The Life and Times of Chaucer

by John Gardner

  In rethinking nominalism, Ockham, as a devout churchman, of course disavowed such heretic implications; he simply (in accord with the intuitive St. Francis, founder of his order) abandoned all attempts at the reconciliation of human understanding and God’s mysteries. Removed to the realm of the incomprehensible, God became a baffling Absolute Will bound by no human concepts of justice or reason, a Being about whom it was futile to ruminate. The idea was not in itself new. Augustine had long before proclaimed that he believed because he could not understand. But Ockham’s purpose was new, the freeing of philosophy. He never presumed to question the truth of Christian revelation, but he turned it, in effect, into a subject no longer open for discussion. He opened the door to the layman and the scientist, free to ask questions untrammeled by theological presuppositions. His followers would study human history, politics, and the world of sense without undue concern for the authority of the past; and the independence his ideas inspired would lead to Wyclif, and through Wyclif, to the Bohemian religious reformer and martyr Jan Hus, and to Calvin and Luther.

  John of Gaunt’s friend and apologist, John Wyclif, ten years older than Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote largely in reaction to nominalist ideas, though he sometimes reached similar conclusions. He was a moderate realist, a partial follower of Aquinas who admitted that universal ideas are only substances “in an equivocal sense”: their existence is only separable, on the one hand, from the particulars in which they are made palpable or, on the other, from the mind of God, where they have their ghostly eternal existence. Given his Platonic idea of God—his idea that God’s will and nature are unalterable, like a Platonic “form” (e.g., Plato’s perfect, insubstantial chair, of which all actual chairs are mere approximations)—Wyclif necessarily rejected the idea of arbitrary divine decree, rejected the notion that the Pope and his delegates could receive or confer upon others arbitrary privileges, for instance, pardons and dispensations—rejected Papal authority in temporal matters (as Ockham had done), rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation as historically newfangled and philosophically absurd, and, more and more as he grew older, inclined to accept theological determinism and a notion of election (grace in a special sense) much like Calvin’s. For all his dislike of nominalism, he shared the nominalists’ concern about translation, and, arguing the literal inspiration of the Bible, he accepted the scriptures as the sole basis of the law of God and urged that they be placed in the hands of the laity. The clergy, he thought, should be stripped of worldly offices and surplus wealth, and though he did not in fact argue against wealth in general, he was interpreted as doing so, and thus gave solace to the peasants who rioted in 1381, burning rich men’s houses, including Gaunt’s. Actually, of course, Wyclif was a Gaunt apologist, “running about from church to church” in London, attacking Gaunt’s clerical enemies, especially William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, who in 1376 had briefly overturned Gaunt’s control of parliament. It was in support of Wykeham that young William Courtenay, bishop of London, cited Wyclif to appear before Archbishop Simon Sudbury—the trial which Gaunt helped break up, to all London’s indignation.

  The main popularizers of Wyclif’s ideas were the Oxford-based “Lollards” or “mutterers.” Among other points, they argued in their Twelve Conclusions, drawn up for presentation to parliament in 1395, that the Church in England had become unduly subservient to her “stepmother” in Rome; the present priesthood was not the one ordained by Christ, and the ritual or ordination had no warrant in scripture; clerical celibacy caused unnatural lust; transubstantiation was a “feigned miracle” which led toward idolatry; the hallowing of bread, wine, vestments, and the like was necromancy; prelates should not be temporal judges and rulers; prayers for the dead, pilgrimages, and offerings to images were heathen; confession to a priest was unnecessary for salvation; and warfare was “express contrarious to the New Testament.” Though some famous Lollards were wealthy knights, particularly certain followers of the Black Prince, Lollardy came to be associated in the popular mind with lower-class puritanical self-righteousness and with a sort of ignorant biblical fundamentalism, especially a cranky, eccentric glossing of texts. It’s in this sense that Harry Bailey and the Shipman think of the Lollards when they speak of them in the Canterbury Tales:

  “Sir Parisshë Prest,” quod he [the Host], “for Goddës bonës,

  Telle us a tale, as was thi forward yorë.…”[bargain]

  The Parson hem answeredë, “Benedicite!

  What eyleth the man, so synfully to swerë?”

  Oure Host answerde, “O Jankin, be ye therë?

  I smelle a Lollere in the wynd,” quod he.

  “Now! goodë men,” quod oure Hoste, “herkeneth me;

  Abydeth, for Goddës dignë passioun, [noble]

  For we schal han a predicacioun;

  This Lollere heer wil prechen us somwhat.”

  “Nay, by my fader soulë, that schal he nat!”

  Seydë the Shipman; “heer schal he nat prechë;

  He schal no gospel glosen herë ne techë. [gloss, explain]

  We leven alle in the gretë God,” quod he; [believe]

  “He woldë sowen som difficulte,

  Or springen cokkel in our clenë corn.....”

  But despite the commonplace association of Lollardy with the ignorant and unsophisticated—despite Lollardy’s natural appeal to the barely literate, who by Lollard theory might read the Bible in their own tongue, not Latin, and understand it without background or training—the movement remained a part of the intellectual climate of fourteenth-century Oxford. In his association with the university, whether as student or only as an occasional reader of poems, visiting parent, or guest in the rooms of his tutor friends, Chaucer cannot help having picked up and sympathized with some Lollard ideas. Like Gaunt, Chaucer had no wish to follow Wyclif into heresies—such as his dismissal of transubstantiation—but many Wyclif notions, especially Wyclif’s hatred of the rich, corrupt clergyman, are featured in Chaucer’s poetry.

  For much of the fourteenth century Oxford was the best university in all Europe. Yet for all its prestige, it was a violent place. The university chancellor, elected by the highest branches of the senior faculty (theology and canon law), was the principal executive officer of the university and had wide jurisdiction in both criminal and civil actions where members of the university were implicated. His duties virtually assured the university of self-regulation—not only the right of self-government, making, itself, all decisions on moral and academic standards, but also the right to protect its members from civil law and even to try townsmen whenever one party to the dispute was a member of the university. These jealously guarded rights were continually threatened from without and within, but they held firm down to the time of the temporary closing of the university for Lollardy in 1382. Battles flared up from time to time with the town of Oxford, which not unreasonably objected to the sometimes inexcusable liberties taken by students on Oxford’s streets (for instance, murder) and objected still more to the university’s claim to jurisdiction in such cases. There were also times of internal conflict, sometimes between the various faculties, more often among Oxford’s students of different nationalities—the English, Scottish, and Welsh. The disputes were so violent that, according to one writer, more than one famous battlefield might perhaps be found upon which less blood had been shed per square yard than upon the Oxford High Street.7

  The most famous of Oxford’s riots, still vividly remembered when Chaucer knew Oxford, was the “Great Slaughter” of St. Scholastica’s Day, February 10, 1355. (Chaucer was then fifteen.) It began when some students went to a tavern, disliked the wine, and commented on it. When the taverner answered them incautiously, the students threw the wine pot at his head. Before long the bell of St. Martin’s Church was calling the citizens to arms, and the bell of the university church was tolling, by order of the chancellor, to call out the university. When it was over, townsmen and men of the surrounding countryside had on two successive days broken
into the halls and killed sixty-five students. Most of the scholars left alive fled the town, but the town’s victory was Pyrrhic. The university exacted heavy damages, imposed a stiff fine on the burgesses, and received extension of the chancellor’s jurisdiction, giving him sole custody of the assizes of bread and ale and of weights and measures, along with other privileges which in effect placed the town under university rule. Right up into the nineteenth century, the mayor of Oxford was still doing annual penance for town sins in a formal procession to the university church.

  Though the Great Slaughter claimed more lives than any other Oxford riot, murderous battles between Town and Gown or between students of different nationalities were common throughout Chaucer’s time, and he may well have taken part himself in such battles, tiptoeing down alleyways, pressed close against the walls, making use, perhaps, of old war skills. G. G. Coulton quotes a Coroner’s Roll of 1314 as a typical specimen of the kind of thing found throughout the period—a jury report of how Scottish students and southern and western students met at Grope Lane “with swords, bucklers, bows, arrows and other arms, and there fought together.” Robert of Bridlington and some of his fellows, the report tells us, stood in an upper chamber window,

  and there the said Robert de Bridlington with a small arrow, smote…Henry of Holy Isle and wounded him hard by the throat, on the left side in front; and the wound was of the breadth of one inch, and in depth even to the heart; and thus he slew him.…And in the same conflict John de Benton came with a falchion into Grope Lane and gave David de Kirkby a blow on the back of the head, six inches in length, and in depth even unto the brain. At which same time came William de la Hyde and smote the aforesaid David with a sword across the right knee and leg: and at the same time came William de Astley and smote the said David under the left arm with a misericorde, and thus slew him.…8

  The same kind of thing was still going on in 1389-99, when Adam of Usk, a solemn old lecturer in canon law, led his Welsh and southern students in their battle against Northerners, with numerous deaths on either side.9

  Some of Oxford’s troubles came from intellectual earnestness. Derek Brewer writes:

  In the Lollard controversies, one of the disputants on the orthodox [anti-Lollard] side (which was not popular in the university) lost his nerve when he saw, or thought he saw, that twelve of his listeners held weapons concealed under their robes. He believed that death was threatening him unless he got down from the chair in which, according to custom, he was maintaining in public his argument.10

  Brewer comments that “against such rowdiness we should balance the intense zeal for intellectual matters which in a rather odd way it bears witness to.” Possibly. But whatever the cause of the rowdiness in a given case, the numerous records of beatings and street wars give a slightly chilling dimension to Chaucer’s merry fabliaux of rough-and-ready Oxford and Cambridge students, the Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale. In the latter, when the miller is beating up the young clerk Allan, punching him in the nose so that the blood gushes down, Allan’s companion John—and also the miller’s wife—leap up to help as best they can in the dark:

  And by the wal a staf she [the wife] foond anon,

  And saugh a litel shymeryng of a light,

  For at an hole in shoon the moonë bright;

  And by that light she saugh hem bothë two,

  But sikerly she nystë who was who, [truly, she knew not]

  But as she saugh a whit thyng in hir yë. [eye]

  And whan she gan this whitë thyng espyë,

  She wendë the clerk hadde werëd a volupeer, [weened, or believed…nightcap]

  And with the staf she drow ay neer and neer,

  And wende han hit this Aleyn at the fullë,

  And smoot the millere on the pylëd skullë, [bald]

  That doun he gooth, and cride, “Harrow! I dyë!”

  Thise clerkës beete hym weel and lete hym lyë;

  And greythen hem, and tooke hir hors anon, [dressed]

  And eek hirë mele, and on hir wey they gon… [meal]

  Both the rowdiness and the zeal were conspicuous elements of Oxford student life in Chaucer’s time, and both come through powerfully in Chaucer’s verse, the rowdiness in characters like John and Allan and “noble Nicholas” in the Miller’s Tale, the zeal in Chaucer’s own explorations of experience and authority, or in his Lollard-like attacks on the corrupt religious.

  From February to May 1366, Chaucer was away from England’s snow, traveling the glorious mountain roads of Spain. In England’s war against France, the king’s two sons, Gaunt and the Black Prince, were now seeking to establish a second front by allying themselves with France’s Spanish enemies, and one theory has it that in 1366 Chaucer was traveling in connection with the preparations of Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, for war against France. The Black Prince is known to have been in Navarre at this time, as was the then well-known English military leader Dauberchicourt (or Daubrichecourt), perhaps for negotiations with Charles the Bad. Another theory (untenable) is that Chaucer was in Spain to help Henry of Trastamara—pretender to the throne of another Spanish kingdom, Castile—in his attempt to unseat the legitimate ruler, Pedro, called by later historians Pedro the Cruel. The truth is probably that Chaucer’s job was to fight or (more likely) negotiate on Pedro’s side against Trastamara. To John of Gaunt and the Black Prince, it was imperative that the powerful Castilian navy not fall into the hands of England’s enemy, France (to whom Trastamara looked for help), and since the French army’s escape route lay through Navarre, it was important that King Charles be kept friendly. Thus Chaucer may have seen both Spanish courts at this time. He gained from the trip, if nothing else, one striking image for his poetry. In the House of Fame he finds a mountain of ice with a building on top, and recalling his Spanish trip—recalling the amazing peaks, the frightening sudden drops to valley floors, perhaps the occasional monastery high on a crag above one’s head as one moves along what was then the only pass through the Pyrenees—he says of Fame’s false Paradise, tawdry imitation of the medieval white castle of heaven, “Hier stant ther non in Spaynë.” He may have brought back much more besides—ideas from the highly sophisticated Spanish Moors he would have met in the various Spanish courts, and perhaps the idea for his later Parliament of Birds, since a poem somewhat similar in general conception and identical in title had been composed in Spanish before 1366.

  In 1366 or 1367, John Chaucer, the poet’s father, died, and in May 1367, his widow married a vintner named Bartholomew Attechapel (or atte Chapel, or, simply, Chapel). Also by 1366, and perhaps earlier, Geoffrey Chaucer had married Philippa Roet, damoiselle of the queen. As a daughter of Sir Paon Roet, Philippa was considerably above her husband in social station, and in recent years, if not at the time, the marriage has given rise to gossip. For one thing, the marriage is said to have proved an unhappy one; for another, it is said to have been arranged by John of Gaunt as a means of disposing of his pregnant, highborn mistress. To this thoroughly mysterious business let us turn at once.

  Geoffrey’s father, as I’ve said, had died the previous year—he was alive in January 1366 but dead by May 6, 1367, when his widow remarried. However rich he may have been by vintner’s standards, John Chaucer cannot have left his son sufficiently well off that he would seem an attractive catch to the Roets, prominent in Hainault, for many years intimately associated with the queen, and rich in land (if we may judge from the fact that Philippa’s sister Katherine had married into the ancient family of Swynford, English landed aristocrats). Neither rich nor highborn, not yet established as a poet of high, international stature—in fact nothing but a squire—Chaucer captured one of Queen Philippa’s own wards. How can it have happened? He may have loved her, of course, and because he was likable and clever at “dalliaunce,” she may have loved him in return; but love was rarely a major consideration in the marriage of fourteenth-century heiresses.

  Certain evidence suggests (though by no means proves) that John of Gaunt, who
had a reputation in his day for amorous adventures, seduced Philippa, got her with child, and persuaded his attendant Geoffrey Chaucer to marry her. In that very September of 1366 when Philippa is recorded as married to Chaucer,11 Gaunt was preparing to leave England to join his brother the Black Prince in war against the French and Henry Trastamara, a war from which, given the way medieval wars were fought, especially in Spain, he might never return. As a man devoted, like his father, to chivalry—as a man who all his life would prove unswervingly loyal to friends and dependents, a paragon of faithfulness in that ofttimes faithless, licentious age—Gaunt would have found it unthinkable to abandon a girl who was, after all, no strumpet but the daughter of one of the queen’s old friends, indeed, the queen’s own damoiselle and ward. Perhaps, then, the lifetime annuity he granted to Philippa that September was a consolation and marriage gift. Nine months later, apparently at about the time Elizabeth Chaucer, daughter of Philippa (probably), was born,12 Geoffrey (now a member of the royal court) was granted a lifetime annuity of 2o marks (c. $3,000). Obviously the grant might be simply a recognition of the poet’s new parental responsibilities, or a favor granted for some other reason; but just as obviously, if Elizabeth Chaucer was the illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, it would be natural that the duke, through his father (who made the grant; but Gaunt was in full control of the government), should take care of his own. Professor Williams, whose conjectural account I’m summarizing, notes a curious parallel:

  Whether such procedures [as the marriage “at his owene cost” outlined above] were common in this corrupt court, I do not know; but there is a teasing little record of one of Chaucer’s fellow employees in the court, Edmund Rose, being granted a royal annuity “because he has taken to wife Agnes Archer, Damoiselle of the Queen’s chamber.” The wording is suggestive—and Agnes retained her maiden name.13