FOOTNOTES:
[45] Edward III. and the Black Prince.
[46] She was popularly distinguished as the "good Queen Anne," and as dear to her husband as to her people. Richard, who with many and fatal faults, really possessed sensibility and strong domestic affections with which Shakspeare has so finely pourtrayed him, was passionately devoted to his amiable wife. She died young, at the Palace of Sheen; and when Richard afterwards visited the scene of his loss, he solemnly cursed it in his anguish, and commanded it to be razed to the ground, which was done. One of our kings afterwards rebuilt it. I think Henry the VIIth.
[47] Court of Love, v. 369-412.
[48] Court of Love, v. 36-42.
[49] i. e. the tapestry, like my dream, was a representation, not a reality.
[50] Chaucer's Dreame, v. 2185. "Here also is showed Chaucer's match with a certain gentlewoman, who was so well liked and loved of the Lady Blanche and her Lord (as Chaucer himself also was), that gladly they concluded a marriage between them."—Arguments to Chaucer's Works. Edit. 1597.
[51] To me there is nothing dear or hateful, every thing is indifferent.
[52] Mazed,—distracted.
[53] Godwin's Life of Chaucer, v. iii. p. 5.
[54] In right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, eldest sister of Edward IV.
[55] These were Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV. Philippa, Queen of Portugal, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter.
[56] Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster, had three sons: the second was the famous Cardinal Beaufort; the eldest (created Earl of Somerset,) was grandfather to Henry the Seventh, and consequently ancestor to the whole race of Tudor: thus from the sister of Chaucer's wife are descended all the English sovereigns, from the fifteenth century; and likewise the present family of Somerset, Dukes of Beaufort.
[57] "The King's Quhair," (i.e. cahier or book.)
[58] Liberality.
[59] Dignity.
[60] Knowledge and discretion.