Chaucer and His England Part 10

... say somewhat of love; for certes ye Do ken thereon as much as any man.

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 bra.s.s. 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 'gentillesse,' 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, such things 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 ma.s.s of splinters and the dinted walls, and begin to quarrel over the cause--

Some said it was along on the fire making, Some saide Nay, it was on the blowing, (Then was I feared, for that was mine office,) 'Straw!' quoth the third, 'ye be lewed and nice [ignorant and foolish It was not tempered as it ought to be.'

'Nay,' quoth the fourthe, 'stint and hearken me; Because our fire ne was not made of beech, That is the cause, and other none, so I theech!' [so may I thrive!

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 h.e.l.l-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--

'Awake, thou Cook,' quoth he, 'G.o.d give thee sorrow!

What aileth thee to sleepe by the morrow?

Hast thou had fleas all night, or art thou drunk?'

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--

And with this speech the Cook was wroth and wraw, [indignant And on the manciple he 'gan nodde fast For lack of speech; and down the horse him cast, Where as he lay till that men up him took!

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 grat.i.tude.

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 thorpe'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, "c.o.kkes bones!" which slips out unawares) and looks round now for the hitherto neglected Parson, upon whom he calls for a "fable."

This Parson answered all at once 'Thou gettest fable none y-told for me, For Paul, that writeth unto Timothee, Reproveth them that weyven soothfastness [depart from And tellen fables and such wretchedness ...

I cannot geste "_rum, ram, ruf_" by letter,[166]

Nor, G.o.d wot, rhyme hold I but little better; And therefore if you list--I will not glose-- I will you tell a merry tale in prose To knit up all this feast, and make an end; And Jesu, for His grace, wit me send To shewe you the way, in this voyage, Of thilke perfect, glorious pilgrimage That hight Jerusalem celestial ...'

Upon this word we have a.s.sented soon, For as us seemed, it was for to doon [right to do To enden in some virtuous sentence, And for to give him s.p.a.ce and audience.

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.).

[Ill.u.s.tration:CANTERBVRY 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.t without disturbance of any hosteler."[168] In the Cathedral itself--

The Pardoner and the Miller, and other lewd sots, Sought themselves in the church right as lewd goats, Peered fast and pored high upon the gla.s.s, Counterfeiting gentlemen, the armes for to blase, [blazon

till the Host bade them show better manners, and go offer at the shrine.

"Then pa.s.sed 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 exactly mirrored 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 s.h.i.+re. 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 d.i.c.k" of 250 years later, who made a merit of having mounted on a lofty ladder, pike in hand, to "rattle down proud Becket's gla.s.sie bones."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARD III. FROM HIS TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY]

CHAPTER XIV

KING AND QUEEN

"Then came there a King; knighthood him led; Might of the Commons made him to reign."

"Piers Plowman," B., Prol. 112

We have 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 ent.i.tled The Glorious par excellence, for that by virtue of grace from heaven he outshone in excellence all his predecessors, renowned and n.o.ble as they were. He was so great-hearted that he never blenched or changed the fas.h.i.+on 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 sea and land; clement and benign, familiar and gentle even to all men, both strangers and his own subjects or dependents; devoted to G.o.d, for he held G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble, 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 l.u.s.ts 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 scarcely dissuaded 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, Crecy 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--

Hay, hay, the white swan!

By G.o.ddes soul I am thy man!

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 Crecy 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 s.h.i.+p, his own was beginning to sink. The Black Prince had even a narrower escape; it became evident that his s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 from the Spaniards; bright eyes and careless merriment at the Royal board, while the hawks scream down from their perches, and n.o.ble 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 p.a.w.n with foreign merchants, and they themselves have been obliged to leave four earls behind as hostages to their Flemish creditors.[173] Royalty has always its _memento mori_, no doubt, but not always under the same forms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PEAc.o.c.k FEAST

(From the sepulchral bra.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 the expedition. 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 n.o.ble show of lords, earls, barons, knights, highborn ladies and n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.ce 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 n.o.ble virtues, and well beloved of G.o.d and men."[174]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 n.o.blest 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 doc.u.ments, we may throw interesting sidelights on these more living memorials. One such doc.u.ment, 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 to Edward II., is in the main like other episcopal registers--a record of ordinations, inst.i.tutions, 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 t.i.tle 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 doc.u.ment 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 next to 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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]--