Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/14

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [ID* s. iv. JULY i. im. 1. John le Chaucer was wounded by John de Guldeford and others, including, appa- rently, his own servant John the Uook, in Sopereslane, near the house of John Heyroun, in the early part of 1302. He died within three month's after, in Vintry Ward. 2. Thomas Godard was wounded at the same place and time by Benedict theTaverner and John the Cook, servants of John le Chaucer, and died within a week. 3. About six years later John de Gulde- tford was killed by certain persons in the •same lane, likewise near the nouse of John Heyroun. Before his death John le Chaucer obtained a Commission of oyer and terminer, dated 26 April, 1302, to the Mayor and two others, to try his plaint to the king that Elias Russel, John de Gildeford, Henry his brother, Ralph Johanesman (i.e., the man of the said John 1), John le Keu, Peter Adrian, Alexander de Betoigne, William Walran, and Richard Galopyn assaulted him with force and .arms, and beat and wounded him, so that his life was despaired of, "to his damage of a,000/." The commission states that the •king was "not willing to leave so great a trespass unpunished, if perpetrated/' The •king was then at Devizes, and the order for the issue of the commission was brought to "the Lord Chancellor by the Earl of Lincoln (Patent Roll, 30 Edw. I., m. 24d). No record •of the trial has been found. Ralph de Sandwich, above mentioned, was •ene of the Justices of Gaol Delivery at New- gate. Their roll for 33 Edw. I., 1305, No. 39, m. 15, shows that Benedict the Taverner of John le Chauser was put in exigent, but did not appear, and was therefore outlawed. The acquittal of Henry de Guldeford and Alexander de Betoyne must have occurred before 1307, as Ralph de Sandwich ceased to be Justice in that year. John de Guldeford may have been acquitted at the same time. He is mentioned as being alive in 1307, in the 'Liber Custumarum.' ed. Riley, p. 108, along with a Simon Godara. He was killed soon after, and his tenement in Soper's Lane came to the king, as stated. The more general proceedings of the Iler in 1321 are recorded in the 'Liber Custu- marum,' pp. 285-425, but the Assize Rolls, Nos. 546, 547, contain much fuller details, and it seems highly desirable that they should be printed in full, or at least summarized in the «ame manner as the City Letter-Books and Wills. .Stow, in his 'Survey of London,' thus alludes to this assize;— " In the year 1320 [old style] the King's Justices sat in the Tower, for trial of matters ; whereupon John Gisors," late Mayor of London, and many others fled the city, for fear to be charged of things they had presumptuously done." Elsewhere he calls Gisors a vintner, and Constable of the Tower. The Assize Roll No. 547 does not support the chronicler's statement that Gisors fled, it being there evident that he appeared before the Justices to answer certain charges made against him, and paid a fine (m. 58). It is positively stated in the roll that one of John le Chaucer's servants, Benedict le Taverner, was a foreigner, and there can be little doubt that he was one himself. He was probably identical with John le Cliau- cers, one of the fifteen merchants of Abbe- ville who had a safeconduct, on G June, 1293, to visit various ports in England, for the purpose of identifying their wines and goods taken at sea by English sailors (Patent Roll, 21 Edw. I., m. 13 ; new Calendar). John le Chaucer's name occurs several times under 1278 and later years in Dr. Sharpe's ' Calendars of the City Letter-Books.' He was evidently regarded as being a citizen, but this does not necessarily prove that he was an Englishman born, for there is a special order in the ' Liber Albus,' ed. Riley, p. 287, that "foreign merchants of respect- ability "(suffisants) should enjoy the franchise of the City. On the other hand, Englishmen were fre- quently included among the foreign mer- chants. Stow mentions a writ of 28 Edward I. (1300) in favour of the merchants of Bordeaux, who unladed their wines at the Thames side in the Vintry, and among them he mentions John Stodey, clearly an English name. He further alludes to the cordwainers and curriers in Sopar's Lane; to Henry Scogao and Geoffrey Chaucer : and to the gift by Richard Chaucer of his tavern to Aldermary Church. Other passages in Stow relating to the Vintners are of interest in connexion with the poet and his ancestors :— "The vintners in London were of old time called Merchant-vintners of Gascoyne they were as well Englishmen as strangers born beyond the seas, but then subjects to the Kings of England." " The successors of those vintners and wino drawers that retailed by the gallon, pottle, quart, and pint, were all incorporated by the name of Wine-tunners in the reign of Edward III., and con- tinued in the 15th of Henry VI." At one time Prof. Skeat was inclined to believe that the name "Chaucer" meant " hosier " rather than " shoemaker." Stow has some curious remarks on these very trades ; —.