by John Gardner
As a servant of Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, Chaucer must have met, on numerous occasions such as the festival of St. George, King Edward himself, Prince Lionel’s father. He was a handsome, fair man with a curly brown beard, gentle eyes and mouth, the eyes just perceptibly slanted like the eyes of all his sons. He was no ordinary mortal, one could see at a glance, and he liked to support that impression with a story.
Some four hundred years ago, Edward III told his friends, the founder of his line, Count Fulke the Black, ruler of Anjou, traveled to a distant land and returned with a bride whose beauty was unsurpassed in all the world. The four children she bore him were brilliant and handsome, like all Plantagenet sons and daughters after them, but they carried also a darker heritage. She kept it secret for many years, living a life more secluded than a nun’s. Then one day the count demanded that his wife accompany him to Mass, a thing she’d repeatedly refused to do. She did so this time, pale and trembling. When the priest raised the Host, the countess let out an unearthly shriek, rose into the air, flew out the chapel window, and was never seen again. The truth was out. She was Melusine, daughter of the Devil!
By the time Chaucer knew him, Edward III at least half believed the story. Again and again he’d led armies into battle against Scots and Frenchmen, and it had come to appear to him that he really did have a charmed life. (The Morte Arthure-poet makes a point of this queer belief of Edward’s.) He knew by experience that the description “Scion of Satan” struck terror into the hearts of his enemies. He half believed, too, that he was the reincarnated Arthur—not metaphorically but literally—and established a Round Table to prove it. (Mortimer, his mother’s lover, had earlier maintained that he was Arthur.) At the same time, Edward’s religious devotion was by all accounts as simple and unquestioning as a peasant’s. He regularly prayed for wealth and victory before the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster, and when visiting Kent he never failed to kneel in obeisance to the saint, Thomas à Becket, whom his forbears had murdered.
He could show the same noble Christianity on the battlefield, as in one famous story of the siege of Calais. According to Froissart, when the governor of Calais realized the force of the English king’s siege, he called together all the poorer inhabitants, those who’d been unable to lay in food, and one Wednesday morning sent seventeen hundred men, women, and children out of town. As they were passing through the English army, the English asked them why they’d left, and when the people replied that they had no food, the king allowed them to pass through in safety, ordered them a hearty meal, and gave to each two sterlings, as charity and alms, “for which many of them prayed earnestly for the king.”
Edward’s mercy, however, was not unfailing. When Calais surrendered, the king threatened to put the city to the sword, then offered the people this bargain: he would spare the city if six of the chief burghers would give themselves up unconditionally. With some courageous gallantry, and some expectation that their lives would be saved by the wealth their ransoms might bring to King Edward, six of the chief burghers gave themselves up and begged the king for mercy. All the knights and barons around Edward wept for pity, but Edward was out for vengeance, since the people of Calais had caused him losses at sea; and despite the pleas of his own knights, including saintly Henry of Lancaster, his cousin, he ordered the hostages executed. Queen Philippa, who was with him, and great with child, fell on her knees to plead for them, “for the sake of the Son of the Blessed Mary, and for your love to me.” Reluctantly, angrily, the king relented. Then, stubbornly cruel, as vain and overweening as the Arthur of the alliterative Morte Arthure, he evacuated the French inhabitants and repeopled the city with Englishmen. Ironically, it was partly in celebration of the fall of Calais that Edward instituted the chivalric and idealistic Order of the Garter, his latter-day Round Table.
But Edward’s whimsy, or at least changeability, did nothing to diminish his stature with the commons, or with those at court who, like young Geoffrey Chaucer, had the pleasure of knowing this “new King Arthur” in person. His charm could be devastating, as many women found, including his good, plump wife Queen Philippa, who loved him despite his affairs, just as he loved her, as was sensible and right. He had the boyish good looks, the brash yet gentle and idealistic love of life and of his native England—also the ferocity, deviousness, and cunning—that it took to make his weak, demoralized realm a European power again, mainly perhaps because, as an athlete, an orator, and a benevolent lawmaker, he encouraged men to feel once more respect and affection for the crown and, beyond that, such love for and pride in the island of their birth as John of Gaunt’s son expresses when banished from his homeland in Shakespeare’s Richard II:
Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;
My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though bannish’d, yet a trueborn Englishman.
From boyhood, Edward III was an athlete, a lover of jousting and a dangerous opponent in that frequently deadly imitation of war. With his mother and Roger Mortimer, and with his relatives from Hainault, he’d attended a great number of magnificent tournaments, and after he’d achieved his crown and independence, he and his friends had become still more fanatical spectators and participants in military sports.
There was, to take one typical instance, the great tournament given by William Montagu in Cheapside when Chaucer was still a boy. The king and his knights paraded through London in Tartar dress, to a skirling of pipes and a brattle of drums, then entered the lists and—in armor calculated to be at once spectacular and terrifying (not for mere convenience was the helmet shaped like a hangman’s hood, the eyes grimly slanted, and the codpiece of steel made enormous, as if for a bull or a stallion)—declared they would take on all comers. Such tournaments, widely publicized, were attended by thousands; and given man’s age-old illicit affair with pain and death—the same dark entanglement of fear and desire that brings fame, if not fortune, to bullfighters and motorcycle stuntmen today—the heavy attendance is understandable. Though a contender could survive them, and most contenders did, jousts could make the fiercest modern football game seem a pastime for ailing young ladies. How much Chaucer knew of the deadly sport, and something of what he felt about it, is apparent in the Knight’s Tale:
Tho werë the gates shet, and cried was loud ë: [Then]
“Do now yourë devoir, yongë knyghtës proudë!” [duty]
The heraudës lefte hir prikyng up and doun;
Now ryngen trompës loude and clarioun. [heralds…galloping]
Ther is namoorë to seyn, but west and est
In goon the sperës ful sadly in arrest; [solemnly]
In gooth the sharpë spore into the sydë. [spur]
Ther seen men who kan juste and who kan rydë;
Ther shyveren shaftës upon sheeldës thikkë;
He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikkë. [the spoon-shaped
Up spryngen sperës twenty foot on hightë; depression at the end
Out goon swerdës as the silver brightë; of the breastbone]
The helmës they tohewen and toshredë; [hew and shred]
Out brest the blood with stiernë stremes redë;
With myghty maces the bonës they tobrestë. [burst]
He thurgh the thikkeste of the throng gan threstë; [thrust]
Ther stomblen steedës stronge, and doun gooth al;
He rolleth under foot as dooth a bal;
He foyneth on his feet with his tronchoun, [thrusts (or parries)]
And he hym hurtleth with his hors adoun;
He thurgh the body is hurt and sithen takë, [afterwards taken]
Maugree his heed, and broght unto the stakë; [to safety zone]
As forward was, right there he moste abydë. [prearrangement, former agreement]
For all the “stern (or violent) red streams,” broken bones, and hurts through the body, Chaucer is describing here not battle-to-the-death but mere s
port, a joust with nubbed lances.
The games proper opened with a parade around the tourney grounds, model of the parade of artists and animals in our modern circus. As in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, every champion of importance had his host of followers, all splendidly armed and mounted, and had his array of bright banners, also, in some cases trumpeters, clowns, fine hunting dogs, exotic animals. Then the jousting began—heralds riding back and forth announcing contenders, marshals establishing the positions of the players and the particular rules to be followed in this joust, whether the combat was to be between two men or twenty or, indeed, two hundred. Setting up each joust was a slow business, so between collisions of iron and iron there were various forms of interlude: displays by acrobats, animal trainers, jugglers, clowns, magicians, dancers—all the various forms of “buffoonery” that men like the Leicester cloisterer Knighton believed to be responsible for the plagues. When the jousters were ready, the bannered wooden horns rang out (horns modern man has been unable to reproduce, as he’s unable to reproduce tempered brass or fused brick), and the tourney grounds fell silent. Whatever act was in progress broke off—perhaps a spatter of applause—and the contenders, alone or with their followers, rode in at the opposite ends of the field, helmets off or visors lifted, lances raised. Interluders fled out of the field, back to the stands, or if they were too late retreated to the safety of the “stake.” With a sound like thunder the great gates fell shut, sealing off the field from the spectators, and the horns rang out again.
In upright position—“in arrest,” as Chaucer says—its butt end supported by a cup hanging close to the rider’s steel shoe, the lance could be nearly the height of a modern telephone pole (“twenty foot on highte,” Chaucer says) and for much of its length very nearly as wide, though hollowed out. (Such lances have been preserved all over Europe and can be seen in, for instance, the Tower of London.) When he was ready to attack, or when the fourteenth-century equivalent to our referee gave the signal, the jouster snapped his visor shut, took in a huge gulp of air like a weight-lifter’s, and heaved upward on the lance, throwing the wide steel flange onto his shoulder and clamping the butt inside his arm while in the same motion tilting the tip slightly forward, into “proffering” position—sign to his opponent that he was charging now (hence Chaucer’s obscene pun in the Miller’s Tale, when sex-hungry Nicholas, urging his attentions on the miller’s wife, “spak so faire, and profrëd him so fastë”)—and spurred his horse in the direction of his challenger. As the horses moved toward each other (lumbering but swift medieval destriers exactly like the Busch Beer Clydesdales), increasing their speed, the two knights gradually let their lances drop, pivoting the weight on the flange of the lance, which would in strike position rest on the right steel breastplate. If the timing was wrong, the lance might drop too far, harmless, shattering or stabbing the tourney turf, or might fail to descend to the target area, the opponent’s head or chest. If the timing was right, and if the opponent was unable to deflect the blow with his enormous shield, or “targe,” down he went—down quite frequently both knights went, noisily rolling underfoot. Even if the point of the lance was capped with a great, blunt ball—as it is in the Knight’s Tale and as it often though by no means always was in the English tournaments where Chaucer sat bent forward, holding his breath, watching the combatants with partisan alarm—the damage to man and horse could be considerable. It was not, in short, a sport for weaklings, or for men with the faintest touch of clumsiness or bad judgment, or for men perturbed by bruises. Needless to say, when the battle was in earnest, it was considerably more violent. The chronicles are filled with such accounts as the following:
Then stepped forth an English squire…and came before the earl and kneeled down and desired that he might perform the battle; and the earl agreed thereto. Then this [squire] came forth and armed himself completely and took his spear, and Clarence his, and so they came against each and foined and thrust so sorely at each other that the spears flew all to pieces over their heads. And at the second encounter they did likewise, and at the third also, so that their spears were broken; and all the lords on both sides thought this deed a goodly feat of arms. Then they took their swords, which were very big, and in six strokes they broke four swords. And then they would have fought with axes, but the earl would not let them and said he would not see them fight to the finish, saying they had done enough.5
Even more common in the chronicles are the catalogues of knights who did fight to the finish, slaughtering or dying.
King Edward, though a small man, was one of the world’s great jousters. That alone might have made him into a hero to his people, with their love of pageantry and roughneck games. But he was also—after his bad start in Scotland, at fifteen—a master strategist, one devil of a man to encounter in actual war by sea or land. Around the time of Geoffrey Chaucer’s birth, the enormous French fleet was a constant threat to the shores of England. It raided Portsmouth and Southampton in 1338, brazenly sailed near the mouth of the Thames, and, just off Middelburg, seized the great cog Christopher and four other vessels; in 1339 the French attacked Dover and Folkestone. They got their comeuppance the following year. As he was approaching the Flemish coast with a small English fleet, King Edward, aboard his cog the Thomas, unexpectedly came upon “so great a nombre of [French] shippes that their mastes semed to be lyke a great wood,” Froissart reports. The king of England rearranged his ships, “the greatest befor, well furnysshed with archers, and ever bytwene two shyppes of archers he had one shypp with men-at-arms.” He set aside three hundred men-at-arms and five hundred archers for the protection of the numerous highborn ladies who were traveling to Flanders to join the queen, then waited for favorable wind and tide, and, when the sun was in the faces of the enemy, steered full sail into the harbor mouth of Sluys and crashed into the French at their moorings. Even against overwhelming odds, Edward’s combination of archers and men-at-arms—a trick he’d learned in Scotland—was devastating. Though the French fought hard, by dawn both French admirals were dead, and the fleet was in ruins.
In 1346, when Chaucer was a small child, King Edward had still more spectacular success. In what may or may not have been a brilliant last-minute change of plan, he landed not at the Bay of Biscay—where he had intended to join forces with Henry, earl of Lancaster, eldest son of blind Henry—but in Normandy, where, in the words of an adviser (according to Froissart), “ther is none that shall resyst you: the people of Normandy have not been used to the warr, and all the knyghtes and squyers of the contrey ar nowe at the siege before Aguyllon with the duke: and sir, ther ye shall fynde great townes that be nat walled, wherby your men shall have such wynning [booty], that they shall be the better therby twenty yer after.” Edward’s plan was a typically bold one. He risked meeting the much larger army of King Philip of France, and since, once the troops were landed, the English shipmasters were always eager to sail back home, he risked, first, loss of his line of retreat, then encirclement and annihilation. But Edward was lucky, or protected by the Devil, as usual—or perhaps had information historians lack. Even after his invasion force had been spotted, he managed by feints to evade an encounter until he’d reached Crécy and an ideal position for defense, the wood of Crécy-en-Ponthieu behind him, in front of him the broad Valley of the Clerks. Against the advice of some of Philip’s generals, and despite thunder and rain that made a great flock of crows wheel crazily for fear, the daredevil French knights attacked, facing into the setting sun, with Genoese crossbowmen in the vanguard. Overmatched by English longbows, with their greater range, the Genoese spent their arrows on mere angels and empty air, then retreated in confusion. The French king was outraged, according to Froissart, and yelled, “Slay me these rascals, for they shall hinder and trouble us without reason!” The French cavalry rode down their own allies, striking them as if they were the enemy, while Edward’s cool, well-ordered archers picked off both Genoese and Frenchmen, and Edward’s foot soldiers hamstrung French horses with their kn
ives and killed fallen French knights—much to Edward’s displeasure, since he’d have lief had their ransom.
It was a great triumph for Edward’s ideas on how battles should be conducted. The French nobility and the aristocrats among Philip’s allies fought by the old, wasteful code of individual chivalry. Froissart tells how the king of Bohemia, nearly blind, asked his companions to lead him into battle that he might strike one stroke with his sword. His gentlemen linked their horses’ reins, with the king at the head. When morning came, they were all found dead, their horses still tied together. The English, on the other hand, fought as a unit, efficiently controlled under Edward’s direction, calm, fanatically loyal to their king. When dawn came and the countryside was blanketed in fog, any other medieval army would have scattered in pursuit of the enemy and might well have been lost. Under Edward’s command, the English counted casualties, tended to the wounded, and prepared for their march on Calais.
To his contemporaries, to men like young Chaucer—whatever modern historians may say—Edward seemed an ideal king. He was widely praised for his fair-mindedness. Despite the treason of Sir Roger Mortimer, Sir Roger’s son Edmund (husband to the countess of Ulster’s baby daughter) was allowed to retain land in Wales; and when Edmund Mortimer died, his son, another Roger, was granted holdings, later knighthood (for bravery at the Battle of Crécy), and eventual membership in the Order of the Garter, restitution of all titles and family lands, and, in the end, parliamentary reversal of the judgment on his grandfather. Those close to court affairs thought Edward III politically astute, which indeed he was, though the fact is obscured by calamities no one at the time could have foreseen: the early death of his eldest son, the Black Prince, and the general bad luck of Edward’s grandson, son of the Black Prince, Richard. Edward dealt justly and wisely with his magnates, keeping the loyalty of his people not just by charm or by such shrewd innovations as paying wages to his armies—a practice which freed him from that bane of the medieval general’s existence, an army of feudal vassals which by law had the right to disband after forty days to go home and do its farmwork—but also by concern for the general welfare of all Englishmen. He chose advisers, generals, and civil servants wisely, and he was willing to delegate authority. He avoided clashes with parliament and the Church, still maintaining his royal rights to the best of his ability. If he was wrong in thinking war the great hope of his kingdom, his people, for the most part, wholeheartedly believed him right.