Geoffrey Chaucer (abt. 1343 - abt. 1400)

Ancestors Descendants

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Origins and Family 1.2 Marriage and Descendants 1.3 In Royal Service 1.4 Poet 1.5 Poet's Corner 1.6 Poetic Legacy 1.7 Works 2 Research Notes 3 Sources 4 Acknowledgements

Biography

Geoffrey Chaucer was a courtier serving the 14th century Plantagenet kings, and a poet widely considered the founder of English verse.

Origins and Family

Geoffrey Chaucer was the only son of John Chaucer, citizen and vintner of London and his wife Agnes, daughter of John Copton of London. ^{[1] [2]} The family originated in Ipswich, where Robert (Malyn) de Dynyngton aka le Taverner owned property and kept an inn. He married Duce (Malyn), and his son Andrew (also le Taverner) married Isabella (Malyn); they had a son Robert Malyn and a daughter Agnes. Robert removed to London, where he apparently apprenticed himself to a mercer called John le Chaucer (from "chausses", or hose). When John le Chaucer was killed in 1302, he willed the management of his business to Robert Malyn, who thereupon took his name. Matheson ^[3] explains this change of name by referencing "Malyn" (Molly/Moll) as a colloquial slur for "a servant woman, a young woman of the lower classes, or a woman of loose morals." He also cites Chaucer himself as having used the name in such contexts:

It wole not come agayn, withouten drede,
Namore than wole Malkynes maydenhede
Whan she hath lost it in hir wantownesse. ^[4]

Given such a connotation, the change of name, in an age where continuity of surnames was not yet firmly established, is explicable.

Robert Malyn/le Chaucer married, about 1305, Mary, the widow of pepperer John Heyron, with whom she had a son Thomas Heyron. The sole known child of her second marriage was John Chaucer, born about 1312. Both Thomas Heyron and John Chaucer became vintners, and after Robert's early death about 1314, Mary took a Richard le Chaucer, also a vintner and possibly Robert's cousin, as her third husband. Pearsall suggests that Richard was a cousin of her second husband Robert le Chaucer. ^[5]

John Chaucer prospered as a vintner, becoming a citizen and freeman of London, and was granted several royal appointments: as deputy in the port of Southampton to the king's chief butler (a position that would later be held by his grandson Thomas Chaucer), and a collector of customs on exported goods. He was also in the service of King Edward III, with him in Flanders in 1338, just before the king initiated the 100 Years War. ^[6]

John Chaucer married, probably before 1340, Agnes, daughter of John de Copton. John de Copton had died years earlier, and Agnes was raised by her uncle Hamo de Copton, a moneyer of London. ^[7] Their only son Geoffrey Chaucer was born some time after 1340. In a 1386 deposition, Chaucer declared himself to be "forty years and more", attesting further that he had born arms for twenty-seven years. ^{[8] [9]} There may also have been a daughter Katherine, for whom the evidence is tenuous.

In 1349, while Geoffrey Chaucer was still a young child, the Black Death struck London and killed John Chaucer's stepfather Richard Chaucer and his stepbrother Thomas Heyron, as well as his wife's uncle Hamo Copton, with her cousin Nicholas Copton, Hamo's son. ^{[10] [11]} John Chaucer and his wife inherited substantial property from their deceased relatives.

Marriage and Descendants

Some time before 12 September 1366, while at court, Chaucer was married, possibly a match made by Queen Philippa, who is known to have had in her service a "damoiselle" called Philippa Pan. She was probably a daughter of the Hainaut knight Sir Paon (Pan) de Roët sometimes of Queen Philippa's service. ^[12] In September, "Philippa Chaucer" was named as receiving a life annuity of 10 marks for service to the queen. ^[13] Philippa Chaucer, as daughter of Sir Paon de Roët, was thus the sister of Katherine de Roet, who was then in the service of Lionel's brother John of Gaunt. From these relationships, much would come.

Geoffrey and Philippa Chaucer had two sons:

Thomas - b. abt 1367, 5 times Speaker of the House of Commons ^[14]

Lewis - b. 1380

(and probably) Elizabeth - b. abt 1366, who became a nun at Barking Abbey in 1381. ^{[15] [16]}

Other daughters have been attributed to the marriage, but the evidence for these is insufficient to attach them.

Philippa Chaucer died in 1387. ^[17]

Thomas Chaucer married, about 1395, Maud (c.1379-27 Apr. 1437), daughter and coheir of Sir John Burghersh of Ewelme, Oxfordshire. The issue of the marriage was one daughter, Alice, who married three times: lastly to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, whose descendants were Yorkist claimants to the English throne following the Wars of the Roses. ^{[18] [14]} Their deaths ended Chaucer's surviving male line.

In Royal Service

At some time by May of 1357, when he was perhaps fourteen, Geoffrey Chaucer entered the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster, as a page. From this time, many of his activities were attested in the records of the court. ^[19] Elizabeth was the wife of Lionel, the second surviving son of King Edward III; he was then Earl of Ulster in right of his wife and later created Duke of Clarence. By 1359, Geoffrey Chaucer had transferred to Lionel's service, probably as a "valettus" or yeoman. ^[20] This was the year that Chaucer later deposed that he had first been "armed".

By September he had joined a small company under Lionel Earl of Ulster at the siege of Reims in France. Lionel's force was 6 knights, 32 esquires, 40 archers, and other attendants, including Chaucer. ^[21] At some point, Chaucer was taken prisoner, and on 1 March he was ransomed by the king - a sign of high favor for one of his rank, probably because he was a member of the earl's household. The ransom paid was £16 - more than given for some esquires. ^{[22] [23]}

Chaucer continued in Lionel's service for an undetermined time; he is known to have delivered documents between England and France in 1360. However, between that year and 1366, further records concerning Chaucer have not been found. ^[24] Elizabeth of Ulster died in 1363 and Lionel in 1368, but by then, Chaucer had joined the service of the king, in which he was soon named "esquire". From that time, he occupied positions of increasing trust in the service of King Edward and later for his son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

His official travels: ^[25]

1366 - to Navarre

1368 - ?

Sept 1369 - in France with expeditionary force

June-Sept 1370 - in France with expeditionary force

1 Dec 1372 - 23 May 1373 - to Genoa Italy as envoy for trade

1376-77 - in France for peace negotiations

28 May - 19 September 1378 - to Lombardy to negotiate alliance with the Visconti

Offices held: ^[16]

8 June 1374 - 4 Dec. 1386 - Controller, customs and subsidies, London

1835 - 1389 - JP Kent

Oct - Nov 1386 - MP for Kent

1389 - 1391 - Clerk of the King’s works, Westminster, the Tower, St. George’s chapel, Windsor

c. 1390 - 1399 - Forester of North Petherton, Somerset

Chaucer's appointment in 1374 to the customs post was a significant shift from his previous career as a courtier. It made him responsible for the tax on wool (England's greatest export) from the port of London, as well as skins, leather and petty customs, for a salary of over £16 per annum. He was granted in addition a dwelling above the Aldgate in London, convenient to the wool-quay. The position was not a sinecure. Chaucer describes himself as a drudge:

For when thy labour doon al ys
And hast mad alle they rekengynges,
In stede of reste and new thynges
Thou goost hom to they hous anoon,
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another book,
Tyl fully daswed ys thy look; ^[26]

As with many other poets throughout history, this was his day job. He was, however, occasionally recalled to other service for the king and granted license to employ a deputy at the wool-quay, which right was made permanent in 1385. ^{[16] [27] [2]}

He resigned the customs position in 1386 during a time of strife in the government, giving up his lease on his Aldgate quarters as well, and began to occupy himself in Kent. For two years between 1389 and 1391, he held the office of Clerk of the King's Works, which involved even more tedious accounting work, but retired from this post as well, perhaps in consequence of being robbed of the payroll on the road. ^{[16] [28]} His final appointment as Forester was indeed a sinecure, and after losing the income from the clerkship, he probably needed the money, as he was in his last decade regularly in debt. ^{[2] [29]} His short poem "The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse," was addressed in fact to King Henry IV, son and successor of his former patron John Duke of Lancaster, who renewed his annuity.

On 24 December 1399, apparently returning to London from Kent, Chaucer took a long lease on a dwelling in the garden of the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey. He lived there less than year. The last known record of his life was dated 5 June 1400 when he received the last installment on his annuity. ^[30] The tenancy of his house at Westminster was transferred from his name in September. The traditional date of his death is 25 October. ^{[31] [2] [16]}

Poet

When teenaged Geoffrey Chaucer joined the English court in the mid-14th century, the language of the court poets was French: their works inspired in large part by the Roman de la Rose, the 13th century epitome of chivalric romance. Undoubtedly the young Chaucer produced early compositions in this language, but no authenticated examples have been found. However, at some point in the 1360s, he began attempts to write courtly poetry in the English language, which was then coming more into widespread use. It is likely that his first serious effort was a translation of the Roman de la Rose (Romaunt in English) into English verse, in which he experimented with the problems of adopting patterns of meter and rhyme that were more suitable for the vernacular language than those used in French, most notably the iambic pentameter: ^[32] (e.g. "And GLADly WOULD he LEARN and GLADly TEACH.") Some time shortly after 1368, he produced his first major work, in English verse: The Book of the Duchess, an elegy for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.

In 1372, Chaucer was sent by the Crown as a trade envoy to the Italian state of Genoa, likely selected for his knowledge of Italian, which he probably had picked up on the docks of London as a youth. From there he went to Florence, where he encountered the embryonic Renaissance in the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose writings in the Italian language, following Dante. Their influence on Chaucer was profound. Not only did he discover in these poets confirmation of the value of the vernacular language, but the matter which would inform his subsequent works. Most of Chaucer's best-known works can be traced back to the Italian poets - in particular to Boccaccio, whose Decameron would be a model for the plan of the Canterbury Tales. On a second journey to Italy in 1378, Chaucer acquired manuscript copies of some works of Boccaccio, ^{[33] [2]} whose Filostrato would be the model for Chaucer's masterpiece Troilus and Criseyde. ^{[34] [35]}

It has not proved possible to definitively date most works of Chaucer, and a number of his poems were later repurposed over the years. It appears, however, that his most productive years were those also spent in the customs department, beginning in 1374 after his first return from Italy. ^[36] At the end of this period, he completed "Troilus", which was profoundly informed by the other major work he was working on a this time, the prose translation of The Consolation of Philosophy (Boece) by the Roman philosopher Boethius.

The years following, up until the time of his death, were primarily spent on The Canterbury Tales, the work for which Chaucer is best known. It is the least "courtly" of his major writings, featuring a well-realized cast of characters from all segments of English society - "infinitely various" ^[37] from high to low - a factor that has certainly contributed to its lasting popularity. The tales are accessible, and in many cases, such as the Wife of Bath, highly entertaining.

Yet the work is incomplete - at least according to the original plan, which proposed four stories from each of the pilgrims. Instead, following the sermon of the Parson and with some pilgrims not heard from, Chaucer appears to have taken his own call for repentance to heart. He broke off the tales with a short passage he called his "retractions", in which he repudiated almost all his previous works as "worldly vanities," excepting primarily his "Boece" and at least those of the Tales that do not "sownen unto synne". There, as he declared, the author took his leave, and the work was never completed beyond that point. It is noteworthy, though, that if the poet believed his work was sinful, he did not consign it to the flames. Of the existing manuscripts that contain "The Parson's Tale", almost all include the "Retractions". ^[38] Thus it appears that he was not willing, in retracting his work, to destroy it. Rather, he wishes it to be read, so that his readers should pray for him, if he had unknowning (unkonnynge) displeased Christ, that he might have mercy and forgive him for it. Yet, the author apparently made no additions to the work, nor did he organize the material into publishable form. It remained as unsorted fragments, for later editors to try to organize. ^[39]

Poet's Corner

It has been claimed that Geoffrey Chaucer was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, which rather misstates the case. Chaucer was buried at Westminster because he lived there as a tenant during his last year and was a member of the parish. He was laid at the entrance to the chapel of St Benedict, in the south transept of the Abbey. His burial place in 1400 was originally marked by a plain slab, since lost when a monument to the poet John Dryden was installed there in 1720.

In 1556, a new marble monument was built and the bones of the poet were allegedly moved there, according to antiquary William Camden, with his arms and crest above it - also later destroyed but now restored. The idea of a Poet's Corner may have originated from the time of the poet Edmund Spenser's 1620 internment near Chaucer, such that by Dryden's time others wished their remains to join them there. ^[40]

Poetic Legacy

Chaucer's reputation as a poet was already well established before his death. Gower has Venus call him "mi poete" in his "Confessio amantis", (8, 2941-57). In 1385, the French poet Deschampes wrote in praise of "noble Geoffrey Chaucier". ^{[2] [41]} as did Thomas Hoccleve in his 1412 "Regiment of Princes."

His popularity is attested by the fact that there are 82 extant handwritten manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales alone, most from the years just after his death.^[42] In 1476, it was the first book printed in England by William Caxton, and a second, revised, edition followed in 1483. Further print editions followed, and it has never been out of print. ^[2] In 1598 and again in 1602, Thomas Speght produced what he intended as complete and definitive editions of Chaucer's Works, complete with biography. However, by that time, two hundred years since Chaucer had last lived, the facts of his life had been all but forgotten, leaving all too much room for editorial invention. ^[43] Further, the English language had altered so drastically in that time that Chaucer's verses had become almost unintelligible, requiring the addition of a glossary. The consequences of the Great Vowel Shift destroyed much of his rhyme. ^[44] Perhaps worst, the alterations in English pronunciation obliterated much of the poet's metrical integrity, so that critics from the 17th century would complain that Chaucer had no metrical skill. ^[45] It is been the task of recent scholarship to chip away at the biographical accretions of prior centuries and recreate his verse as the poet originally meant it to be heard, thus restoring his reputation.

Works

For a complete list of Chaucer's authenticated works, along with chronology and extensive critical notes, see: The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Edition. Larry D. Benson, General Editor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

Or Wikipedia: Geoffrey Chaucer

Over 60 of Chaucer's works have been digitised and are available online at the British Library and as links at bbc.co.uk

Research Notes

An unsourced profile of a daughter Agnes Chaucer was previously attached to this profile. The only possible source for her is the listing of an Agnes Chaucer as a "domicella" of the queen at the 1399 coronation of Henry IV. ^[46] The actual record is not provided. "Agnes" was a family name in the Chaucer family and there is no link between this girl and the poet alleged as her possible father. Accordingly, the profile has been detached.

An unsourced profile of a daughter Alice was previously attached to this profile. This Alice appears to be a conflation of Alice Chaucer, daughter of Thomas, and Katherine, wife of Simon Manning of Codham, Kent. It is possible that no such person existed and the profile has been detached.

Sources

1. ↑ Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. pp. 11. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6} Gray, Douglas. "Chaucer, Geoffrey (C, 1349-1400)". Oxford DIctionary of National Biography. ODNB
3. ↑ Matheson, Lister M. “Chaucer’s Ancestry: Historical and Philological Re-Assessments.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 25, no. 3, Penn State University Press, 1991, pp. 171–89, Chaucer Review
4. ↑ "The Reeve's Tale" 29-31
5. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 11-17.
6. ↑ Howard, Donald R. Chaucer: His Life/His Works/His Times, pp. 6-7. New York: Fawcett, 1987.
7. ↑ Howard, p. 35.
8. ↑ Chaucer Life-Records, pp 370-373. Crow, Martin Michael. Chaucer Life-Records, pp. 370-374. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Life-Records
9. ↑ Pearsall, p. 10.
10. ↑ "Parishes: St Botolph Aldgate." The Cartulary of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. Ed. G A J Hodgett. London: London Record Society, 1971. 167-192. British History Online. Web. 27 March 2022. #926
11. ↑ Turner, Marion. Chaucer: A European Life, p. 36. Princeton University Press: 2019.
12. ↑ Galway, Margaret. "Philippa Pan., Philippa Chaucer". The Modern Language Review Vol. 55, No. 4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 481-487 JSTOR
13. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 49-50.
14. ↑ ^{14.0 14.1} History of Parliament Online: Chaucer,Thomas (c.1367-1434), of Ewelme, Oxon. HOP-Thomas
15. ↑ Life-Records of Chaucer, pp. 337-338. Chaucer Society, 1900. Life-Records
16. ↑ ^{16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4} The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993 HOP
17. ↑ Pearsall, p. 143.
18. ↑ Lamborn, E A G. "THE ARMS ON THE CHAUCER TOMB AT EWELME". Oxoniensia
19. ↑ Life-Records. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Life-records
20. ↑ Life-Records, pp. 13-21. Life-Records
21. ↑ Pearsall, p. 41.
22. ↑ Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website Harvard
23. ↑ Life-Records, pp. 23-28. Life-Records
24. ↑ Pearsall, p. 47.
25. ↑ Pearsall, Appendix II, pp. 306-311.
26. ↑ The House of Fame, 652-8
27. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 96-102.
28. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 210-214.
29. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 222-226.
30. ↑ Chaucer's Life-Records, p. 596. Life-Records
31. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 274-276.
32. ↑ Howard, p. 263.
33. ↑ Pearsall, pp. 118-121.
34. ↑ Pearsall, p. 170.
35. ↑ Howard, pp. 169-199; 260-303.
36. ↑ The Riverside Chaucer 3rd Edition, pp. xxvi-xxix. Larry D. Benson, General Editor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
37. ↑ Pearsall, p. 241
38. ↑ "Riverside", p. 965.
39. ↑ Pearsall, p. 233.
40. ↑ Westminster Abbey: Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer
41. ↑ Jenkins, T Atkinson. "Deschamps' Ballade to Chaucer." Modern Language Notes Vol. 33, No. 5 (May, 1918), pp. 268-278. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press JSTOR
42. ↑ Pearsall, p. 231.
43. ↑ Machan, Tim William. “Speght’s ‘Works’ and the Invention of Chaucer.” Text, vol. 8, Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 145–70, Speght
44. ↑ Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website, "The Great Vowel Shift" Harvard
45. ↑ Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website, "The Loss of the Final -e" Harvard
46. ↑ Chaucer's Life-Records, p. 546. Life-Records

See also:

• The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer Oxford

• The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer, Luminarium.org.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of biography above was written by David Wright, a Gregory Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds, and translator of the Canterbury Tales for Oxford World Classics.