Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/169

 He returned to England in the autumn or the late summer of 1373, and soon after received several marks of the royal satisfaction. On 23 April 1374 he had granted him for life a daily pitcher of wine, to be received in the port of London from the hands of the king's butler; this was afterwards commuted into a second pension of twenty marks. On 8 June he was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of London during the king's pleasure, taking the same fees as other comptrollers of the customs and subsidy. ‘He was, like his predecessors, to write the rolls of his office with his own hand; he was to be continually present; to perform his duties personally; and the other part of the seal which is called “the coket” was to remaining his custody’. On 13 June the Duke of Lancaster granted him 10l. a year for life, to be paid him at the manor of 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. On 8 Nov. 1375 he obtained a grant of the custody of the lands and person of Edmond Staplegate of Kent. This brought him 104l., some l,200l. or l,300l. of our money. On 28 Dec. of the same year he had granted him the custody of five ‘solidates’ of rent in Solys, Kent, during the minority of the heir of John Solys, deceased. On 12 July 1376 the king granted him 71l. 4s. 6d., being the price of some forfeited wool, one John Rent of London being fined to that amount for having conveyed the said wool to Dordrecht without having paid the duty. He was also one of the king's esquires (40s, is twice recorded as paid by the keeper of the king's wardrobe for his half-yearly' robes). But thrift does not seem to have been one of Chaucer’s virtues. At Michaelmas 1376 we find him having an advance made at the exchequer of fifty shillings on account of the current half-year's allowance.

He lived at this time in the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate. It was leased to him in May 1374. Probably though his formal appointment as a comptroller of the customs is dated 8 June—he knew some weeks before that it was coming, and secured in good time convenient accommodation in the city, within an easy walk from his office. A translation of the lease is given by Riley in his ‘Memorials of London,' The tenant was to have ‘the whole of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate with the rooms built over and a certain cellar beneath the same gate on the south side of that gate and the appurtenances thereof’ ‘for the whole life of him, the same Geoffrey.' He is to maintain and repair it, ‘to be ousted if the chamberlain to whom the right of inspection is reserved finds he is not doing so, not to sublet. And they on their part promise not to make a gaol of it while he is there, nor disturb him except it becomes necessary to arrange for the defence of the city.’ This was his abode for some twelve years; in 1386 one Richard Forster succeeded him (see Academy, 6 Dec. 1879). With it the picture of himself in the ‘House of Fame’ is associated.

The monotony of his life was broken by several diplomatic employments, for the terms of his oath as comptroller were made compatible with absences on the king's service. Towards the end of 1373 he was appointed with Sir John Burley to discharge some secret service, which is yet a secret. In February 1377 he was sent with Sir Thomas Percy (afterwards Earl of Worcester) on another secret mission into Flanders; a little later in that year he was again abroad, possibly in France. Early in the following year he was in France once more, probably attached to the ambassadors who went over to negotiate Richard II's marriage with a French princess. In May he was despatched again to Italy, this time to Lombardy, along with Sir Edward Berkeley, to treat with Bernardo Visconti, lord of Milan, and the notorious Sir John Hawkwood, ‘pro certis negociis expeditionem guerræ Regis tangentibus,’ probably to support in some way the proposed expedition into Brittany. And he seems to have been abroad again in 1379. One signal interest appertaining to the second Italian appointment is that Chaucer named one John Gower as one of his two ‘attorneys’ or representatives during his absence, it is fairly certain that this was Gower the poet. He mentions him also in ‘Troylus and Cryseyde,’ which was probably written about this very time, with the epithet ‘moral,’ which has ever since adhered to his name—an epithet probably suggested by his ‘Speculum Meditantis,’ to judge from what we are told of the contents of that lost work. Gower repaid the compliment. in his ‘Confessio Amantis.’ But Chaucer and Gower were very different types of men, and their friendship does not seem to have remained unshaken. Chaucer reflects somewhat sharply on Gower in the prologue to the ‘Man of Lawes Tale,’ and cries ‘fie’ on certain ‘cursed stories,' which, as it happened, ‘the moral Gower’ had carefully related. It has been urged that the point of this reprimand is blunted by the ‘fact’ that the ‘Man of Lawes Tale’ is itself taken from Gower. But the fact is doubtful. The Man of Law implies that Chaucer had ‘of olde time’ written the tale