Impolitic Bodies: Poetry, Saints, and Society in Fifteenth-Century England: The Work of Osbern Bokenham

Thomas Chaucer turns out to have inherited his Chaucer grandfather's proclivities or perhaps his genuine company, for the poet's father used to be a vintner and his son was once, after 1402, butler for the royal loved ones. during this skill, he purveyed wines for the king's numerous castles and armies in addition to for the courtroom, and he used to be additionally answerable for accumulating the tariff on imported wines. (In a interval of intermittent battle with France, the place of work of butler should have been fairly profitable. ) in the course of his lifetime, Thomas Chaucer sat on many royal commissions, together with the person who investigated Oxfordshire after the Oldcastle insurrection of 1415. Like his father, he served as a minor diplomat, with royal missions to Germany, France, and the Low international locations, and John Lydgate composed a heartfelt farewell poem for his buddy: "On Thomas Chaucer's Departing" into France. Thomas Chaucer's profession used to be most likely aided extra via his dating with dwelling the Aristocracy than with a lifeless courtier-poet. His mom was once the French noblewoman Philippa Payne de Roet, whose sister Katherine Swynford used to be John of Gaunt's longtime mistress and, from 1396, spouse. Their offspring, the legitimized Beauforts, have been movers and shakers within the country. the main eminent of them was once Henry Beaufort, chancellor lower than Henry IV and Henry V, bishop of Lincoln and of Winchester and, from 1426, cardinal. Beaufort spoke of Thomas Chaucer as "dilecto consanguineo" (beloved cousin) in granting him the lifelong constableship of his fortress at Taunton (Ruud, 8)—one of many such profitable perquisites and sinecures Chaucer loved in the course of his lifetime. THE F R I A R AS C R I T I C sixty seven one other Beaufort, Edmund, turned earl of Dorset and duke of Somerset. He was once a rival of Richard, duke of York, in court docket circles below Henry VI and supplanted Richard as governor of England's French territories simply on the time while Bokenham was once composing his mythical. within the intrigue-ridden surroundings of the past due Lancastrian court docket, the Beauforts have been allied with William de los angeles Pole, duke of Suffolk, opposed to Yorkist targets and reviews of the regime. In neighborhood and parliamentary politics, too, Thomas Chaucer used to be a tremendous determine. He was once the executor of many wills and held the guardianship and marriage of many teens. occasionally those profitable delivers happened during the generosity of a noble buyer, and at different instances, via friendship with contributors of the provincial gentry. between his many benefactors have been the Stonor family members, who lived close to Chaucer's property at Ewelme and who have been additionally landlords and pals of the kin of John Fortescue, leader justice to Henry VI and a tremendous Lancastrian propagandist (see bankruptcy 7). Thomas Chaucer was once sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire (1400—1404). He was once elected no fewer than fourteen instances to the Commons from Oxfordshire and used to be 5 instances speaker for the Commons, at which he acted as "mouthpiece"7 for the pursuits of his relations the Beauforts. Thomas's daughter Alice Chaucer completed much more magnificent social prestige via her useful marriages to the Aristocracy.