Canterbury Tales and Other Poems | Page 9

deferred for a year, 1358 and 1359 have been assigned as the respective dates of the two
poems already mentioned. In the "Dream," Chaucer
prominently introduces his own
lady-love, to whom, after the happy union of his patron with the Lady Blanche, he is
wedded amid great rejoicing; and various expressions in the same poem show that not
only was the poet high in favour with the
illustrious pair, but that his future wife had
also peculiar claims on their regard. She was the younger daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a
native of Hainault, who had, like many of his
countrymen, been attracted to England by
the example and
patronage of Queen Philippa. The favourite attendant on the Lady
Blanche was her elder sister Katherine: subsequently
married to Sir Hugh Swynford, a
gentleman of Lincolnshire;
and destined, after the death of Blanche, to be in succession
governess of her children, mistress of John of Gaunt, and
lawfully-wedded Duchess of
Lancaster. It is quite sufficient proof that Chaucer's position at Court was of no mean

consequence, to find that his wife, the sister of the future Duchess of Lancaster, was one
of the royal maids of honour, and even, as Sir Harris Nicolas conjectures, a god-daughter
of the Queen -- for her name also was Philippa.
Between 1359, when the poet himself testifies that he was made prisoner while bearing
arms in France, and September 1366,
when Queen Philippa granted to her former maid
of honour, by the name of Philippa Chaucer, a yearly pension of ten marks, or L6, 13s.
4d., we have no authentic mention of Chaucer, express or indirect. It is plain from this
grant that the poet's marriage with Sir Payne Roet's daughter was not celebrated later than

1366; the probability is, that it closely followed his return from the wars. In 1367,
Edward III. settled upon Chaucer a lifepension of twenty marks, "for the good service
which our
beloved Valet -- 'dilectus Valettus noster' -- Geoffrey Chaucer has rendered,
and will render in time to come." Camden
explains 'Valettus hospitii' to signify a
Gentleman of the Privy Chamber; Selden says that the designation was bestowed "upon
young heirs designed to he knighted, or young gentlemen of
great descent and quality."
Whatever the strict meaning of the word, it is plain that the poet's position was
honourable and near to the King's person, and also that his worldly
circumstances were
easy, if not affluent -- for it need not be said that twenty marks in those days represented
twelve or twenty times the sum in these. It is believed that he found powerful patronage,
not merely from the Duke of Lancaster and his wife, but from Margaret Countess of
Pembroke, the King's daughter. To her Chaucer is supposed to have addressed the
"Goodly
Ballad", in which the lady is celebrated under the image of the daisy; her he is
by some understood to have represented under the title of Queen Alcestis, in the "Court
of Love" and the Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women;" and in her praise
we may
read his charming descriptions and eulogies of the daisy -- French, "Marguerite," the
name of his Royal patroness. To this period of Chaucer's career we may probably
attribute the elegant and courtly, if somewhat conventional, poems of "The Flower and
the Leaf," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," &c. "The Lady Margaret," says Urry, ". . .
would frequently
compliment him upon his poems. But this is not to be meant of his
Canterbury Tales, they being written in the latter part of his life, when the courtier and
the fine gentleman gave way to solid sense and plain descriptions. In his love-pieces he
was obliged to have the strictest regard to modesty and decency; the ladies at that time
insisting so much upon the nicest punctilios of honour, that it was highly criminal to
depreciate their sex, or do anything that might offend virtue." Chaucer, in their estimation,
had sinned against the dignity and honour of womankind by his translation of the French
"Roman de la Rose," and by his
"Troilus and Cressida" -- assuming it to have been
among his less mature works; and to atone for those offences the Lady Margaret (though
other and older accounts say that it was the first Queen of Richard II., Anne of Bohemia),
prescribed to him the task of writing "The Legend of Good Women" (see
introductory
note to that poem). About this period, too, we may place the composition of Chaucer's A.
B. C., or The Prayer of Our Lady, made at the request of the Duchess Blanche, a
lady of
great devoutness in her private life. She died in 1369; and Chaucer, as he had allegorised
her wooing, celebrated her marriage, and aided her devotions, now lamented her death, in
a poem entitled "The Book of the Duchess; or, the Death of
Blanche.<3>
In 1370, Chaucer was