so little from him, ready as he was to teach! and when this londes verray tresour and richessse,' as the pupil felt that Chaucer was, is removed, it is too late.

How much does not Shakespeare himself owe to the early master Chaucer with his fressh commedies 1 -one of which was certainly produced on the French stage during his life, probably in a form which he had helped to make popular? Without the original 'well of English undefiled,' the first English poet, whence would the second great poet have drawn his immortal drops of crystal ?

CHAUCER'S DESCENT-NEW FACTS.

The latest discoveries anent Chaucer's parentage are Mr. Rye's, who has shown us that John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was the son and heir of Robert le Chaucer, not Richard as has been supposed, and was ward of Richard le Chaucer and Mary his wife (formerly wife of Robert le Chaucer), and lived with them, in 1326, in Cordwainer Street, London.

The young John, then under fourteen years old, had property in Ipswich, and after a year's quiet residence with his mother and her new husband (perhaps his uncle), a curious attack was made on him by Agnes, widow of Walter de Westhale, and some persons named Thomas and Geoffrey Stace; the boy was removed by force of arms in order to be married willy-nilly to Joan de Westhale.

An action was brought in Norwich to recover damages on account of this raptus : '2 300l. (about 3,000l. now) were claimed, and 250l. awarded by the jury.

Geoffrey and Thomas Stace, however, resented the verdict, and in 1329 attainted Richard and Mary Chaucer of perjury committed at the trial; but the verdict held good, and Geoffrey Stace was made over to the custody of the marshal of the city. Still, it was found by the jury that the stolen heir had not been married when abducted: 'Et trove fu q'ils avoient ravi le dit heire, mes ne mie mariée.' So it seems that Chaucer's mother was not the obnoxious Joan.

It is known that Mary, Chaucer's grandmother, was married three times to Heroun,3 by whom she had a son, Thomas Heroun; to Robert Chaucer, by whom she had a son, John, the poet's father; and to Richard Chaucer of Cordwainer Street, perhaps Robert's brother or cousin.

1 Griselda. See Chaucer for Schools, p. 111.

2 This raptus reminds us of that of Cecilia Chaumpaign, in which Chaucer was concerned when he was about forty; which also may have been connected with money

matters.

3 Observe birds on the Seals.

And it is also clear now why Richard Chaucer did not mention John in his will-strange enough, had he been his son. The boy was well off.

The abduction of the boy John was no doubt the climax of a family quarrel upon money matters. Robert le Chaucer had been collector in the port of London of the new customs upon wine granted by the merchants of Aquitaine-a similar post to that filled by his grandson the poet. One of the Staces held the same office in Ipswich. Agnes de Westhale was probably a Stace, and certain lands had been settled on her for life, remainder to her daughter Sibilla and her heirs, remainder to Joan her other daughter, and ultimate remainder to John Chaucer, whom they tried to forcibly marry to Joan.

It is not unlikely that the Staces and Westhales were connections of the Chaucers; certainly they were allied in business matters. Curiously, there were four brothers Stace-Thomas, Geoffrey, Henry, and Nicholas; and the poet Geoffrey had three contemporaries, probably relations, in London-Thomas, Henry, and Nicholas Chaucer,-who with himself may have been named after the Staces. Mary Chaucer herself may have been née Stace.

Richard Chaucer and his stepson Thomas Heroun died in 1349, probably in the first great pestilence, at which time Geoffrey Chaucer was either nine or twenty-one years of age, according as the late or early date is accepted for his birth. It seems more likely that he was a child, as he was page to Elizabeth of Ulster seven years later, and at twenty-eight he would have been rather an old page.

CHAUCER'S FATHER.

John Chaucer, the poet's father, was a vintner, like so many of his kinsmen. He was deputy king's butler in 1349, the year of his stepfather's death (a similar post to that which Thomas Chaucer later held as a young man). He was in attendance on Edward II. and his queen in Flanders and Cologne. We have seen that he inherited property from his father, and he married. money in Agnes (niece and heiress of the moneyer, Hamo de Copton), who was probably the poet's mother. Those, therefore, who lay so much stress on Geoffrey Chaucer's poverty and pecuniary difficulties, and complain of the royal neglect of so great a man, surely forget that he must have derived competent private means from both parents; whilst the various pensions and gifts he received from Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV., appear very liberal compared with Government pensions to literary persons now, and were all over and above his private fortune.

After John Chaucer's death, about 1366, the year when Geoffrey was certainly already a husband, Agnes Chaucer married again immediately a certain Bartholomew atte Chapel.

The ancient parchment deeds proving the above new facts have been recently found in the Record Office by Mr. Walford D. Selby. One of the most interesting results is the discovery that John Chaucer's seal differs materially from any coat hitherto assigned to either Geoffrey or Thomas Chaucer; for sufficient wax is left intact to show that the field is, Ermine, on a chief three birds' heads issuant (long-billed herons? his mother's previous name was Heroun, and sons often took their mothers' arms). The legend runs thus in the early Lombardic capitals: SIGILLVM IOH annis Chau] CER.

Thomas Chaucer's seal, attached to a deed preserved among the miscellanea of the Queen's Remembrancer of the Exchequer, shows a coat party per pale, argent and gules a bend counterchanged

(the coat tradition assigns to the poet), with the legend Shofr ai cha ucier. This legend, in spite of the illegibility of the principal letter, Mr. Hunter, who discovered it in the Record Office, authoritatively pronounces to mean Sigillum Ghofrai Chaucer (the seal of Geoffrey Chaucer), and to have been used by Thomas Chaucer in the absence of his own, since he states that it is his own seal in the deed. Other critics are doubtful whether the G may not be a T, for Thomas; but on close examination I cannot see how the unmistakable f can belong to the word Thomas, and it seems to me all but proved to be Geoffrey's seal.

The symbol on the reverse of Thomas's seal is not clear: may it not be a pelican or a heron?

The drawing of Thomas Chaucer's seal in the Cottonian MS. Julius C. VII. f. 153 includes the generally accepted coat and crest.

Crest a unicorn's head, shield party per pale, argent and gules a bend counterchanged; but in the corner of the seal is a bird, which long exercised industrious antiquaries.

The feet of Thomas Chaucer's effigy in Ewelme Church rest on a unicorn couchant, although he relinquished the arms of Chaucer for those of Roet; but the retention of the bird on his seal (Cotton. MS.) corresponds curiously with the birds' heads upon John Chaucer's seal, and may be the paternal emblem, which the vintner's grandson still bore. Father and son did not then necessarily confine themselves to the same bearings; the fourth generation may have remembered a bird, but forgotten what bird, or why it was there: and there is no outrageous improbability in these suggestions. But a seal and arms were only used by persons of good position: hence we may be sure John Chaucer held, as we should say, that of a gentleman.

CHAUCER'S MARRIAGE.

We know that Chaucer was married, probably as early as 1365, to a certain Philippa, successively maid of honour to Queen Philippa and to Constance of Lancaster, John of Gaunt's second wife, as I showed in my Chaucer for Schools': and there is increasing probability that she was the daughter of Sir Payne Roet, who came from Hainault with the Queen.

If so, when her sister Katherine married Sir Hugh Swynford, it was not inconsistent for Philippa to marry Sir Geoffrey Chaucer, as Froissart calls him, and whom she probably met when both had posts at Court: for Chaucer was not, and had never been, without sufficient means and sufficient Court interest to render him a gentleman and a good parti, whatever his father's position might have been and a well-to-do vintner's is no mean one.

Lady Swynford must have been beautiful, and shrewd to boot. Philippa Chaucer was surely handsome, sister or no to her who was only just not Queen of England at the end of her life. Whether she was a good woman, we have no record. Chaucer only praises wedded life by a fool's mouth. Who sat for his portraits of fair, noble damsels with their assured maner,' eyes 'debonaire, good, glad and sad,' and 'goodly swete speech '?-we see how he liked the self-possession and grace of courtly breeding. Did Philippa sit for Emelye, or for Cressida, that fair woman 6 mean of stature,' whose habit was

To gon ytressed with her heres clere

Doun by her colere, at her bak behind,

Which with a thred of goldë she would bind ? 3

1 Roet or Rouet-three Catherine Wheels or.

3 Troilus.

2 The Merchant's Tale.

But he had some earlier attachment: to a lady too exalted in birth, as he implies in more than one poem,' complaining of deep melancholy and sleeplessness, and saying, he has for eight years suffered from what is still without cure, for there is phisicien but one that may me heal'-but that is at an end now.'

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Mr. Furnivall dates the Book of the Duchess' in 1369, when Blanche (John of Gaunt's first Duchess) died, and when Chaucer was a married man. But if John himself is meant by the 'wonder well faring knight' of the age of four and twenty yere,' it is five years too young for him, as John was the same age as Chaucer, twenty-nine then. In the Complaint of Mars,' dated by Mr. Furnivall 1375, Chaucer again speaks of a lady of so great beauté, that I was mad till I had gete her grace,' and bewails his 'un-wit that ever [he] clombe so high,' with what reads like personal passion. In the Parliament of Birds' there are many veiled allusions to an inaccessible fair lady and his own discontent and jealousy-e.g. ll. 90, 91; 160, 161; &c. But in those lovemaking days such a man may have cared for many more than one; and whether these hints refer to his own feelings or not, we know much was forgiven to lovers of both sexes.

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CHAUCER'S CHILDREN-THOMAS CHAUCER.

Three Chaucers, besides little Louis, for whom Chaucer wrote his treatise on the Astrolabe, may be affirmed or denied to be his children :

I. Elizabeth, whom Edward III. nominated nun in St. Helen's in 1377-perhaps a convent answering to a fashionable school, whose Principal may be the original of the dainty Prioress Chaucer quizzes so neatly. This was the same Elizabeth, probably, whose noviciate in the Abbey of Barking was paid for by John of Gaunt four years later, to the tune of 500l. of our money-who knows why?

II. Agnes, one of the domicillæ at Henry IV.'s coronation, with a certain Joan Swynford--her cousin?

III. Thomas, much patronised by John of Gaunt: Chief Butler to Richard II. ; 2 nine times M.P. for Oxfordshire; who married an heiress of good family, served at Agincourt, was himself an ambassador, received numberless royal grants and favours, and

The Book of the Duchess: also in the Dethe of Pitie, and Complaint of Mars. 2 Richard II. subscribes his name to a Norman French letter addressed to his Chancellor De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk (same family as Alice Chaucer's third husband), granting a tun of his Gascony wine yearly to our beloved in God, Elizabeth Princess of St. Magdalen, by the hands of our Chief Butler' (Thomas Chaucer?)—a proof that grants of the King's wine, such as Geoffrey Chaucer received, were a compliment suitable to the highest in the land. See Chaucer for Schools, p. 25.