Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/298

 the Duke of Bourbon, who defended it. Duke Louis II of Bourbon had been one of the hostages for King John while he was prisoner in London, knew Gourney and was glad to have to do with him. He afterwards joined John of Gaunt on an expedition into Artois and Picardy, and fell into an ambush near Soissons, where he and others were taken prisoners. In 1376 he and his companions, in prison in France, petitioned parliament to ransom them. The commons petitioned the king to grant the request of Gourney and his companions. It was granted, but the ransom of these mischievous persons was afterwards made a charge against William of Wykeham, the chancellor. In 1378 Gourney was governor of Bayonne, where he was besieged by the combined forces of the Duke of Anjou and Henry, king of Castile. The following year he was named seneschal of the Landes, and on 13 Oct. of this year a royal commission was drawn up in which he and three others were named umpires to decide the rival claims of Charles, king of Navarre, and John de Arundel, marshal of England, to the ransom of Oliver Duguesclin, brother of the better-known Bertrand Duguesclin (Fœdera, vii. 230). In 1388 he was with the expedition to Portugal, under the command of Edward, earl of Cambridge (, Ypodigma Neustriæ, p. 334, Rolls Ser.) Gourney, then over seventy years of age, was constable of the forces. In 1390 he was present, as a baron, in parliament at the decision given by Richard II in the famous controversy between Scrope and Grosvenor, in which Chaucer was cited as a witness. It has been suggested that Gourney may have been the prototype of Chaucer's knight, who, in the prologue to the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ is described as having been at the ‘siege of Algezir, and riden in Belmarie.’ Chaucer's description of his knight ‘as worthy and wise, meke as a mayde, who no vileinye sayde, and a perfight gentil knight’ scarcely applies to Gourney. Yet Fuller, in placing Gourney among his worthies, says: ‘The veneration attached to this distinguished warrior was so great that his armour was beheld by martial men with much civil veneration, and his faithful buckler was a relic of esteem.’ He sat in the upper house in the first parliament of Henry IV, and voted for the detention in safe custody of the deposed king Richard. He possessed considerable estates in England, those of his brothers having reverted to him. In 1401 he received a regrant of the district called ‘between two seas,’ or the baillage of Criou, near Bordeaux, which district had been originally granted to him by Edward III, and inadvertently, so the record states, taken from him by Richard II. These lands he was to enjoy during his life. He was twice married, first, after 1362, to Alice, sister of Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and widow of John, lord Beauchamp of Hache (d. 1362); she died 26 Oct. 1384; and again, before 1389, to Philippa, sister of John, lord Talbot, who died in 1419, aged 51. Gourney died on 26 Sept. 1406, leaving no issue. His estates reverted to the crown. Leland, in his ‘Itinerary’ (ii. 93–4), describes a fine brass, no longer extant, above his tomb at Stoke-under-Hamden, Somersetshire. The French inscription (given by Leland) enumerates the battles in which he was engaged, and states that he was ninety-six years of age (cf. Record of the House of Gurney, i. 680).

[Rymer's Fœdera, orig. ed.; Froissart; Cuvilier's Chronicle de Bertrand Duguesclin, ed. E. Charrière, 1839; Chazaud's Chronique du Duc Louis de Bourbon (French Hist. Soc.); Daniel Gurney's Record of the House of Gurney, 1848; Fuller's English Worthies, ii. 285; Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 20–2.]  GOUTER or GAULTIER, JAMES (fl. 1636), lutenist, was a Frenchman in the service of Charles I. A warrant dated 28 Nov. 1625 directs the payment of ‘the sum of one hundred pounds due to him at Christmas next, and likewise a hundred pounds a year until such time as his Majesty shall make him a grant under the Great Seal of England, of the like value, during his life.’ By later warrants, dated 21 Oct. 1629 and 26 March 1631, this annuity was confirmed and arrears ordered to be paid (Sign Man. Car. I, vol. i. No. 133, and vol. xiii. No. 2). In the returns, dated October 1635, to the privy council by the justices of the peace of ‘Straungers borne,’ dwelling within Westminster and the liberties thereof, among those of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster, occurs the entry, ‘Mr. Gottiere, a frenchman, householder, Musician’ (State Papers, Dom. ccc. 75). In the charter, dated 15 July 1636, granted by Charles to Nicholas Lanier, ‘Mounsieur Gaultier’ is mentioned among the fifty-two musicians hereafter to be ‘the musicians of us, our heirs and Successors,’ and ‘by force and virtue of theis p'sents, a body corporate and politique in deed, fact and name, by the name of Marshall, Wardens and Cominalty of the Arte and Science of Musick in Westm' in the County of Midd'.’ (Patent Rolls, ii. Car. I, Nona pars, 4). A petition of Michael Burton to the privy council dated 30 April 1637, shows that Gaultier had incurred a debt to one Sara de Lastre; that Burton had solicited her cause in the court of arches, and had obtained judgment