The Worthiness of Chaucer’s Worthy Knight

Abstract

The Worthiness of Chaucer’s Worthy Knight Gerald Morgan Hony soyt qui mal pence.1 Were anyone, therefore, to say that those who are engaged in a career of arms would not be able to save their souls, they would not know what they were saying, for in all good, necessary, and traditional professions anyone can lose or save his soul as he wills. —Geoffroi De Charny, Le Livre De Chevalerie2 [End Page 115] Per pale argent and gules, a bend counterchanged. —Chaucer Arms3 King Edward : Upbraidst thou him, because within his faceTime hath engraved deep characters of age?Know that these grave scholars of experience,Like stiff-grown oaks, will stand immovableWhen whirlwind quickly turns up younger trees. —Shakespeare, Sing Edward iii, III.iii.126–304 The Great Age of English Chivalry (1330–1370) There are classic patterns, both good and bad, of the careers of knights in all ages, and not least in the fourteenth century, the great age of English chivalry. Although this is a period remote from the perceptions of scholars in the twenty-first century, it was not remote to those who lived through it, and hence we must accord a special respect in these matters to Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote directly from the experience of life in the royal households of Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt (and possibly also their yet more celebrated brother, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince), and also their father, the king himself, Edward III (1327–77). A royal household [End Page 116] was organized above all for war, and all its male members, from the king and princes, dukes and earls, downwards through barons and bannerets and knights-bachelor, to esquires and valets or grooms, were expected to accompany their lord to war.5 Hence Chaucer, a page (presumably) in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster, in 1357, and then valettus on the merging of her household with that of her husband, Lionel of Antwerp, in 1359,6 found himself on Edward’s campaign in France of 1359–60 that ended the first phase of the Hundred Years War with the Treaty of Brétigny on May 8, 1360. The king was present with his three eldest sons, Edward (Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester), Lionel (Earl of Ulster), and John of Gaunt (Earl of Richmond), and also the famous Henry of Grosmont (Duke of Lancaster and Earl of Derby).7 Thus Chaucer would have seen in the field (as distinct from the royal household)8 all the great knights of [End Page 117] that early and (from an English point of view) triumphant phase of the war with France (men such as Sir James Audley, Sir John Chandos,9 Sir Reginald Cobham,10 and Sir Walter Mauny/Manny11). Chaucer was not present as a [End Page 118] reporter or observer but as a participant, and indeed was captured some time after the action at Réthel near Rheims, to which he refers in his deposition at Westminster on October 15, 1386, in favor of Sir Richard (le) Scrope’s right to bear the arms Azure, a bend or.12 As a valettus in the household of the Earl of Ulster, Chaucer was significant enough to be ransomed and for the king to be involved in the paying of a contribution of £16 towards his ransom.13 He lacked at this time the stature of Richard Stury, for whom as an esquire of his own household the king contributed a sum of £50 for his ransom on January 12, 1360,14 but he was not the lowest in degree of those ransomed on this occasion. Thus the sum of £16 was paid for Geoffrey Chaucer on March 1, 1360, whereas no more than £10 was paid for George, a valettus in the household [End Page 119] of the Countess of Ulster.15 It seems that by the beginning of 1360 Chaucer had already come to the attention of Edward III himself, hardly surprising, perhaps, in the light of his outstanding abilities. Chaucer’s Career As Squire and Diplomat Chaucer lived out his life at the...