THE WIFE OF BATH(From the Ellesmere MS.)
The thread of the tales here breaks off; and then suddenly we find the Wife of Bath talking, talking, talking, almost without end as she was without beginning. Her prologue is half a dozen tales in itself, longer almost, and certainly wittier, than all the other prologues put together. The theme is marriage, and her mouth speaks from the abundance of her heart. Here, indeed, we have God’s plenty: fish, flesh, and fowl are set before us in one dish, not to speak of creeping things: it is in truth a strong mess, savoury to those that have the stomach for it, but reeking of garlic,crammed with oaths like the Shipman’s talk; a sample of the Eternal Feminine undisguised and unrefined, in its most glaring contrast with the only other two women of the party, the Prioress and her fellow-nun—
The good wife tells how she has outlived five husbands, and proclaims her readiness for a sixth. The five martyrs are sketched with a master-touch, and are divided into categories according to their obedience or disobedience. But, with all their variety of disposition, time and matrimony had tamed even the most stubborn of them; even that clerk of Oxford whose earlier wont had been to read aloud nightly by the fire from a Book of Bad Women—
But the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love; and when the husband had been brought, half by violence and half by cajolery, to give his wife her own way in everything, then—
For all social purposes, as we have said, this wasthe only woman of the company; and where there is one woman there are always two men as ready to quarrel over her as if she were Helen of Troy. Moreover, in this case, professional jealousies were also at work. Already in the middle of her prologue the Summoner had fallen into familiar dialogue with this merry wife; and now, at the end—
The lady, having thus definitely notified her choice between the rivals (on quite other grounds, as the next few lines show, than those of religion or morality), proceeds to tell her tale on the theme that nothing is so dear to the female heart as “sovereignty” or “mastery.” Then the quarrel blazes up afresh, and the Friar (after an insulting prologue for which theHost calls him to order) tells a story which is, from first to last, a bitter satire on the whole tribe of Summoners. Then the Summoner, “quaking like an aspen leaf for ire,” stands up in his stirrups and claims to be heard in turn. His prologue, which by itself might suffice to turn the tables on his enemy, is a broad parody of those revelations to devout Religious which announced how the blessed souls of their particular Order (for the Friars were not alone in this egotism) enjoyed for their exclusive use some choice and peculiar mansion in heaven—under the skirts of the Virgin’s mantle, for instance, or even within the wound of their Saviour’s side. Then begins the tale itself of a Franciscan Stiggins on his daily rounds, and of the “oldë churl, with lockës hoar,” who at one stroke blasphemed the whole convent, and took ample change out of Friar John for many a good penny or fat meal given in the past, and for much friction in his conjugal relations. The whole is told with inimitable humour, and it is to be regretted that we hear nothing of the comments with which it was received. At this point comes another gap in Chaucer’s plan.
THE FRIAR(From the Ellesmere MS.)
Then suddenly our Host calls upon the Clerk of Oxford—
The Clerk, thus rudely shaken from his meditations, tells the story of Patient Griselda, which he had “learned at Padua, of a worthy clerk ... Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet.” The good Clerk softens down much of that which most shocks the modern mind in this truly medieval conception of wifely obedience; and, as a confirmed bachelor, he adds an ironical postscript which is as clever as anything Chaucer ever wrote.[163]We must revere the heroine, but despair of finding her peer—
So begins this satirical ballad, and goes on to bid the wife of the present day to enjoy herself at her husband’s expense—
The last line rouses a sad echo in one heart at least, for the Merchant had been wedded but two months—
His tale turns accordingly on the misadventures of an old knight who had been foolish enough to marry a girl in her teens. Upon this the Host congratulateshimself thathiswife, with all her shrewishness and other vices more, is “as true as any steel.” Here ends the third day; the travellers probably slept at the Pilgrim’s House at Ospringe, parts of which stand still as Chaucer saw it.
Next morning the Squire is first called upon to
He modestly disclaims the compliment, and tells (or rather leaves half told) the story of Cambuscan, with the magic ring and mirror and horse of brass. Chaucer had evidently intended to finish the story; for the Franklin is loud in praise of the young man’s eloquence, and sighs to mark the contrast with his own son, who, in spite of constant paternal “snybbings,” haunts dice and low company, and shows no ambition to learn of “gentillesse.” “Straw for your ‘gentillessë,’ quoth our Host,” and forthwith demands a tale from the Franklin, who, with many apologies for his want of rhetoric, tells admirably a Breton legend of chivalry and magic.
Another gap brings us to the Second Nun, who tells the tale of St. Cecilia from the Golden Legend, with a prefatory invocation to the Virgin translated from Dante. By the time this is ended the pilgrims are five miles further on, at Boughton-under-Blee. Here, at the foot of the hilly forest of Blean, with only eight more miles before them to Canterbury, they are startled by the clattering of horse-hoofs behind them. It was a Canon Regular with a Yeoman at his heels.[164]The man had seen the pilgrims at daybreak, and warned his master; and the two had ridden hard to overtake so merry a company. While the Canon greeted the pilgrims, our Host questioned his Yeoman, who first obscurely hinted, and then began openly to relate, suchthings as made the Canon set spurs to his horse and “flee away for very sorrow and shame.” The Yeoman is now only too glad to make a clean breast of it. He has been seven years with this monastic alchemist, who has fallen meanwhile from one degree of poverty to another; half-cheat, half-dupe, with a thousand tricks for cozening folk of their money, but always wasting his own on the search for the philosopher’s stone. Meanwhile, after ruinous expenses and painful care, every experiment ends in the same way: “the pot to-breaketh, and farewell, all is go!” The experimenters pick themselves up, look round on the mass of splinters and the dinted walls, and begin to quarrel over the cause—
At last the mess is swept up, the few recognizable fragments of metal are put aside for further use, another furnace is built, and the indefatigable Canon concocts a fresh hell-broth, sweeping away all past failures with the incurable optimism of a monomaniac, “There was defect in somewhat, well I wot.” Many of the fraternity, however, are arrant knaves, without the least redeeming leaven of folly; and the Yeoman goes on to tell the tricks by which such an one beguiled a “sotted priest” who had set his heart on this unlawful gain.
By this time the company was come to “Bob Up and Down,” which was probably the pilgrims’ nickname for Upper Harbledown. Here our Host found the Cook straggling behind, asleep on his nag in broad daylight—
The Cook opens his mouth, and at once compels his neighbours to adopt the latter and less charitable theory. He is evidently in no state for story-telling; so the Manciple offers himself instead, not without a few broad jests at his fellow’s infirmity—
The Manciple, fearing lest the Cook’s resentment should prompt some future revenge in the way of business, pulled out a gourd of wine, coaxed another draught into the drunken man, and earned his half-articulate gratitude. Then he told the fable of the crow from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The tale was ended, and the sun began to sink, for it was four o’clock.[165]The cavalcade began to “enter at a thorpë’s end”—no doubt the village of Harbledown, the last before Canterbury, famous for the Black Prince’s Well and for the relics of St. Thomas at its leper hospital. Here at last the pilgrims remember the real object of their journey. The Host lays aside his oaths (all but one, “Cokkës bones!” which slips out unawares) and looks round now for the hitherto neglected Parson, upon whom he calls for a “fable.”
The Host voices the common consent, reinforcing his speech for once with a prayer instead of an oath. The Parson then launches out into a treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies, translated from the French of a 13th-century friar. The treatise (like Chaucer’s other prose writings) lacks the style of his verse; but it contains one lively and amusing chapter of his own insertion, satirizing the extravagance of costume in his day (lines 407 ff.).
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FROM W. SMITH’S DRAWING OF 1588. (SLOANE MS. 2596).THE PILGRIMS ENTERED BY THE WEST GATE (NO. 6)
Long before the Parson had ended, the city must have been in full view below—white-walled, red-roofed amid its orchards and green meadows, but lacking that perfect bell-tower which, from far and near, is now the fairest sight of all. At this point an anonymous and far inferior poet has continued Chaucer’s narrative in the “Tale of Beryn.” The prologue to that tale shows us the pilgrims putting up at the Chequers Inn, “that many a man doth know,” fragments of which may still be seen close to the Cathedral at the corner of Mercery Lane.[167]Travelling as they did in force—and especially with such redoubtable champions among their party—they would no doubt have been able to choose this desirable hostel without too great molestation; but in favour of less able-bodied pilgrims the city authorities were obliged to pass a law that no hosteler should“disturb no manner of strange man coming to the city for to take his inn; but it shall be lawful to take his inn at his own lust without disturbance of any hosteler.”[168]In the Cathedral itself—
till the Host bade them show better manners, and go offer at the shrine. “Then passed they forth boisterously, goggling with their heads,” kissed the relics dutifully, saw the different holy places, and presently sat down to dinner. How the Miller (being accustomed to such sleight of hand) stole afterwards a bosom-full of “Canterbury brooches”; how uproarious was the merriment after supper, and how the Pardoner became the hero of a scandalous adventure—this and much more may be read at length in the prologue to the “Tale of Beryn.” It will already have been noted, however, that the anonymous poet entirely agrees with Chaucer in laying stress on what may be called the bank-holiday side of the pilgrimage. That side does indeed come out with rather more than its due prominence when we thus skip the separate tales and run straight through the plot of the pilgrims’ journey; but, when all allowances have been made, Chaucer enables us to understand why orthodox preachers spoke on this subject almost as strongly as the heresiarch Wycliffe; and, on the other hand, how great a gap was made in the life of the common folk by the abolition of pilgrimages.
The very fidelity with which the poet paints his own time shows us the Reformation in embryo. We have in fact here, within the six hundred pages of the “Canterbury Tales,” one of the most vivid and significant of all scenes in the great Legend of the Ages; and his pilgrims, so intent upon the present, so exactlymirrored by Chaucer as they moved and spoke in their own time, tell us nevertheless both of another age that was almost past and of a future time which was not yet ripe for reality. The Knight is still of course the most respected figure in such a company; and he brings into the book a pale afterglow of the real crusades; but the Host now treads close upon his heels, big with the importance of a prosperous citizen who has twice sat in Parliament side by side with knights of the shire. The good Prioress recalls faintly the heroic age of monasticism; yet St. Benedict and St. Francis would have recognized their truest son in the poor Parson, upon whom the pilgrims called only in the last resort. The Monk and the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner, do indeed remind us how large a share the Church claimed in every department of daily life; but they make us ask at the same time “how long can it last?” Extremes meet; and the “lewd sots” who went “goggling with their heads,” gaping and disputing at the painted windows on their way to the shrine, were lineal ancestors to the notorious “Blue Dick” of 250 years later, who made a merit of having mounted on a lofty ladder, pike in hand, to “rattle down proud Becket’s glassie bones.”
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EDWARD III. FROM HIS TOMBIN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
KING AND QUEEN
Wehave traced the main course of the poet’s life, followed him at work and at play, and considered his immediate environment. Let us now try to roam more at large through the England of his day, and note the more salient features of that society, high and low, from which he drew his characters.
In this age, Chaucer could scarcely have had a better introduction to Court life than that which fell to his lot. The King whom he served, when we have made all possible deductions, was still the most imposing sovereign of the time. Adam Murimuth, a contemporary chronicler not often given to rhetoric, has drawn Edward III.’s portrait with no more exaggeration than we must take for granted in a contemporary, and with such brilliancy that his more picturesque successor, Walsingham, has transferred the paragraph almost bodily into his own pages. “This King Edward,” writes Adam, “was of infinite goodness, and glorious among all the great ones of the world, being entitled The Glorious par excellence, for that by virtue of grace from heaven he outshone in excellence all his predecessors, renowned and noble as they were. He was so great-hearted that he never blenched or changed the fashion of his countenance at any ill-hap or trouble soever that came upon him; a renowned and fortunate warrior, who triumphed gloriously in battles by seaand land; clement and benign, familiar and gentle even to all men, both strangers and his own subjects or dependents; devoted to God, for he held God’s Church and His ministers in the greatest reverence. In temporal matters he was not too unyielding, prudent and discreet in counsel, affable and gentle in courtesy of speech, composed and measured in gesture and manners, pitiful to the afflicted, and profuse in largesse. In times of wealth he was not immoderate; his love of building was great and discriminating; he bore losses with moderation; devoted to hawking, he spent much pains on that art. His body was comely, and his face like the face of a god, wherefrom so marvellous grace shone forth that whosoever openly considered his countenance, or dreamed thereof by night, conceived a sure and certain hope of pleasant solace and good-fortune that day. He ruled his realm strictly even to his old age; he was liberal in giving and lavish in spending; for he was excellent in all honour of manners, so that to live under him was to reign; since his fame was so spread abroad among barbarous nations that, extolling his honour, they averred that no land under the sun had ever produced a King so noble, so generous, or so fortunate; and that, after his death, none such would perchance ever be raised up for future times. Yet he controlled not, even in old age, the dissolute lusts of the flesh; and, as is believed, this intemperance shortened his life.” Hereupon follows a painfully involved sentence in which the chronicler draws a moral from Edward’s brilliant youth, the full midday of his manhood, and the degradation of his declining years.[169]
If the praise of Edward’s clemency seems overdrawn to those who remember the story of the citizens of Calais, we must bear in mind that the chronicler compares him here with other sovereigns of the time—with his rival Philippe de Valois, who was scarcelydissuaded from executing Sir Walter de Mauny in cold blood, despite his safe conduct from the Dauphin; with Gaston de Foix, who with a penknife in his hand struck at his only son and killed him; with Richard II., who smote the Earl of Arundel in the face during the Queen’s funeral, and “polluted Westminster Abbey with his blood”; with Charles the Bad of Navarre, and Pedro the Cruel of Spain. What even the cleric Murimuth saw, and what Chaucer and his friend Hoccleve saw still more intimately, was the Haroun al-Raschid who went about “in simple array alone” to hear what his people said of him; the “mighty victor, mighty lord” of Sluys, Crécy and Calais; the King who in war would freely hazard his own person, “raging like a wild boar, and crying ‘Ha Saint Edward! Ha Saint George!’”[170]and who in peace would lead the revels at Windsor, clad in white and silver, and embroidered with his motto—
If Edward and his sons were renowned for their uniform success in battle, it was not because they had feared to look defeat in the face. Every one knows how much was risked and all but lost at Crécy and Poitiers; the great sea-fight of “Les Espagnols sur Mer” is less known. Froissart excels himself in this story.[171]We see Edward sailing out gaily, in spite of the superior numbers of the Spaniards, and bidding his minstrels pipe the brand-new air which Sir John Chandos had brought back from Germany, while Chandos himself sang the words. Then, when the enemy came sailing down upon him with their great embattled ships, the King bade his steersman tilt straight at the first Spanish vessel, in spite of the disparity of weight. The English boat cracked under the shock; her seams opened; and,by the time that Edward had captured the next ship, his own was beginning to sink. The Black Prince had even a narrower escape; it became evident that his ship would go down before he could board the enemy; only the timely arrival of the Earl of Derby saved him; the deck sank almost under his feet as he climbed the sides of the Spaniard; “and all the enemy were put overboard without taking any to mercy.” The Queen prayed all day at some abbey—probably Battle—in anguish of heart for the news which came from time to time through watchers on the far-off Downs. Although Edward and his sons took horse at once upon their landing, not until two o’clock in the morning did they find her, apparently in her own castle at Pevensey: “so the lords and ladies passed that night in great revel, speaking of war and of love.”
Arms and love were equally commemorated in a foundation which was one of the glories of Edward’s reign—the Round Tower of Windsor. Dying chivalry, like other moribund institutions, broke out now and then into fantastic revivals of the past. Edward resolved to hold a Round Table at his palace, and to build a great tower for the purpose. Warrants were sent out to impress the unhappy labourers throughout six counties; for a short time as many as 722 men were employed on the work, and the whole Round Tower was built in ten months of the year 1344.[172]Froissart connects this, probably too closely, with the Order of the Garter, which seems not to have been actually founded until 1349, when every household in the country was saddened by the Great Pestilence. We have here one of the typical contrasts of those times; both sides of the shield are seen in those memories of love and war which cling round the Round Tower of Windsor. Lavish profusion side by side with dirt and squalor; the minstrels clad in rich cloths taken fromthe Spaniards; bright eyes and careless merriment at the Royal board, while the hawks scream down from their perches, and noble hounds fight for bones among the rushes; silken trains, stiff with gold, trailing over the nameless defilements of the floor; a King and his sons, more stately and warlike than any other Royal family; but their crowns are in pawn with foreign merchants, and they themselves have been obliged to leave four earls behind as hostages to their Flemish creditors.[173]Royalty has always itsmemento mori, no doubt, but not always under the same forms.
THE PEACOCK FEAST
(From the sepulchral brass of Robert Braunche, twice Mayor of Lynn, who died in 1364. Braunche had the honour of entertaining Edward III., here distinguished by his crown on the extreme left of the guests. Observe the attitude of the attendant squire on the extreme right.)
If Chaucer the poet was fortunate in his Royal master, still more fortunate was Philippa Chaucer in her namesake, “the good Queen.” The wooing of Edward and Philippa of Hainault is painted lovingly by Froissart, who was the lady’s compatriot and a clerk in her service. In 1326 Queen Isabella of England, who had broken more or less definitely with her husband, was staying with her eldest boy at her brother’s Court in Paris. But the King of France had no wish to encourage open rebellion; and Isabella avoided extradition only by fleeing to her cousin, the Count of Hainault, at Valenciennes. “In those days had Count William four daughters, Margaret, Philippa, Joan, and Isabel; among whom young Edward devoted himself most, and inclined with eyes of love to Philippa rather than to the rest; and the maiden knew him better and kept closer company with him than any of her sisters. So have I since heard from the mouth of the good Lady herself, who was Queen of England, and in whose court and service I dwelt.” It was agreed, in reward for the count’s hospitality, that Edward should marry one of the girls; and when Isabella went home to conquer England in her son’s name, the main body of her army consisted of Hainaulters, and most of the prepaid dowry of the future bride was consumed by the expenses of theexpedition. Then, in 1327, when the wretched Edward II. had bitterly expiated his follies and crimes in the dungeon of Berkeley, and the “she-wolf of France” already ruled England in her son’s name, she went through the form of asking whether he would marry one of the young countesses. “And when they asked him, he began to laugh, and said, ‘Yes, I am better pleased to marry there than elsewhere; and rather to Philippa, for she and I accorded excellently well together; and she wept, I know well, when I took leave of her at my departure.’” All that was needed now was a papal dispensation; for the parties were second cousins. This was, of course, a mere matter of form—or, rather, of money. Towards the end of the year Philippa was married by proxy at Valenciennes; and on December 23 she arrived in London, where there were “great rejoicings and noble show of lords, earls, barons, knights, highborn ladies and noble damsels, with rich display of dress and jewels, with jousts too and tourneys for the ladies’ love, with dancing and carolling, and with great and rich feasts day by day; and these rejoicings endured for the space of 3 weeks.” Edward was at York, resting after his first Scottish campaign; so “the young queen and her meinie journeyed northwards until they came to York, where she was received with great solemnity. And all the lords of England who were in the city came forth in fair array to meet her, and with them the young king, mounted on an excellently-paced hackney, magnificently clad and arrayed; and he took her by the hand, and then embraced and kissed her; and so riding side by side, with great plenty of minstrels and honours, they entered the city and came to the Queen’s lodgings.... So there the young King Edward wedded Philippa of Hainault in the cathedral church of St. William [sic].... And the king was seventeen years of age, and the young queen was on the point of fourteen years.... Thus came the said queen Philippa to England at so happy a time that the whole kingdom might well rejoice thereat,and did indeed rejoice; for since the days of queen Guinevere, who was wife to King Arthur and queen of England (which men called Great Britain in those days), so good a queen never came to that land, nor any who had so much honour, or such fair offspring; for in her time, by King Edward her spouse, she had seven sons and five daughters. And, so long as she lived, the realm of England enjoyed grace, prosperity, honour, and all good fortune; nor was there ever enduring famine or dearth in the land while she reigned there.... Tall and straight she was; wise, gladsome, humble, devout, free-handed, and courteous; and in her time she was richly adorned with all noble virtues, and well beloved of God and men.”[174]
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PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT,FROM HER TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY(THE FIRST OF THE ROYAL TOMBS WHICH IS AN ACTUAL PORTRAIT)
So far Froissart, recording events which happened some ten years before his birth, from the mouths of the actors themselves; writing lovingly, in his extreme old age, of his first and noblest patroness, and proudly as a Dane might write thirty years hence of the princess who had come from his own home to win all hearts in England.[175]From other chroniclers, and from dry official documents, we may throw interesting sidelights on these more living memorials. One such document, however, is as living as a page from Froissart himself, in spite of—or shall we say, because of?—its essentially business character and the legal caution of phrase in which the writer has wrapped up his direct personal impressions. The official register of the ill-fated Bishop Stapledon, of Exeter, so soon to expiate at the hands of a London mob his loyal ministerial service toEdward II., is in the main like other episcopal registers—a record of ordinations, institutions, dispensations, lawsuits, and more or less unsuccessful attempts to reduce his clergy to canonical discipline.[176]But it contains, under the date of 1319 (p. 169), an entry which has, so far as I know, been strangely overlooked hitherto by historians. The Latin title runs, “Inspection and Description of the Daughter of the Count of Hainault, Philippa by name.” To this a later hand, probably that of the succeeding bishop, has added: “She was Queen of England, Wife to Edward III.” The document itself, which is in Norman-French, runs as follows: “The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean-shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face still more narrow and slender than the forehead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and also flattened, yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper; yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body and lower limbs are reasonably well shapen; all her limbs are well set and unmaimed; and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us. And the damsel will be of the age of nine years on St. John’s day nextto come, as her mother saith. She is neither too tall nor too short for such an age; she is of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank, and highly esteemed and well beloved of her father and mother and of all her meinie, in so far as we could inquire and learn the truth.” Cannot we here see, through the bishop’s dry and measured phrases, a figure scarcely less living and attractive than Froissart shows us?
But the register corrects the historian just where we should expect to find him at fault. “The noble and worthy lady my mistress” would scarcely have told Froissart how much State policy there had been in the marriage, true love-match as it had been in spite of all. The old bishop, before whose face she had trembled, and laughed again behind his back with her sisters; his invidious comparisons between her first and second teeth; his business-like collection of backstairs gossip, which some more confidential maid-of-honour must surely have whispered to her mistress—of all this the noble lady naturally breathed no syllable to her devoted clerk. But, apart from the official record in the secret archives of Exeter diocese, a vague memory of it all was kept alive in men’s minds by that most efficacious of historical preservatives—a broad jest. The rhyming chronicler Hardyng, whose life overlapped Froissart’s and Chaucer’s by several years, records a good deal of Court gossip, especially about Edward III.’s family. He writes[177]—
Later on again, after enumerating the titles and virtues of the sons that were born of this union, Hardyng continues—
We need find no difficulty in reconciling Froissart with these other documents; Edward’s was a love-match, but, like all Royal love-matches, subject to possible considerations of State. The first negotiations for a papal dispensation carefully avoid exact specification; the request is simply for leave to marry “one of the daughters” of Hainault; only two months before the actual marriage does the final document bear Philippa’s name.
The Queen’s public life—the scene before Calais, and her (somewhat doubtful) presence at the battle of Nevile’s Cross—belongs rather to the general history of England; of her private life, as of Chaucer’s, a great deal only flashes out here and there, meteor-wise, fromaccount-books and similar business documents. We find, for instance, what gifts were given to the messengers who announced the births of her successive children to the King; and Beltz, in his “Memorials of the Garter,” has unearthed the name of the lady who nursed the Black Prince.[178]We find Edward building for his young consort the castle since called Queenborough, the master-mason on this occasion being John Gibbon, ancestor to the great historian. At another moment we see the Earl of Oxford, as Chamberlain, claiming for his perquisites after the coronation Philippa’s bed, shoes, and three silver basins; but Edward redeemed the bed for £1000.[179]This redemption is explained by divers entries in the Royal accounts; in 1335-6 the King owed John of Cologne £3000 for a bed made “against the confinement of the Lady Philippa ... of green velvet, embroidered in gold, with red sirens, bearing a shield with the arms of England and Hainault.” The infant on this occasion was the short-lived William of Hatfield, whose child-tomb may be seen in York Cathedral. Her carpets for a later confinement cost £900, but her bed only £1250. And so on to the latest entries of all—the carving of her tomb at Westminster; the wrought-iron hearse which the canons of St. Paul’s obligingly took from the tomb of Bishop Northbrooke and sold for that of the Queen at the price of £600;[180]lastly, the rich “mortuary” accruingto the Chapter of York Minster, who got for their perquisite the bed on which Philippa had breathed her last, and had its rich hangings cut up into “thirteen copes, six tunics and one chasuble.”[181]
But here let us turn back to Froissart, who, under the year 1369, turns suddenly aside from his chronicle of battles and sieges, to pay a heartfelt tribute to his first benefactress. “Now let us speak of the death of the gentlest queen, the most liberal and courteous of all who reigned in her time, my Lady Philippa of Hainault, queen of England and Ireland: God pardon her and all others! In these days ... there came to pass in England a thing common enough, but exceedingly pitiful this time for the king and her children and the whole land; for the good lady the Queen of England, who had done so much good in her lifetime and succoured so many knights, ladies, and damsels, and given and distributed so freely among all people, and who had ever loved so naturally those of her own native land of Hainault, lay grievously sick in the castle of Windsor; and her sickness lay so hard upon her that it waxed more and more grievous, and her last end drew near. When therefore this good lady and queen knew that she must die, she sent for the king her husband; and, when he was come into her presence, she drew her right hand from under the coverlet and put it into the right hand of the king, who was sore grieved in his heart; and thus spake the good lady: ‘My Lord, heaven be thanked that we have spent our days in peace and joy and prosperity; wherefore I pray that you will grant me three boons at this my departure.’ The King, weeping and sobbing, answered and said, ‘Ask, Lady, for they are granted.’ ‘My Lord, I pray for all sorts of good folk with whom in time past I have dealt for theirmerchandize, both on this and on that side of the sea, that ye will easily trust their word for that wherein I am bound to them, and pay full quittance for me. Next, that ye will keep and accomplish all ordinances which I have made, and all legacies which I have bequeathed, both to churches on either side of the sea where I have paid my devotions, and to the squires and damsels who have served me. Thirdly, my Lord, I pray that ye will choose no other sepulture than to lie by my side in the Abbey of Westminster, when God’s will shall be done on you.’ The King answered weeping, ‘Lady, I grant it you.’ Then made the Queen the sign of the true cross on him, and commended the King to God, and likewise the lord Thomas her youngest son, who was by her side; and then within a brief space she yielded up her ghost, which (as I firmly believe) the holy angels of paradise seized and carried with great joy to the glory of heaven; for never in her life did she nor thought she any thing whereby she might lose it.”
As the good Queen’s beloved bed-hangings were dispersed in fragments among the Canons of York, so her dying benedictions would seem to have been scattered no less widely to the winds. One of the servants so tenderly commended to the King’s care was Chaucer’s wife; but another was Alice Perrers, whom Edward had already noted with favour, and who now took more or less openly the dead Queen’s place. Men aged rapidly in those days; and, as Edward trod the descending slope of life, his manly will weakened and left little but the animal behind. Philippa was scarcely cold in her grave when Alice Perrers, decked in her mistress’s jewels, was masquerading at royal tournaments as the Lady of the Sun. Presently she was sitting openly at the judge’s side in the law courts; the King’s shame was the common talk of his subjects; and even the formal protests of Parliament failed to separate her from the doting old King, from whom on his death-bed she kept the clergy away until his speech was gone.Then, having stolen the very rings from his fingers, she left him to a priest who could only infer repentance from his groans and tears. Thomas of Woodstock, the Queen’s Benjamin, fared not much better. He became the selfish and overbearing leader of the opposition to Richard II., and was at last secretly murdered by order of the royal nephew whom he had bullied more or less successfully for twenty years.
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES
Thetheory of chivalry, which itself owes much to pre-Christian morality, lies at the roots of the modern conception of gentility. The essence of perfect knighthood was fearless strength, softened by charity and consecrated by faith. A certain small and select class had (it was held) a hereditary right to all the best things of this world, and the concomitant duty of using with moderation for themselves and giving freely to others. Essentially exclusive and jealous of its privileges, the chivalric ideal was yet the highest possible in a society whose very foundations rested on caste distinctions, and where bondmen were more numerous than freemen. The world will always be the richer for it; but we must not forget that, like the finest flower of Greek and Roman culture, it postulated a servile class; the many must needs toil and groan and bleed in order that the few might have grace and freedom to grow to their individual perfection. In its finest products it may extort unwilling admiration even from the most convinced democrat—
When, however, we look closer into the system, and turn from theory to practice, then we find again those glaring inconsistencies which meet us nearly everywhere in medieval society. A close study even of such a panegyrist as Froissart compels us to look to some other age than his for the spirit of perfect chivalry; and many writers would place the palmy days of knighthood in the age of St. Louis. Here again, however, we find the same difficulty; for in Joinville himself there are many jarring notes, and other records of the period are still less flattering to knightly society. The most learned of modern apologists for the Middle Ages, Léon Gautier, is driven to put back the Golden Age one century further, thus implying that Francis and Dominic, Aquinas and Dante, the glories of Westminster and Amiens, the saintly King who dealt justice under the oak of Vincennes, and twice led his armies oversea against the heathen, all belonged to an age of decadence in chivalry. Yet, even at this sacrifice, the Golden Age escapes us. When we go back to the middle of the 12th century we find St. Bernard’s contemporaries branding the chivalry of their times as shamelessly untrue to its traditional code. “The Order of Knighthood” (writes Peter of Blois in his 94th Epistle) “is nowadays mere disorder.... Knights of old bound themselves by an oath to stand by the state, not to flee from battle, and to prefer the public welfare to their own lives. Nay, even in these present days candidates for knighthood take their swords from the altar as a confession that they are sons of the Church, and that the blade isgiven to them for the honour of the priesthood, the defence of the poor, the chastisement of evil-doers, and the deliverance of their country. But all goes by contraries; for nowadays, from the moment when they are honoured with the knightly belt, they rise up against the Lord’s anointed and rage against the patrimony of the Crucified. They rob and despoil Christ’s poor, afflicting the wretched miserably and without mercy, that from other men’s pain they may gratify their unlawful appetites and their wanton pleasures.... They who should have used their strength against Christ’s enemies fight now in their cups and drunkenness, waste their time in sloth, moulder in debauchery, and dishonour the name and office of Knighthood by their degenerate lives.” This was about 1170. A couple of generations earlier we get an equally unfavourable impression from the learned and virtuous abbot, Guibert of Nogent. Further back, again, the evidence is still more damning; and nobody would seriously seek the golden age of chivalry in the 11th century. It is indeed a mirage; and Peter of Blois in 1170, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry in 1220, who so disadvantageously contrasted the knighthood of their own time with that of the past, were simply victims of a common delusion. They despaired too lightly of the actual world, and sought refuge too credulously in an imaginary past. Even if, in medieval fashion, we trace this institution back to Romulus, to David, to Joshua, or to Adam himself, we shall, after all, find it nowhere more flourishing than in the first half of the 13th century, imperfectly as its code was kept even then.
By the end of that century, however, two great causes were at work which made for the decay of chivalry. Before Dante had begun to write, the real Crusades were over—or, indeed, even before Dante was born—for the two expeditions led by St. Louis were small compared with others in the past. In 1229 the Emperor Frederick II. had recovered from the infidelby treaty those holy places which Coeur-de-Lion had in vain attempted to storm; and this had dealt a severe blow to the old traditions. Again, during the years that followed, the Pope did not hesitate to attack his enemy the Emperor, even in the Holy Land; so that, while Christian fought against Christian over Christ’s grave, the Turk stepped in and reconquered Jerusalem (1244). Lastly, his successors, while they regularly raised enormous taxes and contributions for the reconquest of Palestine, systematically spent them on their own private ambitions or personal pleasures. Before the 13th century was out the last Christian fortress had been taken, and there was nothing now to show for two centuries of bloodshed. Under these repeated shocks men began to lose faith in the crusading principle. A couple of generations before Chaucer’s birth, Etienne de Bourbon complained that the upper classes “not only did not take the cross, but scoffed at the lower orders when they did so” (p. 174). In France, after the disastrous failure of St. Louis’s first expedition, the rabble said that Mahomet was now stronger than Christ.[183]Edward III. and his rival, Philippe de Valois, did for a moment propose to go and free the Holy Land in concert, but hardly seriously. Chaucer’s Knight had indeed fought in Asia Minor, but mainly against European pagans in Spain and on the shores of the Baltic; and, irreproachable as his motives were in this particular instance, Gower shows scant sympathy for those which commonly prompted crusades of this kind.[184]
A still more fatal cause of the decay of chivalry, perhaps, lay in the growing prosperity of the merchant class. Even distinguished historians have written misleadingly concerning the ideal of material prosperity and middle-class comfort, as though it had been born only with the Reformation. It seems in fact an inseparablebye-product of civilization: whether healthy or unhealthy need not be discussed here. As the Dark Ages brightened into the Middle Ages, as mere club-law grew weaker and weaker, so the longing for material comforts grew stronger and stronger. The great monasteries were among the leaders in this as in so many other respects. In 12th-century England, the nearest approach to the comfort of a modern household would probably have been found either in rich Jews’ houses or in the more favoured parts of abbeys like Bury and St. Albans. Already in the 13th century the merchant class begins to come definitely to the fore. As the early 14th-centuryRenart le Contrefaitcomplains—
Italy and the south of France were particularly advanced in this respect; and Dante’s paternal house was probably richer in material comforts than any castle or palace in England, as his surroundings were in many other ways more civilized. Even the feudal aristocracy, as will presently be seen, learned much in these ways from the citizen-class: and, meanwhile, a slow but sure intermingling process began between the two classes themselves. First only by way of abuse, but presently by open procedure of law, the rich plebeian began to buy for himself the sacred rank of Knighthood. Long before the end of the 13th century, there were districts of France in which rich citizens claimed knighthood as their inalienable right. In England, the order was cheapened by Edward I.’s statute ofDistraint of Knighthood(1278), in which some have seen a deliberate purpose to undermine the feudal nobility. By this law, all freeholders possessing an estate of £20 a year were not only permitted, but compelled to become knights; and the superficiality of the strict chivalric ideal is shown clearly by the factsthat such a law could ever be passed, and that men tried so persistently to evade it. If knighthood had been in reality, even at the end of the 12th century, anything like what its formal codes represent, then no such attempt as this could have been made in 1235 by a King humbly devoted to the Church—for, as early as that year, Henry III. had anticipated his son’s enactments.
Where Royal statutes and popular tendencies work together against an ancient institution, it soon begins to crumble away; and the knighthood which Chaucer knew was far removed from that of a few generations before. We read in “Piers Plowman” that, while “poor gentle blood” is refused, “soapsellers and their sons for silver have been knights.” An Italian contemporary, Sacchetti, complains that he has seen knighthood conferred on “mechanics, artisans, even bakers; nay, worse still, on woolcarders, usurers, and cozening ribalds”; and Eustache Deschamps speaks scarcely less strongly.[186]Several 14th-century mayors of London were knighted, including John Chaucer’s fellow-vintner Picard, and Geoffrey’s colleagues at the Customs, Walworth, Brembre, and Philipot.
But Brembre and Philipot, Sir Walter Besant has reminded us, were probably members of old country families, who had come to seek their fortunes in London.[187]True; but this only shows us the decay of chivalry on another side. Nothing could be more honourable, or better in the long run for the country, than that there should be such a double current of circulation, fresh healthy blood flowing from the country manor to the London counting-house, and hard cash trickling back again from the city to the somewhat impoverished manor. It was magnificent, but it was not chivalry, at any rate in the medieval sense. Gowerreminded his readers that even civil law forbade the knight to become merchant or trader; but the movement was far too strong to be checked by law. The old families had lost heavily by the crusades, by the natural subdivision of estates, and by their own extravagance. Moreover, the growing luxury of the times made them feel still more acutely the limitation of their incomes; and the moneylenders of Chaucer’s day found their best customers among country magnates. “The city usurer,” writes Gower, “keeps on hire his brokers and procurers, who search for knights, vavasours and squires. When these have mortgaged their lands, and are driven by need to borrow, then these rascals lead them to the usurers; and presently that trick will be played which in modern jargon is called thechevisanceof money.... Ah! what a bargain, which thus enriches the creditor and will ruin the debtor!”[188]In an age which knew knight-errantry no longer, nothing but the most careful husbandry could secure the old families in their former pre-eminence; and well it was for England that these were early forced by bitter experience to recognise the essential dignity of honest commerce. Edward I., under the financial pressure of his great wars, insisted that he was “free to buy and sell like any other.” All the Kings were obliged to travel from one Royal manor to another, as M. Jusserand has pointed out, from sheer motives of economy.[189]We have already seen how Edward III., even in his pleasures, kept business accounts with a regularity which earned him a sneer from King John of France. The Cistercians, who were probably the richest religious body in England, owed their wealth mainly to their success in the wooltrade. But perhaps the most curious evidence of this kind may be found in the invaluable collections from the Berkeley papers made in the 17th century by John Smyth of Nibley, and published by the Bristol and Gloucester Archæological Society. We there find a series of great barons, often holding distinguished offices in peace or war, but always exploiting their estates with a dogged unity of purpose which a Lombard might have envied. Thomas I., who held the barony from 1220 to 1243, showed his business foresight by letting a great deal of land on copyhold. His son (1243-1281) was “a careful husband, and strict in all his bargains.” This Thomas II., who served with distinction in twenty-eight campaigns, kept in his own hands from thirteen to twenty manors, farming them with the most meticulous care. His accounts show that “when this lord was free from foreign employment, he went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, scarce two miles asunder, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the above-mentioned husbandries.” Lady Berkeley went on similar rounds from manor to manor in order to inspect the dairies. Smyth gives amusing instances of the baron’s frugalities, side by side with his generosity. He followed a policy of sub-letting land in tail to tenants, calculating “that the heirs of such donees being within age should be in ward to him, ... and so the profit of the land to become his own again, and the value of the marriage also to boot”: a calculation which the reader will presently be in a better position to understand. He “would not permit any freeman’s widow to marry again unless she first made fine with him” (one poor creature who protested against this rule was fined £20 in modern money); and he fixed a custom, which survived for centuries on his manors, of seizing into his own hands the estates of all copyholders’ widows who re-married, or were guilty of incontinence. He vowed a crusade, but neverperformed it; his grandson paid a knight £100 to go instead of the dead baron. Lady Berkeley’s “elder years were weak and sickly, part of whose physic was sawing of billets and sticks, for which cause she had before her death yearly bought certain fine hand-saws, which she used in her chamber, and which commonly cost twopence a piece.”