[66] “Life Records,” iv. 282, 283.
[67] A well-to-do youth could be boarded at Oxford for 2s. a week, and it was reckoned that the whole expenses of a Doctor of Divinity could be defrayed for thrice that sum, or half Chaucer’s salary. (Riley, “Memorials,” p. 379; Reynerus, “de Antiq. Benedict,” pp. 200, 596.)
[68] A. 3907. “Lo Grenewych, ther many a shrewe is inne.”
[69] “Little Lowys my son, I aperceive well by certain evidences thine ability to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions; and as well consider I thy busy prayer in special to learn the treatise of the Astrelabie.” Excusing himself for having omitted some problems ordinarily found in such treatises, Chaucer says, “Some of them be too hard to thy tender age of X. year to conceive.”
[70] “Life Records,” iv., Nos. 250, 270, 277. The great significance of this fact is obscured even by such excellent authorities as Prof. Skeat, Prof. Hales, and Mr. Pollard, who all follow Sir Harris Nicolas in misinterpreting the last of these three documents. Chaucer had not lost, as they represent, Henry’s own letters patent of only five days before, but Richard’s patents for the yearly £20 and the tun of wine. It is quite possible that Chaucer may have been obliged to leave them in pledge somewhere, or that they were momentarily mislaid; but it is natural to suspect that the poet would not so lightly have reported them as lost unless it had been to his obvious interest to do so. We must remember the trouble and expense constantly taken by public bodies, for instance, to get their charters ratified by a new king.
[71] Globe ed., p. 464; Buchon, iii., 349.
[72] “Complaint to his Purse,” last stanza.
[73] “Life Records,” iv., p. xlv. In 1395 or 1396 Chaucer received £10 from the clerk of Henry’s great wardrobe, to be paid into Henry’s hands.
[74] Though the subject-matter of this poem is mainly taken from Boethius, yet it evidently has the translator’s hearty approval, and is in tune with many more of his later verses.
[75] Michelet, “Hist. de France,” Liv. VI., ad fin. A cardinal explained the extreme violence of Urban VI.’s words and actions by the report “that he could not avoid one of two things, lunacy or total collapse; for he never ceased drinking, yet ate nothing.” Baluze, “Vit. Pap. Aven.,” vol. i., col. 1270. Compare Walsingham’s tone with regard to the Pope, “Hist. Angl.,” an. 1385.