[186] Sacchetti, “Novelle,” cliii.; Ste-Palaye, “Chevalerie,” ii., 80.
[187] Mr. Rye (l. c.) points out how frequent was the interchange between London and Lynn. Another colleague of John Chaucer’s, John de Stodey, Mayor and Sheriff of London, had been formerly a taverner at Lynn.
[188] “Mirour,” 7225: Cf. “Piers Plowman,” C., vii., 248. Readers of Chaucer’s “Prologue” will remember this mysterious word “chevisance” in connection with the Merchant. Its proper meaning was simply bargain: the slang sense will be best understood from a Royal ordinance of 1365 against those who lived by usury; “which kind of contract, the more subtly to deceive the people, they call exchange, or chevisance.”
[189] “Vie Nomade,” pp. 33, 46.
[190] These were, of course, fines for breaches of the assize of ale, as in the Norwich cases already mentioned.
[191] In 1347 his total income was £2460, out of which he saved £1150. In the two other years given by Smyth he saved £659 and £977. Some knights even made a living by pot-hunting at tournaments. See Ch.-V. Langlois, “La Vie en France au M. A.,” 1908, p. 163.
[192] Cf. a similar instance in Riley, p. 392.
[193] The Shillingford Letters show us the Bishop and Canons of Exeter selling wine in the same way at their own houses (p. 91).
[194] Oman, “Art of War in the Middle Ages,” 380 ff.
[195] Buchon, i., 349, 431; Globe, 349.