Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/165

 taken prisoner at a place called Retiers in Brittany, some twenty miles S.E. of Rennes, in the direction of Angers. We can only surmise that he was out with a foraging party and met with some misadventure. It is commonly stated that he was released at the peace of Bretigni; but, in fact, he was ransomed more than two months before. At least on 1 March the king paid 16l. towards his ransom, as Dr. Furnivall has discovered from leaf 70 of ‘Wardrobe Book’ 63/9 in the Public Record Office.

We now lose sight of Chaucer for six or seven years. We know that his father died in 1366 (see Academy, 13 Oct. 1877), and that his widowed mother soon after married one ‘Bartholomew Attechapel.' But of the son we know nothing till, on 20 June 1367, the king, then at Queenborough, grants him a pension ‘de gratis nostra speciali et pro bono servitio quod dilectus valettus noster Galfridus Chaucer nobis impendit et impendet in futurum. . . ad totam vitam ipsius Galfredi vel quousque pro statu sub aliter duxerimus ordinandum;’ and in 1367 occurs the first mention of him in the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer: ‘Die Sabbati to die Novembris. Gaglrido Chaucer cui dominus Rex xx marcas annuatim ad scaccarium percipiendas,’ &c. His pension, it will be noticed, is given for good service done. In the following year the recipient is more fully described as ‘unus Valettorum Cameræ Regis,' that is, as a yeoman of the king's chamber. The pension is separate from his pay as a ‘valettus,’ and must refer to some different service. He is then no longer in Prince Lionel’s household, but in the king’s. Possibly the fact that 16l. towards his ransom was paid by the king and not by Prince Lionel may indicate that this transference had taken place some years before.

The duties and the pay of a valettus may be gathered from ‘Household Ordinances,' printed for the Society of Antiquaries, 1790, p. 8, 9, 11, 18, and especially the ‘Liber Niger Domus Regis Angliæ, id est Domus Regiæ sive Aulæ Angliæ Regis Edw. IV,’ pp. 15–85. Chaucer would have, like his fellows, ‘to make beds, bear or hold torches, to set boards, to apparel all chambers, and such other service as the chamberlain or ushers of chamber command or assign, to attend the chamber, to watch the king by course, to go messages, taking for’ his ‘wages, as yeomen of the crown do in the Chequer Roll, and clothing like, beside their watching clothing, of the king's wardrober.’ This position Chaucer seems to have held till 1372, from which time, with one exception—in 1373—he is styled ‘armiger’ or ‘scutifer,’ that is esquire. In December 1368, however, he is an ‘esquier of less degree’ in the order for gifts of robes to the household (see No. 14 of the second series of the Chaucer Society).

In 1369 he seems to have been campaigning again in France. In that year Henry de Wakefield advances 10l. to him while in the war in France (see Chaucer Soc. 2nd series, No. 10, p. 129). In that same year, in August, died Queen Philippa, and a little later the Lady Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt. Of Chaucer's poem on Lady Blanche's death we shall speak presently. In 1370 he was abroad on the king's service, from June to September; at least his ‘letters of protection’ cover the period from 20 June to Michaelmas. But what is business was and where it took him are questions yet unanswered.

Chaucer's marriage belongs to this period, but it is involved in profound obscurity. It is certain that he was married by 1374, for in that year, in June, ‘the Duke of Lancaster granted him 10l. for life, to be paid to him at the manor of the Savoy, in consideration of the good service which he and his wife Philippa had rendered to the said duke, to his consort, and to his mother, the queen’ (Aldine ed. i. 19). But as early as September 1366 a Philippa Chaucer is mentioned among the ladies of the chamber to the queen. It may be taken as certain that this was the same person who was afterwards his wife, for we know that his wife’s christian name was Philippa, and also that she was in the queen’s service. It is highly probable that she was his wife in 1366. She may have been a namesake, possibly a cousin, but there is some reason for believing her surname was Roet.

In the ‘Assembly of Foules,’ ‘Troylus and Cryseyde,’ the ‘House of Fame,” and the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ as well as the ‘Boke of the Duchesse,’ some certainly written after he was married, Chaucer brings himself before us as one never crowned with happiness in love, as an alien from love's courts, one banished from his favour. The well-known lines in the ‘Boke of the Duchesse’ were quoted long ago by Godwin as portraying some love trouble (see Boke of the Duchesse, verses 30–42). The date of the ‘Boke of the Duchesse’ is, as already pointed out, 1369. ‘The Compleynte of the Deth of Pité’ probably belongs to this period—a poem in which he complains of the obduracy of some lady, how pity is dead, buried, and extinct, in her heart. In the ‘Assembly of Foules’ he writes:

For al be that I knows not Love in dede, &c.

And further on he makes African his guide say to him, as he stands perplexed by the verses written on the gate before them: