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CHAUCER AND HIS ENGLAND
CHAUCER AND HIS ENGLAND
BY THE SAME AUTHOR FROM ST. FRANCIS TO DANTE. “A more enlightening picture than any we have yet read.”— Times. “It will, I hope, be read by every one who wants to know what the Middle Ages were really like.”— Dr. Rashdall in Independent Review . “Extraordinarily vivacious, fresh, and vivid.”— Mr. C. F. G. Masterman , M.P., in Speaker . FRIAR’S LANTERN: A Mediæval Fantasia. “Written with undeniable ability.”— Times. “Worthy of a place beside the ‘Cloister and the Hearth’ as a true work of art.”
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PREFACE
PREFACE
No book of this size can pretend to treat exhaustively of all that concerns Chaucer and his England; but the Author’s main aim has been to supply an informal historical commentary on the poet’s works. He has not hesitated, in a book intended for the general public, to modernize Chaucer’s spelling, or even on rare occasions to change a word. His best acknowledgments are due to those who have laboured so fruitfully during the last fifty years in publishing Chaucerian and other original documents o
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
ENGLAND IN EMBRYO Few men could lay better claim than Chaucer to this happy accident of birth with which Matthew Arnold endows his Scholar Gipsy, if we refrain from pressing too literally the poet’s fancy of a Golden Age. Chaucer’s times seemed sordid enough to many good and great men who lived in them; but few ages of the world have been better suited to nourish such a genius, or can afford a more delightful travelling-ground for us of the 20th century. There is indeed a glory over the distant
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH The name Chaucer was in some cases a corruption of chauffecire , i.e. “chafewax,” or clerk in the Chancery, whose duty it was to help in the elaborate operation of sealing royal documents. [13] But Mr. V. B. Redstone seems to have shown conclusively that the poet’s ancestors were chaussiers , or makers of long hose, and that they combined this business with other more or less extensive mercantile operations, especially as vintners. The family, like others in the wine trade, may
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
THE KING’S SQUIRE In Chaucer’s life, as in the “Seven Ages of Man,” the soldier follows hard upon the lover; he is scarcely out of his ’teens before we find him riding to the Great War, “in hope to stonden in his lady grace.” He fought in that strange campaign of 1359-60, which began with such magnificent preparations, but ended so ineffectually. Edward marched across France from Calais to Reims with a splendid army and an unheard-of baggage train; but the towns closed their gates, the French ar
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
THE AMBASSADOR Although we have nothing important dating from before his thirtieth year, we know from Chaucer’s own words that he wrote many “Balades, Roundels, and Virelays” which are now lost; or, as he puts it in his last rueful Retractation, “many a song and many a lecherous lay.” These were no doubt fugitive pieces, often written for different friends or patrons, and put abroad in their names. Besides these, we know that he translated certain religious works, including the famous “Misery of
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
THE MAN OF BUSINESS “Oh! that any muse should be set upon a high stool to cast up accounts and balance a ledger.”— Times The Italian journey of 1372-3 was far from being Chaucer’s last embassy. In 1376 he was abroad on secret service with Sir John Burley; in February of next year he was associated on another secret mission with Sir Thomas Percy, afterwards Earl of Worcester, and Hotspur’s partner at the battle of Shrewsbury; so that our poet, if he had lived only three years longer, would have s
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
LAST DAYS From this time forward Chaucer seems to have lived from hand to mouth. He had, as will presently be seen, a son, stepson, or foster-son of considerable wealth and position; and no doubt he had other good friends too. We have reason to believe that he was still working at the “Canterbury Tales,” and receiving such stray crumbs from great men’s tables as remained the main reward of literature until modern times. In 1391 (if we may judge from the fact that problems in the book are calcula
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
LONDON CUSTOM-HOUSE There are two episodes of Chaucer’s life which belong even more properly to Chaucer’s England; in which it may not only be said that our interest is concentrated less on the man than on his surroundings, but even that we can scarcely get a glimpse of the man except through his surroundings. These two episodes are his life in London, and his Canterbury Pilgrimage; and with these we may most fitly begin our survey of the world in which he lived. The most tranquilly prosperous p
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
ALDGATE TOWER “For though the love of books, in a cleric, be honourable in the very nature of the case, yet it hath sorely exposed us to the adverse judgment of many folk, to whom we became an object of wonder, and were blamed at one time for greediness in that matter, or again for seeming vanity, or again, for intemperate delight in letters; yet we cared no more for their revilings than for the barking of curs, contented with His testimony alone to Whom it pertaineth to try the hearts and reins
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
TOWN AND COUNTRY That which in Chaucer’s day passed for rank “sluggardy a-night” might yet be very early rising by the modern standard; and our poet, sorely as he needed Philippa’s shrill alarum, might still have deserved the character given to Turner by one who knew his ways well, “that he had seen the sun rise oftener than all the rest of the Academy put together.” It is indeed startling to note how sunrise and sunset have changed places in these five hundred years. When a modern artist waxes
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
THE LAWS OF LONDON But the picturesque side of things was only the smaller half of Chaucer’s life, as it is of ours. We must not be more royalist than the King, or claim more for Chaucer and his England than he himself would ever have dreamed of claiming. That which seems most beautiful and romantic to us was not necessarily so five hundred years ago. The literature of Chivalry, for instance, seems to have touched Chaucer comparatively little: he scarcely mentions it but in more or less open der
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
“CANTERBURY TALES”—THE DRAMATIS PERSONÆ During those twelve years in Aldgate Tower, Chaucer’s genius fought its way through the literary conventions of his time to the full assertion of its native originality. He had begun with allegory and moralization, after the model of the “Roman de la Rose”; shreds of these conventions clung to him even to the end of the Aldgate period; but they were already outworn. In “Troilus and Cressida” we have real men and women under all the classical machinery: the
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
“CANTERBURY TALES”—FIRST AND SECOND DAYS “For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”— Solomon’s Song Here, then, they are assembled on a perfect morning of English spring, with London streets awakening to life behind them, and the open road in front. Think of the dayspring from on high, the good brown earth and tender foliage, smoke curling up from cottage chi
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
“CANTERBURY TALES”—THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS On the morning of the third day we find the Physician speaking; he tells the tragedy of Virginia, not straight from Livy, whom Chaucer had probably never had a chance of reading, but from its feebler echo in the “Roman de la Rose.” Even so, however, the pity of it comes home to his hearers. The suspicion of the “gentles” might seem premature; but they evidently suspected this pardon-monger of too copious morning-draughts already, and the tenor of his whol
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
KING AND QUEEN We have traced the main course of the poet’s life, followed him at work and at play, and considered his immediate environment. Let us now try to roam more at large through the England of his day, and note the more salient features of that society, high and low, from which he drew his characters. In this age, Chaucer could scarcely have had a better introduction to Court life than that which fell to his lot. The King whom he served, when we have made all possible deductions, was st
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES The theory of chivalry, which itself owes much to pre-Christian morality, lies at the roots of the modern conception of gentility. The essence of perfect knighthood was fearless strength, softened by charity and consecrated by faith. A certain small and select class had (it was held) a hereditary right to all the best things of this world, and the concomitant duty of using with moderation for themselves and giving freely to others. Essentially exclusive and jealous of its pri
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
HUSBANDS AT THE CHURCH DOOR “Io ho uno grandissimo dubbio di voi, ch’io mi credo che se ne salvino tanti pochi di quegli che sono in istato di matrimonio, che de’ mille, novecento novantanove credo che sia matrimonio del diavolo.”— St. Bernardino of Siena , Sermon xix But we have as yet considered only one side of chivalry. While blushing, like Gibbon, to unite such discordant names, let us yet remember that the knight was “the champion of God and the ladies ,” and may therefore fairly claim to
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
THE GAY SCIENCE The facts given in the foregoing chapter may explain a good deal in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue that might otherwise be ascribed to wide poetical licence; but they may seem strangely at variance with the “Knight’s Tale” or the “Book of the Duchess.” The contradiction, however, lies only on the surface. Neither flesh nor spirit can suffer extreme starvation. When the facts of life are particularly sordid, then that “large and liberal discontent,” which is more or less rooted in ev
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GREAT WAR Of all the causes that tended in Chaucer’s time to modify the old ideals of knighthood, none perhaps was more potent than the Hundred Years’ War. Unjust as it was on both sides—for the cause of Philippe de Valois cannot be separated from certain inexcusable manœuvres of his predecessors on the French throne—it was the first thoroughly national war on so large a scale since the institution of chivalry. No longer merely feudal levies, but a whole people on either side is gradually in
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
THE BURDEN OF THE WAR It must, however, be admitted that so terrible a weapon in so rough an age was only too dangerous. When Edward III. found that his cousin of France not only meant to deal treacherously with him in Aquitaine, but had also allied himself with our deadly enemies of Scotland, he found a very colourable excuse for retaliation by raising a claim to the throne of France. But for the Salic law, which forbade inheritance through a female, Edward would undoubtedly be, if not the ri
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
THE POOR It has sometimes been contended in recent years that the Middle Ages lacked only our smug middle-class comfort; and that, as the upper classes were nobler, so the poor were healthier and happier then. It is probable that the latter part of this theory is at least as mistaken as the first: but the question is in itself more complicated, and we have naturally less detailed evidence in the poor man’s case than in the rich man’s. Among the great, we find many virtues and many vices common t
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
MERRY ENGLAND “In the holidays all the summer the youths are exercised in leaping, dancing, shooting, wrestling, casting the stone, and practising their shields; the maidens trip in their timbrels, and dance as long as they can well see. In winter, every holiday before dinner, the boars prepared for brawn are set to fight, or else bulls and bears are baited. When the great fen, or moor, which watereth the walls of the city on the north side, is frozen, many young men play upon the ice; some, str
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
THE KING’S PEACE “Accident plays a greater part in the fourteenth century than perhaps at any other epoch.... At bottom society was neither quite calm nor quite settled, and many of its members were still half savage.”— Jusserand , “English Wayfaring Life.” The key to these contrasts, and much else that we are slow to imagine in medieval life, lies in the comparative simplicity of that earlier civilization. We must indeed beware of exaggerating this simplicity; there were already many complex th
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
PRIESTS AND PEOPLE When the greatest Pope of the 13th century saw in his dream a vision of St. Francis propping the tottering church, both he and the saint augured from this happy omen a reformation more sudden and complete than was actually possible. Church historians of all schools have often seemed to imply that if St. Francis had come back to earth on the first or second centenary of his death, he would have found the Church rather worse than better; and certainly Chaucer’s contemporaries th
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CHAPTER XXIV
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 seri
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