by Jim Bernhard
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Jack of many trades—valet, government clerk, forester, soldier, international diplomat, and the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner—Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, the precise date and locale being unknown. His father and grandfather were wine merchants. Through family connections, he was placed at the age of fourteen as a page in the household of the Countess of Ulster. Thereafter, he rose in the ranks of royal courtiers, serving in various capacities for kings Edward III, Richard II, and, briefly, Henry IV. His various jobs included valet de chambre, special diplomatic envoy, clerk of the King’s Works, forester (a sort of game warden), and controller of customs. So highly regarded was he by Edward III that he was granted a gallon of wine daily for life, possibly as a reward for an early poetical work.
When Chaucer was twenty-three, he married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting to Edward’s Queen Philippa, and the Chaucers had three or four children (the record is not precise), one of whom, Thomas, later became Speaker of the House of Commons.
Chaucer’s great achievement—accomplished while he held down his day job at court—was The Canterbury Tales, an account of a pilgrimage that portrays medieval English travelers from many walks of life in vivid, amusing, and sometimes bawdy detail. (If you read it in high school, those parts were probably tactfully omitted.) Although he was a sophisticated man of the world with a ribald sense of humor, Chaucer was also a faithful Catholic, and he apparently had some concern that his writings might stain his immortal soul. As a kind of insurance policy, he wrote this “retraction” at the end of The Canterbury Tales:
Now I pray to all that hear or read this little treatise, that if there be anything in it that pleases them, that for it they thank our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom proceeds all wit and goodness. And if there be anything that displeases them, I pray them also that they ascribe it to the fault of my ignorance, and not to my will, for I would gladly have written better if I had had the skill. For our book says, “All that is written is written for our doctrine,” and that is my intent. Wherefore I beseech you meekly, for the mercy of God, that you pray for me that Christ have mercy on me and forgive me my sins, namely my translations and editings of worldly vanities, which I revoke in this retraction. . . . that Christ in his great mercy forgive me the sin. But for the translation of Boethius’ Consolation, and other books of legends of saints, and homilies, and morality, and devotion, I thank our Lord Jesus Christ and his blissful Mother, and all the saints of heaven, beseeching them that they from henceforth until the end of my life send me grace to bewail my guilt, and to contemplate the salvation of my soul, and grant me grace of true penitence, confession, and satisfaction in this present life, through the benign grace of him that is king of kings and priest over all priests, that bought us with the precious blood of his heart, so that I may be one of them at the day of doom that shall be saved. . . .
Here is ended the book of the Tales of Canterbury,
compiled by Geoffrey Chaucer,
on whose soul may Jesus Christ have mercy.
Amen.
On December 24, 1399, when Chaucer was fifty-six, he optimistically took out a fifty-three-year lease on a dwelling in the garden of St. Mary’s Chapel, Westminster, and it was probably here that he died October 25, 1400. There is some speculation that he was murdered by enemies of his patron, Richard II—possibly even on the orders of Richard’s successor, Henry IV. Hardly anybody believes this, and more likely he died of some unknown illness, or maybe that daily gallon of wine. He left no will, and there was no public funeral. By virtue of his status as a tenant of Westminster Abbey, he was buried there, and his remains were moved in 1556 to a more ornate tomb—the first in what has become known as Poets’ Corner.
The Renaissance
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
The early life of Miguel de Cervantes would make a fascinating novel—and, as a matter of fact, it did. Known now as the father of the modern novel, Cervantes was born about September 29, 1547, near Madrid. His father, who was deaf, worked as a surgeon, in those days not a very lucrative trade, and as a young man Cervantes found employment in Rome as an aide to Giulio Acquaviva, a Roman Catholic prelate who later became a cardinal.
Cervantes joined the Spanish military and fought in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when an alliance of Catholic nations defeated the Ottoman Turks. Although seriously wounded, losing the use of his left hand, Cervantes stayed in the military several more years. In 1575 he embarked on a new voyage with his brother Rodrigo, and the two were captured by Barbary pirates, who held them for ransom in Algeria. The brothers were imprisoned for five years, making numerous thwarted efforts to escape. Their parents sent two priests with three hundred crowns as ransom, but it was only enough to free Rodrigo. At last, with the aid of an order of monks known as the Trinitarians, the parents raised five hundred gold ducats, which proved adequate to spring Miguel, and he returned to Madrid.
When he was thirty-seven, Cervantes married Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, who was nineteen. They never had children, although Cervantes had fathered a daughter in an earlier relationship.
The year after he married he published a novel, La Galatea, but it met with only modest success. After that, he found work as a supplier to the “invincible” Spanish Armada, but some irregularities in his accounts landed him in jail. This misfortune was a blessing in disguise, for during his imprisonment Cervantes began work on what was to become his masterpiece: The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote de La Mancha. It is a romantic tale of a would-be knight who sets out to revive chivalry. Don Quixote has many adventures, in the course of which he employs his lance to “tilt with windmills,” an amusing but hopelessly futile pursuit. Don Quixote is regarded as the earliest example of the modern novel, and it is the most influential work in Spanish literature.
Cervantes viewed death with the eyes of a practicing Catholic. This is his account of Don Quixote’s final moments:
Since nothing earthly lasts forever, especially man’s life, and since Don Quixote’s enjoyed no special dispensation from heaven to stay its course, its end came when he least looked for it. A fever settled upon him and kept him in bed for six days, during which he was often visited by his friends—Carrasco, and the curate, and Nicholas the barber—while his squire Sancho Panza never left his bedside. His friends called in the doctor, who felt his pulse and frowned, and said that he had better attend to his soul, as his body was in a bad way.
Don Quixote heard this news calmly; but his housekeeper, his niece, and his squire began to weep copiously, as if he already lay dead before them. The doctor’s opinion was that melancholy and depression were bringing him to his end.
“I feel that I am rapidly drawing near death,” said Don Quixote. “Let the curate hear my confession and call a notary to make my will.”
When Don Quixote had finished confessing and dictating his will, he felt faint and stretched out on the bed. The house was in confusion; but Don Quixote’s niece continued to nibble sweets, and the housekeeper kept on nipping sherry, and Sancho Panza smiled contentedly—for the prospect of inheriting property softens the pangs of grief.
At last Don Quixote’s end came, after he had received the last rites, and had in forceful terms declared how much he hated books of chivalry. The notary said that in no book of chivalry had he ever read of any knight-errant dying in his bed so calmly and so like a Christian as Don Quixote, who amid the tears and lamentations of all present yielded up his spirit. The curate asked the notary to attest that Alonso Quixano the Good, commonly called Don Quixote of La Mancha, had passed away from this present life, and died naturally.
Cervantes never got rich from his writing—royalties in the seventeenth century were not customary—and he ended his life in near poverty. As his health began to fail, he worked tirelessly on a new novel, The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda, which he thought would be “either the worst or the best book ever written.” He finished it four d
ays before he died at age sixty-eight. He had developed edema, then known as “dropsy,” which led to heart failure, and after receiving the last rites, he died in his home in Madrid on April 23, 1616—the same day that William Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon. Cervantes was carried from the house, “face uncovered,” according to the rule of the Franciscans, and buried in the convent of the Trinitarian nuns in Madrid.
Always cheerful, even in the face of his imminent death, Cervantes wrote a personal farewell in the prologue of his final work, in which he recounts discussing his ailment with a young medical student. The student advises him,
“Sir, your malady is the dropsy, which not all the water of the Ocean, no matter how sweet, can cure. You should curtail your drinking, and be sure to eat properly, and without any other medicine, you should do all right.”
Cervantes replies, “Many people have told me the same thing, but I can no more give up drinking for pleasure than if I had been born to do nothing else. My life is slipping away, and according to the diary my pulse is keeping, it will come to an end by this Sunday. I have to close my life’s account. Good-bye, humours; good-bye, merry friends, for I perceive I am dying, in the wish to see you happy in the other life.”
WALTER RALEIGH
Danger lurked around every corner that Walter Raleigh turned, and more often than not, Raleigh pursued it. He was born January 22, 1552, in Devonshire, to a staunchly Protestant family, which had a number of narrow escapes from attempts by England’s Catholic Queen “Bloody” Mary to ferret out heretics. Life became easier for the Raleighs when the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558. After a brief stint at Oxford University, young Walter left there to roam the Continent—possibly fighting as a mercenary in various skirmishes—but eventually returned to England and may have studied law.
At the age of twenty-six, Raleigh launched his remarkable career—explorer, poet, historian, soldier, courtier, diplomat, and probably spy—with an expedition to America with Humphrey Gilbert, his half-brother. He later returned to the New World and founded a short-lived settlement in a place he named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen.” In 1587, he sent 117 colonists to Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. By 1590, this “lost colony” had vanished without a trace.
Raleigh brought tobacco with him back to the court, where he popularized the “healthful” habit of smoking. The dashing explorer became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. He became a member of Parliament, was awarded extensive land holdings in England and Ireland, and was knighted by the queen in 1585.
A slight indiscretion—the queen discovered Raleigh had secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting—briefly made him a prisoner in the Tower of London. Released two months later, he led another expedition to America in search of the fabled El Dorado, “City of Gold.” He did not find it, but he worked his way back into good standing with the queen. Elizabeth died in 1603, and her successor, James I, intensely disliked Raleigh. Within a matter of months, the king accused him of plotting against the throne, charged him with treason, and sentenced him to death, then relented and reduced the punishment to life in prison. Raleigh, never one to be idle, wrote his History of the World during the twelve years he was locked up in the Tower of London.
At length he was freed to lead another fruitless quest for El Dorado. This time Raleigh disobeyed the King’s orders and attacked a Spanish settlement. On his return to England, the outraged Spanish ambassador prevailed upon James to execute him. Raleigh was beheaded on October 29, 1618, at the age of sixty-six.
Raleigh’s views of death were those of a faithful Anglican, and he had no doubt that he would be suitably rewarded in the next world. He wrote about a blissful afterlife in “The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage,” a poem subtitled “Supposed to be written by one at the point of death:”
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body’s balmer,
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul like a white palmer
Travels to the land of heaven,
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
And there I’ll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill.
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne’er thirst more.
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I’ll bring them first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those nectar suckets,
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,
Then the holy paths we’ll travel,
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel,
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearl bowers.
The night before Raleigh’s execution, he was allowed to stay overnight at the Westminster Abbey gatehouse. His wife was with him until midnight. Next morning a friend, Charles Thynne, came to say good-bye, and the dean of Westminster, Robert Townson, brought Communion and spiritual comfort. Raleigh ate a hearty breakfast, smoked his pipe, and then dressed in a satin doublet with black embroidered waistcoat, taffeta breeches, colored silk stockings, an embroidered hat, and a black velvet cloak.
London’s streets were crowded because it was also the day of the Lord Mayor’s Show, a festive parade and celebration. At the place of execution, the Old Palace Yard at Westminster, Dean Townson and two sheriffs led Raleigh to the scaffold. He turned to the spectators and said, “So I take my leave of you all, making my peace with God.” He took off his gown and doublet, then asked the executioner to show him the axe. He observed, “This is sharp medicine—but it is a physician for all diseases and miseries.” As he placed his head on the block, he said to the executioner, “Let us dispatch. At this hour my ague comes upon me, and I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear.” His final words, as he waited for the axe to fall, were, “Strike, man, strike!”
Raleigh’s head was embalmed and given to his wife. The rest of him was laid to rest at St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. Lady Raleigh kept the head in a velvet bag until her death in 1647, at which time it was placed in Raleigh’s tomb with the body.
FRANCIS BACON
Curiosity may have killed the cat, and curiosity (plus a chicken) also had a hand in the death of the scientific genius Francis Bacon. Bacon was born to privilege on January 22, 1561. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was Lord Keeper of the Seal, and his mother, Anne Cooke, was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI. After attending Trinity College in Cambridge, Francis studied law, then took up a career in politics, becoming known as a politician, lawyer, author, orator, member of Parliament, Queen’s Counsel, Lord Chancellor of England, first Viscount St. Alban, and, most notably, philosopher and scientist. It was a scientific experiment that caused his death at the age of sixty-five.
Every undergraduate has at least a vague notion that Bacon was responsible for codifying the “scientific method,” the basis of all empirical investigation. He wrote many works on science and natural philosophy, notably The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum Scientiarum (New Scientific Method), Nova Atlantis (The New Atlantis), and a series of Essays on ethical subjects. Bacon’s interests were wide-ranging, and some later scholars have even argued that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
In his essay “Of Death,” Bacon gives his
views on the inevitable end of life:
Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. . . . You shall read, in some of the friars’ books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger’s end pressed, or tortured, and thereby imagine, what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted, and dissolved; when many times death passeth, with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts, are not the quickest of sense. . . . Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. . . . It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed, and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death.
Bacon was in “an earnest pursuit” of a scientific answer when he became fatally ill. Riding in a carriage with a physician friend from London to his home at St. Albans, he noticed snow on the ground and began to wonder if snow would preserve meat in the same way that salt does. He stopped the coach at a farm near Highgate, bought a chicken, gutted it, and proceeded to stuff it with snow. He spent so much time in the damp, freezing air that he developed a chill and decided to stop and rest at the home of his friend, the Earl of Arundel. This turned out not to be a good idea. Bacon’s room in the Earl’s house was cold and musty, and the chill developed into bronchitis and then pneumonia. Bacon may also have acquired a salmonella infection from the raw chicken meat.
