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 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 sea and 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 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, 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--

Hay, hay, the whitë swan! By Goddës 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 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 from the 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 its _memento mori_, no doubt, but not always under the same forms.

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 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]

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 to Edward 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 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 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]--

"He sent forth then to Hainault for a wife A bishop and other lordës temporal, Where, in chamber privy and secret At discovered, dishevelled also in all, As seeming was to estate virginal. Among themselves our lords, for his prudence Of the bishop asked counsel and sentence.

"Which daughter of the five should be the queen. Who counselled thus, with sad avisëment 'We will have her with good hippës, I mean, For she will bear good sons, to mine intent.' To which they all accorded by assent, And chose Philippa that was full feminine, As the bishop most wise did determine.

"But then among themselves they laughed fast ay; The lords then said [that] the bishop couth Full mickle skill of a woman alway, [was a good judge That so could choose a lady that was uncouth; [unknown And, for the merry words that came of his mouth, They trowed he had right great experience Of woman's rule and their convenience."

Later on again, after enumerating the titles and virtues of the sons that were born of this union, Hardyng continues--

"So high and large they were of all stature, The least of them was of [his] person able To have foughten with any creature Single battaile in actës merciable; The bishop's wit me thinketh commendable, So well could choose the princess that them bore, For by practice he knew it, or by lore."

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, from account-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" accruing to 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 their merchandize, 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.