it. As this curious incident may suggest a very erroneous idea of the manners of that age and of the light in which such gifts were viewed in the time of the poet, the following observations, extracted chiefly from Mr. Godwin’s Life of Chaucer, will serve to give a more correct impression of the spirit of the bard’s first present to the lady of his love.
There is reason to believe that wine was often given, merely as a token of honour and esteem, and as being a more delicate offering than a sum of money. It is not, therefore, to be supposed that it was always intended for the consumption of the person to whom it was sent. ‘I find,’ says Mr. Godwin, ‘a grant, or rather the confirmation of a grant, of Edward III., in the first year of his reign, to Mary his aunt, daughter of Edward I., of ten tuns of wine per annum towards her sustenance. But the Princess Mary was a votaress, and cannot be supposed to have wanted ten tuns of wine annually for her own consumption; and the phraseology of the grant (in subventum sustentationis suæ) seems to imply rather that it was a commodity to be given in exchange for other commodities, than to be consumed in kind by the grantee.’
Chaucer, who was a contemporary of our bard, had a grant conferred upon him of a pitcher of wine per diem, to be delivered daily in the port of the city of London by the king’s chief butler during the term of his natural life. This pension—for such in reality it was—is calculated by Mr. Godwin to be equivalent to an annuity of £180 in the present day[1].
- ↑ Godwin’s Life of Chaucer, vol. ii. p. 493.
