1348, who seems afterwards to have held the same situation in the port of London.’
It is thus pretty certain that Chaucer was a native of London. Mr. Walter Rye holds that he was born at King’s Lynn (see Academy, 30 Jan. 1886). But undoubtedly the evidence in favour of London preponderates at present. We can associate him and his family with Vintry Ward, Dowgate; with Thames Street; with the church of St. Mary Aldermary; with ‘a newly built house at the corner of Crown Lane;’ with ‘a tenement in the parish of St. Michael's, Paternoster Church.' We may believe him to have been born in Thames Street, his father, a well-to-do wine merchant, keeping also one or more taverns, being both a Vintinarius and a Tabernarius—a person of good position in ‘the city.’
We know nothing of Chaucer’s life before 1357. He was a vigorous student in his later life. ‘The acquaintance he possessed with the classics, with divinity, with astronomy, with so much as was then known of chemistry, and indeed with every other branch of the scholastic learning of the age, proves that his education had been (particuarly attended to’ (Nicolas). London was not without its grammar schools. It is possible that Chaucer may have been sent to Oxford or to Cambridge, but no evidence has been discovered to connect him certainly with either. The ‘Court of Love,' which used to be quoted as definitely proving a Cambridge undergraduateship—
Philogenet I calld am fer and nere,
Of Cambridge clerk—
as not now believed by any competent critic to be Chaucer’s work. The knowledge he shows of Oxford in the ‘Milleres Tale’ is equalled by that of Cambridge shown in the ‘Reeves Tale;’ and in each case he may have been indebted to visits paid to the universities in later life. Certainly in later life he had a friend at Oxford at least, ‘the philosophical Strode,’ ‘one of the most illustrious ornaments of Merton College.'
In 1327 Chaucer appears as occupying the position of a page in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III’s second son. The prosperity of the vintners at this time and their importance in the city may perhaps account for his appearance in such a place; and possibly his father`s previous connection with the court may have procured the son an introduction. with the assistance of the document mentioned above, so happily discovered by Mr. Bond, we may catch glimpses of Chaucer in London, at Windsor, at ‘the feast of St. George held there with great pomp in connection with the newly founded order of the Garter,’ again in London, then at Woodstock at the celebration of the feast of Pentecost, at Doncaster, at Hatfield in Yorkshire, where he spends Christmas, again at Windsor, in Anglesea (August 1358), at Liverpool, at the funeral of Queen Isabella at the Greyfriars Church, London (27 Nov. 1358), at Reading, again in London visiting the lions in the Tower. In this way Chaucer saw a great deal of the world. Prince Lionel (b. 1338) was some two or three years the older. His wife at this time was Elizabeth, the heiress of William de Burgh [q. v.], third earl of Ulster. She died in l363. In 1368, a few months before his own death, Prince Lionel married Violante, daughter of Galeazzo, duke of Milan; but some years before that second marriage' Chaucer’s immediate connection with him had probablv ceased. It was in 1359, as we have seen, that Chaucer first ‘bore arms.’
Chaucer's life may be divided into periods; and as our chief interest in him s rings from his literary distinction, we shag base our arrangement upon literary considerations. Chaucer was not only singularly original but singularly impressible and receptive. The literary influences of the age were reflected in its rising genius. The influence of the French poetry is visible in Chaucer's first period, and that of Dante and other great Italians—also Florentines—in his second. In the last period the qualities that make him one of the great masters of our literature exhibit. themselves no longer in promise but in fulfilment. If we arrange Chaucer's life according to these suggestions, we shall find that it falls readily into these three periods: (i) 1359-72, (ii) 1372-86, (iii) 1386-1400 (see Ten Bink, Chaucer: Studien zur Geschichte seiner Entwicklung und zur Chronologie seiner Schriften).
1359-72.—In the autumn of 1359 Chaucer took part in the expedition into Firaiice. According to Matteo Villani, the number of the king's army exceeded 100,000 men. The king's four sons embarked with him. Froissart gives us the order of the march: first five hundred men to clear and open the roads; then the constable, the Earl of March; then the ‘battle' of the marshals; then the king’s ‘battle' and some eight thousand cars carrying the baggage; amid, last of all, the ‘battle’ of the Prince of Wales and his brothers, consisting of 2,500 men-at-hrms ‘nobly mounted and richly caparisoned.’ Chaucer was probably in this last body. Scarcity of provisions was soon keenly felt. There was no fighting, the weather was dreadful; the king’s resolution at last gave way, and on 8 May a treaty of peace was signed at Bretigni. Chaucer was
