The Life and Times of Chaucer

by John Gardner

  So we must modify the traditional picture of young Jeff Chaucer in the family pub among unwashed, polyglot sailors—a poetic fancy of early biographers, though doubted by William Godwin—re-presented in gilt and alabaster by F. J. Furnivall, who wrote, introducing some of Chaucer’s Life-Records:

  We have him as a boy at his father’s wine-shop or cavern in narrow Thames St, chatting, no doubt, with English and foreign seamen, with citizens who came for their wine, helping to fill their pots, perhaps—a natty, handy lad, but full of quiet fun—messing, I dare say, in Walbrook, that bounded his father’s place; fishing in the Thames, I should think; out on May-day for sweet-scented boughs to dress his father’s tavern-pole. At school—St. Paul’s Cathedral perchance—sharing in all the games and larks that Fitzstephen so well describes some 200 years before; seeing all the grand shows that went on in Smithfield and London streets; well up in his classes, I’ll be bound; the boy the father of the man in this, that he loved his bookës well. Then he goes to serve Prince Lionel’s wife as page, and gets his dress of short cloak, pair of red and black breeches, and shoes, with 3s. 6d. for necessaries.…4

  The picture may have some truth in it—Chaucer’s father may have had, among other things, one or more wine shops, and even the most dignified fourteenth-century establishments could be lively places, as noisy and full of merriment as a modern English pub near closing time; but we may as reasonably conjure up a picture of young Jeff Chaucer the rich boy in his father’s calm house, a child to a large extent cared for by servants and privately tutored, since, almost certainly, his parents were sufficiently concerned about his prospects to give him an expensive education, perhaps in specific preparation for service at court. It is unlikely that he was ever a humble “page” to the countess of Ulster, Prince Lionel’s wife (at any rate, there’s no evidence that he was, as Professor Williams has shown),5 though he did serve her court in some capacity; and, as for the record on his clothes and spending money, rightly understood it suggests no particularly humble position but fairly decent rank. To all this we will return. For the moment the point is that Chaucer’s origin was far from lowly.

  The family background is a little uncertain except that it was, by John Chaucer’s father’s day, solidly though newly middle class insofar as such terms have any meaning in a world of lords and vassals, guild masters and journeymen, freemen and serfs. It was a family engaged, at least tangentially, in more financial ventures than one, and ferociously, litigiously, devoted to making its mark—or pound, or shilling. Part of the evidence of the family’s social standing is the variety of names to which Chaucer’s grandfather answered in courts of law.

  Surnames could be haphazard things in the Middle Ages, given to a man by virtue of his place of origin (as in the case of John of Gaunt, Anglo-Norman for “Ghent,” his birthplace), or by virtue of his father’s name (Williamson, son of William), or his trade (Wat Tyler, that is, tile-maker, or, some think, somewhat mysteriously, tailor), or even—notably in the case of kings but sometimes also in the case of commoners—given by virtue of his character or reputation (Pedro the Cruel). As a man changed locations, trades, or habits, his name changed with him. Geoffrey Chaucer’s grandfather Robert’s family, which had London connections but mainly lived in Ipswich, was known as “le Taverner”—the poet’s great-grandfather was Andrew le Taverner—which means some of them were tavern-keepers, guildsmen of, loosely, the lower middle class. Tavern-keepers were by law distinct from vintners, the one a retailer, the other a socially elevated wholesaler; but the family that acquired a string of taverns might profitably turn to vintry, with its control of retail outlets. In London, the poet’s grandfather, Robert Chaucer, lived on Cordwainer Street (“Shoemaker” or “Leatherworker” Street) in the better section of the leather district, and was known as Robert le Saddler and also as Robert Chaucer (French chaussier, “hose-maker” or “shoemaker”). Both the location and the surnames have suggested to some that he may have been a master craftsman in leatherwork.6 But the more likely explanation is that Cordwainer Street was a fashionable address that might naturally have appealed to a man rising in the wine business and not engaged in leatherwork at all—as on other grounds we know he probably was not. He also appears as Robert of Dennington (as his father, Geoffrey’s great-grandfather, appears as Andrew of Dennington),* which suggests that he was born, once lived in, or owned property in Dennington (in Suffolk); and, finally, he appears as Robert Malyn, that is, apparently, Robert of Greater Lynn, as Robert of Ipswich, and as Robert Malin le Chaucer—whatever that may mean. He did, we know, have relatives in all these places.7

  What seems likely is that, the family having thrived in the tavern business, Robert became a London vintner. He strengthened his position by marriage to a woman of means, who had, possibly, vintry connections, since the marriage of convenience was the rule for his class, as for peasants and kings, and since his wife, though married earlier to a pepperer by the name of John Heyroun (Heron), would be married after Robert Chaucer’s death to another vintner, a man who was perhaps Robert’s first cousin, Richard. That she was well-to-do seems certain: Mary Chaucer, the poet’s grandmother, came from the substantial Ipswich family of Westhales (or Westhalls). In the country, it should be mentioned, even women of the highest class could be bought and sold like cattle, but not so in the cities. There a woman could legally own property, even run her own business. Thus Chaucer’s grandmother’s choice of husbands suggests that she had something in the way of property or position that was useful to vintners—in fact, to at least two in a row. Robert Chaucer increased his wealth through the wine import business, becoming notable enough to be named as deputy to the king’s butler in 1308 and 1310, and as a collector of the king’s customs—a powerful position, profitable even if a man were burdened, as most collectors apparently were not, by moral scruple.

  There are other proofs of the family’s standing. After Robert Chaucer’s death, between 1312 and 1315, his wife Mary (Geoffrey’s grandmother) took as her husband Richard Chaucer (as I’ve said), perhaps a relative of the late Robert. Richard, too, was a vintner who would become deputy to the king’s butler in the London area; and Mary Chaucer’s son by her first marriage, Thomas Heyroun, would also grow up to be a vintner—as would her son John, the poet’s father.

  Judging by his holdings and those of his descendants, Robert Chaucer (and others of the family) may have risen partly through shrewd acquisition of real estate. Both among the rural barons and among wealthy members of the urban middle class, buying up real estate in town—that is, getting it assigned in fief—was one of the roads to power in Robert Chaucer’s day, as getting hold of land in the country would be one road to power in his grandson Geoffrey’s day, after wave on wave of pestilence had decimated England’s shires, making room for new landlords, and the fury of the disease in crowded quarters, not to mention the rush of hungry peasants to town, had made life in the metropolis less attractive than formerly. Court records give some clues to the value of the property the family owned.

  On October 29, 1315, Robert Chaucer’s widow Mary acknowledged she owed £70 (modern value, $16,800)8 to a man named Nicholas of Halweford and promised to pay half of what she owed by the following February, that is, within about ninety days, and the other half at Easter. As security she offered her lands and chattels in the city of London and elsewhere. This has sometimes been interpreted as proof that Robert Chaucer left his widow in debt, but it is probably nothing of the kind. Considering the amount owed, the payment schedule would be stiff for any but the fairly rich; yet the securities are accepted and not seized. As J. M. Manly was, I think, the first to point out, the debt may have had to do with a loan to Mary Chaucer herself; “in any event,” Manly says, “it is clear that she owned in London and elsewhere property which was regarded as good security for the amount.”9 When her son Thomas Heyroun (Geoffrey’s uncle) died, in 1349, he left numerous London tenements to be sold by the executor of his will, his “brother, John Chaucer.” And
when John Chaucer’s stepfather Richard died, also in 1349 (a plague year), he bequeathed property that would cover the cost of a perpetual daily requiem Mass for himself, his late wife Mary, and his stepson Thomas Heyroun. (How long perpetuity lasted in practice I’ve been unable to discover.) Earlier proofs of Richard Chaucer’s wealth include the heavy sums he was several times assessed as his fair contribution to loans made by London’s chief merchants to the king, and his contribution of £500 (modern value, $120,000) to the company headed by Walter Chiriton and John Wesenham, another organization which made royal loans.

  But the most interesting records that come down to us are those dealing with the curious Agnes Malyn affair.

  In Ipswich lived Robert Chaucer’s contentious sister Agnes—she was also his sister-in-law, as widow of Walter of Westhale, Mary Chaucer’s brother. Agnes of Westhale, née Malyn, is a lady remarked by history because after the death of Robert Chaucer (Geoffrey’s grandfather), she made a snatch at his Ipswich property, hoping to consolidate his holdings and her own by conspiring with one Geoffrey Stace and others, and abducting the late Robert Chaucer’s son John, then in his early teens, and trying to force the boy to marry her daughter (his double cousin) Joan. In righteous indignation John Chaucer’s stepfather Richard and John’s half brother Thomas Heyroun, probably with armed and eager servants, rode to Ipswich and captured young John Chaucer back, along with property worth, according to Agnes Malyn’s suit, £40 (about $9,600). In the drawn-out counter-suit proceedings which followed, the Chaucers of London were awarded damages of £250 ($60,000) and both Agnes of Westhale and Geoffrey Stace, her collaborator, were imprisoned in Marshalsea Gaol for inability to pay. Two years later, Stace, now Agnes Malyn’s husband, testified that John Chaucer had been satisfied concerning the fine, and the pair was released from prison. Geoffrey Chaucer’s biographers have sometimes imagined that John Chaucer generously forgave the debt. But that seems unlikely. Just a few days before he testified that his debt was taken care of—on July 13, 1328—Stace had borrowed exactly £250.

  Geoffrey Chaucer’s forbears were, in short, a tough, grasping, fairly well-heeled breed, typical of the early fourteenth-century merchant family of rising fortunes, quick to draw their swords (John Chaucer was kidnapped by force of arms, “viz. swords, bows, and arrows”), quick to marry, if it seemed profitable, and quick to call in lawyers. They were not the type to throw away money with indifferent and saintly caritas—though neither was John Chaucer the type to nurse grudges. Not long after the debt to him was paid (if it was), he allowed his Aunt Agnes and Geoffrey Stace to buy the property they’d tried to steal from him.

  But John Chaucer was perhaps at that time more mellow than usual. In the train of John Bedford, London skinner, he had followed the noble old earl of Lancaster in a rising against Roger Mortimer—adviser and consort to Queen Isabella (mother of Edward III) and chief architect of the recent ignominious peace with Scotland—and had shared in Lancaster’s defeat. In January 1329 John Chaucer had been indicted for his part in the revolt, and when he failed to appear in court to defend himself, he’d been declared an outlaw (May 22, 1329), which he remained until Mortimer’s overthrow and execution, engineered by the young king, Edward III, in 1330, at which time the now blind earl of Lancaster (“blind Henry”) and all those charged with him received pardon. Resurfacing in public, a well-built, war-toughened man of nearly twenty, John Chaucer was in a mood to forget old annoyances, especially those far off in Ipswich. Once he had comfortably settled into life as a London businessman, petty official, and social climber, drawing on his service to the house of Lancaster, in all probability, and doubtless on friendships among the wealthy importers with whom he now moved daily and from whose ranks (lest anyone underestimate their clout) London would choose a good number of its mayors—he showed no more disposition than would his gifted heir, in later years, to let any opportunity for increased prosperity or advancement slip past, much less to leave debts uncollected.

  John Chaucer was by all evidence an admirable and extraordinary man, well liked by his fellow vintners, respected by the courts and moneylenders, amiable, gracious, and properly deferential in the presence of the nobility, who frequently employed him, yet decisive, even fierce, when times required—not a man to flinch from a just war or a tavern brawl. His work was heartily approved and regularly rewarded, as his son’s was to be. He was apparently elevated, by 1338, when he was twenty-five or -six (early middle age by medieval standards), to the train of King Edward III when the king and his entourage visited Flanders and then traveled up the Rhine to negotiate an alliance with the Flemish king, Louis IV. (Since records are sketchy, there is a faint possibility that we may be dealing here with some other John Chaucer and that the mission was a military expedition, but it is very faint indeed.)10

  What John Chaucer’s function was on that occasion is uncertain; his letter of protection says only that he went in the king’s service and at the king’s command. He may have gone, as scholars have traditionally assumed, as an authority on wine, a provider for the king’s vast, sprawling household. If so, and if Edward III followed, in general, the household and wardrobe ordinances of Edward II, John Chaucer traveled around the countryside as a member of the chief butler’s staff on the lookout for first-class wines and buying them “for the sustenance of [the king’s] household,” making sure that “the purveiances & buyinges be made to the le[a]st damage & disturbance of the merchants as the butler can or may devise, so alwaies as our lord the kinge have his auncient prises & al other advantages which of right he ought to have bi reson of his seigniory.”11 If the wine so bought proved undrinkable, men with axes would split the staves on the bottom of the tun, allowing the contents to run gushing through the cellar or soak into the ground, and the man who, in the king’s name, had purchased the wine must stand the price of it himself—emotional and financial humiliation cold-bloodedly designed to break a man, on the presumption that he intentionally misused the king’s funds. (Ironically, the younger Hugh Dispenser, who drew up these rules, was notorious for such thievery, though on a far grander scale.) If not a searcher or buyer, John Chaucer may have served as an experienced taster, passing judgment on the wine just before it was served, or recommending, as a member of the butler’s staff, what wine should be served to particular guests or to the king on particular occasions; or he helped to convey, unload, and store the wine; or, finally, he scheduled and kept records on the use of wine (also beer and ale) by the king’s household, and kept track of the king’s expensive cups.

  Some such job as one of these may have been John Chaucer’s in 1338. So his later employment as deputy to the king’s butler for the London area might seem to imply. No such task would be beneath the dignity of a wealthy Londoner. This was, after all, the late Middle Ages, when kings were very nearly gods, the foundation of the social order, and a gentleman granted the privilege of carrying away the king’s bed sheets—that is, being close to the king at his most vulnerable—could consider himself, and be considered by others, the holder of an awesome responsibility. Nevertheless, it seems to me unlikely that John Chaucer was employed in any such capacity. The kinds of work I’ve mentioned—those traditionally mentioned in connection with the poet’s father at this period—are all much too close to the king’s inner circle. The butler and his staff, the providers, stewards, and tasters, were all regular members of the king’s own household, constantly under his majesty’s eye. If their work was menial, their attachment to the crown was close. (For comparison, think of the relationship of a New York corporation president and his personal secretary as compared with his relationship to his plant manager in Cleveland.) John Chaucer was not a household regular but an outsider, a specialist brought in for the occasion, apparently the diplomatic journey of 1338. Then what did he really do?

  Let us look again at his later employment as deputy to the king’s butler for Southampton. The position of deputy to the king’s butler (or deputy to the king’s anything else) involved doin
g the real work for some favored courtier, the actual king’s butler, who received remuneration of one sort or another for his patronage job but was usually away in attendance on the king or lending prestige to some royal mission. John Chaucer’s job as deputy—for which he was qualified partly by his import-export connections, partly by his father’s having done creditable service both as deputy butler and as a customs collector—kept him in full-time attendance at an office of extreme importance to the crown: wine customs and taxes were a prime source of revenue, and the king’s acquisition of the best wine available was a matter of prestige. It was tedious and exacting work, however rewarding financially and socially—work which consisted mainly of collecting the customs, keeping careful import-export accounts, and setting aside appropriate wines for shipment to the king, for good wages. It was drudgery in fact, though exalted drudgery. John Chaucer was thus neither as eminent as a role in the king’s personal household would imply, nor as lowly as Chaucer’s biographers have imagined.