cripplegate were regular prisons at this time; but Besant is quite mistaken in saying that all gate-leases provide “that they may be taken over as prisons if they are wanted” (“Medieval London,” i., 163). A Cripplegate lease (Riley, p. 387) has naturally such a provision; the others are silent or (like Chaucer’s) definitely promise the contrary.
110 P. 489; cf. “Life Records,” IV., xxxiv. Michaelmas Day fell in 1386 on a Saturday.
111 Bk. II., lines 122 ff.
112 Darmesteter, “Froissart,” p. 112.
113 Riley, pp. 194, 285, 338; cf. Mr. W. Hudson’s “Parish of St. Peter Permountergate” (Norwich, 1889), pp. 21, 45, 60.
114 Cf. the present writer’s “From St. Francis to Dante,” 2nd ed., pp. 6, 160, 167, 380, where proof is adduced from episcopal registers that even large and rich monasteries had often no scriptorium, and many monks could not write their own names.
115 “Town Life,” ii., 84.
116 Riley, p. 226. Cf. the similar complaint of a poet against blacksmiths in “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” i., 240.
117 Nominally, the great gate was shut at the hour of sunset, and only the wicket-gate left open till curfew; but regulations of this kind were generally interpreted with a good deal of laxity.
118 Busch, “Lib. Ref.,” p. 408; Gilleberti Abbatis, “Tract. Ascet.,” VII., ii., § 3.
119 See Oskar Dolch, “The Love of Nature in Early English Poetry;” Dresden, 1882.
120 “Purg.,” xxvi., 4; viii., 1; iii., 25; cf. xvii., 8, 12.
121 “Legend of Good Women,” Prol., 30 ff.
122 “Survey,” ed. Morley, 1893, p. 163.
123 “Monsieur le curé,... ne dansons pas; mais permettons à ces pauvres gens de danser. Pourquoi les empêcher d’oublier un moment qu’ils sont malheureux?”
124 Riley, 571. I have dealt fully with this subject in my “Medieval Studies,” Nos. 3 and 4.
125 “Babees Book,” E.E.T.S., p. 40; “Ménagier de Paris,” i., 15; “C. T.,” C., 62.
126 Sharpe’s “Letter Book” G., pp. 274, 303; Riley, pp. 269, 534, 561, 571, 669. In the country, “hocking” was often resorted to for raising church funds. See Sir John Phear’s “Molland Accounts” (Devonshire Assn., 1903), pp. 198 ff.
127 Cf. “C. T.,” E., 2029; F., 908; “Parl. Foules,” 121. For his personal love of trees, etc., see “C. T.,” A., 2920; “Parl. Foules,” 175, 201, 442.
128 Cf. Riley, pp. 7, 116, 228, 280, 382, 487, 498.
129 “Herbarium,” green and shady spot.
130 Riley, 388, and passim.
131 “Aetas Prima,” l. 23 ff.
132 Loftie, p. 26.
133 “Letter Book,” G., pp. iii. ff., where there is a very interesting case of a Florentine merchant.
134 It is easy to understand how Jews themselves came back to England under the guise of Lombards. We know enough, from many other sources, of the evils which followed from the inconsistent efforts to outlaw all takers of interest, to appreciate the truth which underlay the obvious exaggerations of the Commons in their petition to the King in 1376. “There are in our land a very great multitude of Lombards, both brokers and merchants, who serve no purpose but that of ill-doing: moreover, several of those which pass for Lombards are Jews and Saracens and privy spies; and of late they have brought into our land a most grievous vice which it beseems us not to name” (“Rot. Parl.,” vol. ii., p. 352, § 58).
135 Benvenuto da Imola, “Comentum,” vol. i., p. 579; Etienne de Bourbon, p. 254; Nicole Bozon, pp. 35, 226; “Piers Plowman,” B., iii., 38; cf. Gower, “Mirour,” 21409.
136 “Mirour,” 25429 ff., 25237 ff., 25915. Mr. Macaulay remarks that Gower seems to deal more tenderly with his own merchant-class than with other classes of society; but his blame, even with this allowance, is severe.
137 “Mirour,” 25813. The emphasis which he lays on carpets and curtains shows how great a luxury they were then considered.
138 “In justice, however, to these centuries, it must be remarked, that they received the institutions of Frankpledge as an inheritance from Saxon times” (Riley).
139 “To these writs return was made [in 1354] to the effect that the civic authorities had given orders for butchers to carry the entrails of slaughtered beasts to the Flete and there clean them in the tidal waters of the Thames, instead of throwing them on the pavement by the house of the Grey Friars.” Again: “Although this order [of 1369] was carried out and the bridge destroyed, butchers continued to carry offal from the shambles to the riverside; and this nuisance had to be suppressed in 1370.” But the whole passage should be read in full.
140 Vol. I., cxxxviii. ff. and 365 ff.
141 Mrs. Green, “Town Life,” ii., 55.
142 Between 1347 and 1375, for instance, there are only 23 cases of pillory in all.
143 It is pertinent to note in this connection the medieval custom of giving condemned meat to hospitals. Mr. Wheatley (“London,” p. 196) quotes from a Scottish Act of Parliament in 1386, “Gif ony man brings to the market corrupt swine or salmond to be sauld, they sall be taken by the bailie, and incontinent, without ony question, sall be sent to the leper folke; and, gif there be na lepper folke, they sall be destroyed all utterlie.” At Oxford in the 15th century, there was a similar regulation providing that putrid or unfit meat and fish should be sent to St. John’s Hospital. (“Munimenta Academica” (R.S.), pp. 51, 52). Here is a probable clue to the tradition that medieval apprentices struck against salmon more than twice a week. See Athenæum, August 27 and September 3, 1898.
144 Besant insists very justly on the blood-kinship between the leading citizens and the country gentry. (“Medieval London,” i., 218 ff.) He shows that a very large majority of Mayors, Aldermen, etc., were country-born, and of good family.
145 Michelet, “Hist. de France,” l. i., ch. i.
146 John Philpot, it may be noted, was at this very time one of the Collectors of Customs under Chaucer’s Comptrollership.
147 “C. T.,” E., 995.
148 The violent scenes of the years 1381-1391 are summarized in Wheatley’s “London” (Medieval Towns), pp. 236-9. Among the victims of an unsuccessful cause were even Sir William Walworth and Sir John Philpot.
149 Walsingham, an. 1392; “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 368.
150 Ed. Luce, vol. i., pp. 224, 243, 249.
151 Cf. Mrs. Green, loc. cit., ii., 31. “In 1499 a glover from Leighton Buzzard travelled with his wares to Aylesbury for the market before Christmas Day. It happened that an Aylesbury miller, Richard Boose, finding that his mill needed repairs, sent a couple of servants to dig clay ‘called Ramming clay’ for him on the highway, and was in no way dismayed because the digging of this clay made a great pit in the middle of the road ten feet wide, eight feet broad, and eight feet deep, which was quickly filled with water by the winter rains. But the unhappy glover, making his way from the town in the dusk, with his horse laden with panniers full of gloves, straightway fell into the pit, and man and horse were drowned. The miller was charged with his death, but was acquitted by the court on the ground that he had had no malicious intent, and had only dug the pit to repair his mill, and because he really did not know of any other place to get the kind of clay he wanted save the highroad.”
152 Etienne de Bourbon, p. 411.
153 T. Wright, “Homes of other Days,” pp. 345 ff., whence I borrow the accompanying illustration from a MS. of the 15th century, representing the outside and inside of an inn. Incidentally, it illustrates also the common medieval phrase “naked in bed.” Mrs. Green (“Town Life,” ii., 33) quotes the grateful entry of a citizen in his public accounts “Paid for our bed there (and it was well worth it, witness, a featherbed) 1d.”
154 There were seventy places of pilgrimage in Norfolk alone (Cutts, “Middle Ages,” p. 162). For churches as trysting-places for lovers or gossips we have evidence on many sides, e.g. the lovers of the “Decameron” (Prologue and Epilogue), and the custom of “Paul’s Walk” which lasted long after the Reformation.
155 Berthold v. Regensburg, “Predigten,” ed. Pfeiffer, i., 448, 459, 493; Et. de Bourbon, p. 167; “Piers Plowman,” B., v., 527, C., v., 123; Wharton, “Anglia Sacra,” i., 49, 50.
156 “Wyclif’s Works,” ed. Arnold, i., 83; cf. other quotations in Lechler; “Wiclif,” Section x., notes 286, 288; Jusserand, “Vie Nomade,” p. 296; Foxe (Parker Soc.), vol. iii., p. 268.
157 Chaucer himself tells us the day in the “Man of Lawe’s Prologue”; Prof. Skeat has accumulated highly probable evidence for the year 1387 (vol. iii., p. 373, and vol. v., p. 75).
158 About 520 feet from the ground, according to Hollar, but more probably a little short of 500 feet. (H. B. Wheatley, “London,” p. 333.) It must be remembered also how high the cathedral site rises above the river.
159 Bern. Ep. 25; cf. “Liber Guillelmi Majoris,” p. 478.
160 Skeat, v., p. 129. “In the subsidy Rolls (1380-1) for Southwark, occurs the entry ‘Henri Bayliff, Ostyler... 2s.’ In the Parliament held at Westminster (1376-7) Henry Bailly was one of the representatives for that borough, and again, in the Parliament at Gloucester, 2, Rich. II., the name occurs.”
161 The too strict avoidance of oaths had long been authoritatively noted as suggesting a presumption of heresy; here (as in so many other places) Chaucer admirably illustrates formal and official documents.
162 About £1000 in modern money.
163 “Its unsuitableness to the Clerk has often been noticed,” writes Mr. Pollard; but surely those who find fault here have forgotten the obvious truth voiced by the Wife of Bath, “For trust ye well, it is impossible that any clerk will speakë good of wives.”
164 This highly dramatic addition of the Canon and his Yeoman is probably an afterthought of Chaucer’s, who had very likely himself suffered at the hands of some such impostor.
165 There is, as Prof. Skeat points out, an inconsistency here in the text. We can see from Group H., l. 16 that Chaucer had at one time meant the Manciple’s tale to be told in the morning; yet now when it is ended he tells us plainly that it is four in the afternoon (Group I., 5).
166 An allusion to the alliterative verse popular among the common folk, like that of “Piers Plowman.”
167 It was mostly destroyed by fire in 1865. Most writers on Canterbury, misled by the ancient spelling, call the inn “Chequers of the Hope.” Hope, as Prof. Skeat has long ago pointed out, is simply Hoop, a part of the inn sign. Cf. Riley, “Memorials of London,” pp. 497, 524; and “Hist. MSS. Commission,” Report v., pt. i., p. 448.
168 Mrs. Green, “Town Life,” ii., 33.
169 A. Murimuth, ed. Hog., p. 225.
170 Walsingham, an. 1349; Hoccleve, E.E.T.S., vol. iii., p. 93.
171 Ed. Buchon, i., 286; ed. Luce, iv., 327.
172 Longman, “Edward III.,” i., 225, 413.
173 Longman, “Edward III.,” vol. i., pp. 147, 157, 178.
174 Ed. Buchon, i., 12, 34; ed. Luce, i., 284-287.
175 Cf. Darmesteter, “Froissart,” p. 16, and Froissart, ed. Buchon, p. 512. “The good queen Philippa was in my youth my queen and sovereign. I was five years at the court of the King and Queen of England. In my youth I was her clerk, serving her with fair ditties and treatises of love; and, for the love of the noble and worthy lady my mistress, all other great lords—king, dukes, earls, barons and knights, of whatsoever country they might be—loved me and saw me gladly and gave me much profit.”
176 I cannot refrain here from calling attention to the extraordinary historical value of the eight volumes of Exeter registers published by Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph, who in this department has done more for historical students, during the last twenty-five years, than all the learned societies of the kingdom put together.
177 Ed. 1812, p. 317. The text of this book is frequently corrupt; but the evident sense of these ungrammatical lines 3-5 is that the envoys were allowed to watch the unsuspecting damsels from some hidden coign of vantage. It will be noted that Hardyng speaks of five daughters; there had been five, but the eldest was now dead.
178 Ed. 1841, p. 206. She was Katherine, daughter to Sir Adam Banastre. Miss Strickland asserts that the Queen, contrary to the custom of medieval ladies in high life, nursed the infant herself. She gives no reference, and her authority is possibly Joshua Barnes’s “Life of Edward III.” (1688), p. 44, where, however, references are again withheld. The Black Prince was born June 15, 1330, when the King would have been 19 and the Queen just on 16 years old according to Froissart; but Edward was in fact only 17, and Bishop Stapledon’s reckoning would make the Queen about the same age.
179 Throughout this chapter I multiply the ancient money by fifteen, to bring it to modern value.
180 Such acts of vandalism were far more common in the Middle Ages than is generally imagined; a good many instances are noted in the index of my “From St. Francis to Dante.”
181 Devon, “Issues of the Exchequer,” pp. 144, 153, 155, 199; “York Fabric Rolls,” p. 125; cf. 154. It was one of the privileges of the Archbishops of York to crown the Queen. For the mortuary system, see my “Priests and People in Medieval England.” (Simpkins. 1s.)
182 Clough, “Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.”
183 “Mon. Germ. Scriptt.,” xxxii., 444.
184 “Mirour,” 23893 ff.
185 Lénient, “Satire en France” (1859), p. 202.
186 Sacchetti, “Novelle,” cliii.; Ste-Palaye, “Chevalerie,” ii., 80.
187 Mr. Rye (l. c.) points out how frequent was the interchange between London and Lynn. Another colleague of John Chaucer’s, John de Stodey, Mayor and Sheriff of London, had been formerly a taverner at Lynn.
188 “Mirour,” 7225: Cf. “Piers Plowman,” C., vii., 248. Readers of Chaucer’s “Prologue” will remember this mysterious word “chevisance” in connection with the Merchant. Its proper meaning was simply bargain: the slang sense will be best understood from a Royal ordinance of 1365 against those who lived by usury; “which kind of contract, the more subtly to deceive the people, they call exchange, or chevisance.”
189 “Vie Nomade,” pp. 33, 46.
190 These were, of course, fines for breaches of the assize of ale, as in the Norwich cases already mentioned.
191 In 1347 his total income was £2460, out of which he saved £1150. In the two other years given by Smyth he saved £659 and £977. Some knights even made a living by pot-hunting at tournaments. See Ch.-V. Langlois, “La Vie en France au M. A.,” 1908, p. 163.
192 Cf. a similar instance in Riley, p. 392.
193 The Shillingford Letters show us the Bishop and Canons of Exeter selling wine in the same way at their own houses (p. 91).
194 Oman, “Art of War in the Middle Ages,” 380 ff.
195 Buchon, i., 349, 431; Globe, 349.
196 “Mirour,” 24625. Cf. the corresponding passage in the “Vox Clamantis,” Bk. VI. According to Hoccleve, “Law is nye flemëd [= banished] out of this cuntre;” it is a web which catches the small flys and gnats, but lets the great flies go (Works, E.E.T.S., iii., 101 ff.).
197 Walsingham, an. 1381. The evil repute of jurors is fully explained by Gower, “Mirour,” 25033. According to him, perjury had become almost a recognized profession.
198 Gautier, loc. cit., p. 352.
199 Lyndwood, “Provinciale,” ed. Oxon., p. 272.
200 “Piers Plowman,” B., xv., 237, and xx., 137.
201 Pollock and Maitland, “History of English Law,” vol. i., p. 387; Lyndwood, “Provinciale,” pp. 271 ff. It is the more necessary to insist on this, because of a serious error, based on a misreading of Bishop Quivil’s injunctions. The bishop does, indeed, proclaim his right and duty of punishing the parties to a clandestine marriage; but, so far from flying in the face of Canon Law by threatening to dissolve the contract, he expressly admits, in the same breath, its binding force.—Wilkins, ii., 135.
202 Wilkins, “Concilia,” i., 478.
203 Froissart, Buchon, iii., 235, 258.
204 “Piers Plowman,” C., xi., 256. Gower speaks still more strongly, if possible, “Mirour,” 17245 ff. Chaucer’s friend Hoccleve makes the same complaint (E.E.T.S., vol. iii., p. 60), and these practices outlasted the Reformation. The curious reader should consult Dr. Furnivall’s “Child Marriages and Divorces” (E.E.T.S., 1897).
205 “Adam of Usk,” p. 3; cf. “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 355 (where the price is given as 22,000 marks), and 237, where the negotiations for another Royal marriage are described with equally brutal frankness.
206 Froissart, Buchon, ii., 758.
207 “Paston Letters,” 1901, Introd., p. clxxvi.; cf. for example, Thorold Rogers’ “Hist. of Ag. and Prices,” ii., 608. “Megge, the daughter of John, son of Utting,” pays only 1s. for her marriage; but “Alice’s daughter” pays 6s. 8d.; and so on to “Will, the son of John,” and “Roger, the Reeve,” who each pay 20s. That is, it was possible for the lord of the manor to squeeze £20 in modern money out of a single peasant marriage.
208 Sarradin, “Deschamps,” p. 256.
209 Riley, p. 379. It must, however, be remembered that the ordinary rate of interest then was twenty per cent. Thus Robert de Brynkeleye receives the wardship of Thomas atte Boure, who had a patrimony of £300 (14th-century standard). With this Robert trades, paying his twenty per cent. for the use of it, so that he has to account for £1080 at the heir’s majority. Of this he takes £120 for keep and out-of-pocket expenses, and £390 for his trouble, so that the ward receives £570. The Royal Household Ordinances of Edward II.’s reign provide for the maintenance of wards until “they have their lands, or the king have given or sold them.”—“Life Records,” ii., p. 19.
210 Ste-Palaye, loc. cit., i., 64 ff.; ii., 90. This rule of age, like all others, had, however, been broken from the first. As early as 1060, Geoffrey of Anjou knighted his nephew Fulk at the age of 17; and such incidents are common in epics. Princes of the blood were knighted in their cradles.
211 Walsingham, ann. 1307, 1381; “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 189, 389. The woman avoided the battle only by withdrawing her accusation.
212 Gower, “Mirour,” 17521.
213 “Prediche Volgari,” ii., 115, and iii., 176.
214 I quote from the 15th-century English translation published by the E.E.T.S. (pp. 25, 27, 81; cf. 23, 95; the square bracket is transferred from p. 23). Between 1484 and 1538 there were at least eight editions printed in French, English, and German.
215 Rashdall, “Universities of Europe,” ii., 599.
216 Pp. 8, 18, 33, 36, 156, 207, 217, 218, and passim.
217 “Most of the girls in our ‘Chansons de Geste’ are represented by our poets as horrible little monsters,... shameless, worse than impudent, caring little whether the whole world watches them, and obeying at all hazards the mere brutality of their instincts. Their forwardness is not only beyond all conception, but contrary to all probability and all sincere observation of human nature.” Gautier, l. c., p. 378.
218 There is a very interesting essay on “Chaucer’s Love Poetry” in the Cornhill, vol. xxxv., p. 280. It is, however, a good deal spoiled by the author’s inclusion of many works once attributed to the poet, but now known to be spurious.
219 Bk. IV., ll. 152, 158, 367, 519, 554, 564.
220 “Paston Letters” (ed. Gairdner, 1900), ii., 364; iv., ccxc.
221 Few tales illustrate more clearly the woman’s duty of accepting any knight who made himself sufficiently miserable about her, than that of Boccaccio, which Dryden has so finely versified under the name of Theodore and Honoria. Equally significant is one of the “Gesta Romanorum” (ed. Swan., No. XXVIII.).
222 Quoted by S. Luce, “Bertrand du Guesclin,” 1882, p. 124.
223 The essentially compulsory foundation of Edward III.’s armies, for at least a great part of his reign, seems to have been overlooked even by Prof. Oman in his valuable “Art of War in the Middle Ages.”
224 Froissart, ed. Luce, i., 401. It was at this time that Edward also proclaimed the duty of teaching French for military purposes, as noted in Chap. I. of this book.
225 “Norwich Militia in the 14th Century” (Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc.), vol. xiv., p. 263.
226 Knighton (R.S.), ii., 42, 44, 109.
227 The Scots themselves had found out long before this who were their most formidable enemies. Sir James Douglas had been accustomed to cut off the right hand or put out the right eye of any archer whom he could catch.
228 Compare the interesting case in Gross, “Office of Coroner,” p. 74. Two conscripts, on their way to join the army, chanced to meet at Cold Ashby the constable who was responsible for their being selected; they ran him through with a lance and then took sanctuary. It is significant that they were not hanged, but carried off to the army; the King needed every stout arm he could muster.
229 Tournaments not infrequently gave rise to treacherous murders and vendettas, as in the case of Sir Walter Mauny’s father (Froissart, Buchon., i., 199). Compare also the scandal caused by the women who used to attend them in men’s clothes (Knighton, ii., p. 57). Luce, however, very much overstates the Royal objections to jousts (pp. 113, 141). He evidently fails to realize what a large number of authorized tourneys were held by Edward III.
230 Froissart, Globe, 94-97.
231 Denifle, “La Désolation des Eglises,” etc., vol. i., pp. 497, 504, 514. Two pages from English chroniclers are almost as bad as any of the iniquities printed in Father Denifle’s book, viz. the sack of Winchelsea (Knighton, ii., 109) and Sir John Arundel’s shipload of nuns from Southampton (Walsingham, an. 1379; told briefly in “Social England,” illd. ed., vol. ii. p. 260).
232 Cf. Knighton, ii., 102.
233 Green, “Town Life,” i., 130. “At the close of the 14th century a certain knight, Baldwin of Radington, with the help of John of Stanley, raised eight hundred fighting men ‘to destroy and hurt the commons of Chester’; and these stalwart warriors broke into the abbey, seized the wine, and dashed the furniture in pieces, and when the mayor and sheriff came to the rescue nearly killed the sheriff. When in 1441 the Archbishop of York determined to fight for his privileges in Ripon Fair, he engaged two hundred men-at-arms from Scotland and the Marches at sixpence or a shilling a day, while a Yorkshire gentleman, Sir John Plumpton, gathered seven hundred men; and at the battle that ensued, more than a thousand arrows were discharged by them.”
234 Ed. Luce, i., 213, 214; cf. 312.
235 Mrs. Green, l. c., i., 131.
236 This point is treated more fully in the next chapter.
[237] Denifle, l. c., pp. 497, 504.
238 “More than three thousand men, women, and children were beheaded that day. God have mercy on their souls, for I trow they were martyrs.” Froissart (Globe), 201.
239 Ed. Luce, pp. 214, 249, 337.
240 Trevelyan, “England in the Age of Wycliffe,” 1st Edn., p. 195.
241 “Conseil” (in Appendix to Ducange’s “Joinville”), chap. xxi., art. 8. The writer insists strongly, at the same time, on the lord’s responsibility to God for his treatment of a creature so helpless.
242 C., iii., 177. For the Reeve’s duties, see Smyth, “Berkeleys,” vol. ii., pp. 5, 22.
243 “Those who demand such mortuaries are like worms preying on a corpse” (Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, quoted in Lecoy de La Marche, “Chaire Française,” p. 388). Having already, in my “Medieval Studies” and my “Priests and People,” dealt more fully with this and several points occurring in the succeeding chapters, I can often dispense with further references here.
244 This is admirably discussed by Mr. Corbett in chap. vii. of “Social England.”
245 Froissart, Buchon, ii., 150. Leadam, “Star Chamber” (Selden Soc.), p. cxxviii. Trevelyan, l. c., p. 185.
246 Vitry, “Exempla,” pp. 62, 64; “P. P.,” A., iv., 34 (cf. Lecoy., l. c., 387); Jusserand, “Epopée Mystique,” 114; and “Vie Nomade,” 81, 261, 269.
247 Walsingham, an. 1381; cf. the record in Powell, “Rising in East Anglia,” p. 130. The rioters compelled the constable of the hundred of Hoxne to contribute ten conscripted archers to their party.
248 It must be remembered that the loyal soldiers also had shown in this matter a pusillanimity which contrasted remarkably with their behaviour in the French wars; Walsingham notes this with great astonishment. The quotations are from the “Chronicle of St. Mary’s, York,” in Oman, Appendix V., pp. 188-200.
249 An. 1381; cf. “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 353. The original of both these descriptions seems to be Gower, “Vox Clam.” i., 853 ff.
250 L. c., p. 255.
251 The first general Sanitation Act for England was that of the Parliament held at Cambridge in 1388, and is generally ascribed to the filth of that ancient borough.
252 “Chronicles of London” (4to., 1827), p. 65. “Eulog. Hist.” iii., 353.
253 C., ix., 304; B., v., 549. It will be noted how nearly this diet accords with that of the widow and her daughter in Chaucer’s “Nuns’ Priest’s Tale”; cf. Langlois, “La Vie en France au M-A.,” p. 122.
254 “Rot. Parl.” ii., 340.
255 L. c., C., ix., 331.
256 L. c., C., x., 71 ff. “Papelots” = porridge; “ruel” = bedside; “woneth” = dwell; “witterly” = surely; “and fele to fong,” etc. = “and many [children] to clutch at the few pence they earn; under those circumstances, bread and small beer is held an unusual luxury.” “Pittance” is a monastic word, meaning extra food beyond the daily fare.
257 An Act of 1495 provided that “from the middle of March to the middle of September work was to go on from 5 a.m. till between 7 and 8 p.m., with half an hour for breakfast, and an hour and a half for dinner and for the midday sleep. In winter work was to be during daylight. These legal ordinances were not perhaps always kept, but they at least show the standard at which employers aimed” (“Social England,” vol. ii., chap. vii.).
258 Bishop Grosseteste asserted that honest labour on holy days would be far less sinful than the sports which often took their place. “Epp.” (R.S.), p. 74.
259 “La France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans” (1890), 95 ff. The essay describes a state of things very similar to what we may gather from English records.
260 “Universities of Europe,” ii., 669 ff.
261 Cooper, “Annals of Cambridge,” an. 1410; “Munim. Acad.” (R.S.), 602; Riley, 571; Strutt (1898), p. 49.
262 “Shillingford Letters,” p. 101. Queke was probably a kind of hopscotch, and penny-prick a tossing game; both enjoyed an evil repute, according to Strutt.
263 “Rot. Parl.” ii., 64; Myrc., E.E.T.S., i., 334.
264 “Northumberland Assize Rolls,” p. 323. There is another fatal wrestling-bout in the same roll (p. 348), another in the similar Norfolk roll analysed by Mr. Walter Rye in the Archæological Review (1888), and another exactly answering to John and Willie’s case in Prof. Maitland’s “Crown Pleas for the County of Gloucester,” No. 452.
265 “C. T.,” A., 3328. Etienne de Bourbon has no doubt that “the Devil invented dancing, and is governor and procurator of dancers”; and he explains the popular proverb, that God’s thunderbolt falls oftener on the church than on the tavern, by the notorious profanations to which churches were subjected. (“Anecdotes,” pp. 269, 397.)
266 L. c. ii., 672.
267 Wilkins, “Concilia,” i., 600; iii., 61, 68, 365; “York Fabric Rolls,” 269 ff; Grosseteste, “Epp.” (R.S.), pp. 75, 118, 161; Giffard’s “Register” (Worcester), p. 422; and Cutts, “Parish Priests,” p. 122.
268 Wilkins, i., 530, 719; iii., 61 and passim; Archæological Journal, vol. xl., pp. 1 ff; “Somerset Record Society,” vol. iv.
269 Eight men died in Northampton gaol between Aug. 1322 and Nov. 1323 (Gross, p. 79). The jury casually record: “He died of hunger, thirst, and want.”... “Want of food and drink, and cold.”... “Natural death.”... “Hunger and thirst and natural death.” One is really glad to think that so small a proportion of criminals ever found their way into prison.
270 Gross, “Office of Coroner,” p. 69.
271 “Eng. Hist. Rev.,” vol. 50.
272 This still allowed him to migrate to another part of the King’s dominions—e.g. Ireland, Scotland, Normandy.
273 Worcestershire Record Society.
274 Gower, “Mirour,” 20125, 20653.
275 Riley, 567; cf. Preface to “Liber Albus,” p. cvii., and Walsingham, an. 1382.
276 Cf. Mr. Walter Rye’s articles in “Norf. Antq. Misc.,” vol ii., p. 194, and Archæological Review for 1888, p. 201.
277 The complaints which meet us in Gower and “Piers Plowman” on this score are more than borne out by the “Shillingford Letters” (Camden Soc., 1871). The worthy Mayor of Exeter reports faithfully to his fellow-citizens what bribes he gives, and to whom.
278 Chaucer’s pupil Hoccleve speaks almost equally strongly on the mischief of such pardons (“Works,” E.E.T.S., vol. iii., pp. 113 ff).
279 Clergy is of course here used in the common medieval sense of learning; it does not refer to any body of men.
280 I.e. the type of perfect religion, “the Christ that is to be.”
281 Be “found” or provided for, so that they need no longer to live by begging and flattery.
282 This was very commonly the case even in the greatest cathedrals: typical reports may be found in the easily accessible “York Fabric Rolls” (Surtees Soc.). With regard to Canterbury, a strange legend is current to the effect that Lord Badlesmere was executed in 1322 for his irreverent behaviour in that cathedral. Apart from the extraordinary inherent improbability of any such story, the execution of Lord Badlesmere is one of the best known events in the reign. He was hanged for joining the Earl of Lancaster in open rebellion against Edward, against whom he had fought at Boroughbridge.
283 Wilkins, iii., 360 ff; “Rot. Parl.” ii., 313. I have given fuller details and references in the 8th of my “Medieval Studies,” “Priests and People” (Simpkins, 1s.).
284 Taking eight test-periods, which cover four dioceses and a space of nearly forty-five years, I find that, before the Black Death, scarcely more than one-third of the livings in lay gift were presented to men in priest’s orders—the exact proportion is 262 priests to 452 non-priests.
285 Rashdall, “Universities of Europe,” ii., 613, 701. Merely to reckon the number of years theoretically required for the different degrees, and to argue from this to the solid education of the medieval priest (as has sometimes been done), is to ignore the mass of unimpeachable evidence collected by Dr. Rashdall. Only an extremely small fraction of the students took any theological degree whatever.
286 The list of indictments for grave offences in “Munim. Acad.” (R.S.), vol. ii., contains a very large proportion of graduates, chaplains, and masters of Halls; and Gerson frequently speaks with bitter indignation of the number of Parisian scholars who were debauched by their masters.
287 In Chaucer’s words—
He set... his benefice to hire
And left his sheep encumbred in the mire,
And ran to London, unto Saintë Paul’s
To seeken him a chanterie for souls.
The Archbishop’s decree may be found in the “Register of Bp. de Salopia,” p. 639; cf. 694 (Somerset Record Society).
288 Quoted from a MS. collection of 14th-century sermons by Ch. Petit-Dutaillis in “Etudes Dédiées à G. Monod.,” p. 385.
289 Knighton (R.S.), ii., 191; at still greater length on p. 183. Walsingham, ann. 1387, 1392; cf. “Eulog. Hist.,” iii., 351, 355.
290 Kingsford, “Chronicles of London,” p. 64; Walsingham, an. 1410.
291 “P. Plowman,” B., xv., 383: Jusserand, “Epop. Myst.,” p. 217. See especially the remarkable words of Chaucer’s contemporary, the banker Rulman Merswin of Strassburg, quoted by C. Schmidt, “Johannes Tauler,” p. 218. After setting forth his conviction that Christendom is now (1351) in a worse state than it has been for many hundred years past, and that evil Christians stand less in God’s love than good Jews or heathens who know nothing better than the faith in which they were born, and would accept a better creed if they could see it, Merswin then proceeds to reconcile this with the Catholic doctrine that none can be saved without baptism. “I will tell thee; this cometh to pass in manifold hidden ways unknown to the most part of Christendom in these days; but I will tell thee of one way.... When one of these good heathens or Jews draweth near to his end, then cometh God to his help and enlighteneth him so far in Christian faith, that with all his heart he desireth baptism. Then, even though there be no present baptism for him, yet from the bottom of his heart he yearneth for it: so I tell thee how God doth: He goeth and baptiseth him in the baptism of his good yearning will and his painful death. Know therefore that many of these good heathens and Jews are in the life eternal, who all came thither in this wise.”
292 “P. Plowman,” B., x., p. 51; cf. Langlois, l. c., pp. 211, 264-5.