[256] 'Philippa Chaucer was a lady of the bedchamber, and therefore married, in 1366'; N. and Q. 7 S. v. 289.
[257] But Ten Brink (Sprache und Verskunst, p. 174) dates it about 1370-1372.
[258] 'O ye Herines, nightes doughtren three'; Troilus, last stanza of the invocation in bk. iv.
[259] Most of the passages which he quotes are not extant in the English version of the Romaunt. Where we can institute a comparison between that version and the Book of the Duchess, the passages are differently worded. Cf. B. Duch. 420, with R. Rose, 1393.
[260] i. e. y-treted, treated.
[261] See l. 647. The royal tercel eagle is, then, Richard II; and the formel eagle is Queen Anne; the other two tercel eagles were her other two suitors. See Froissart, bk. ii. c. 86.
[262] Rather, 1382. Ch. could not have foretold a year's delay.
[263] It is quite impossible that the poem can refer, as some say, to the marriage of John of Gaunt in 1359, or even to that of de Coucy in 1364; see Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 70. It is plainly much later than the Book of the Duchess, as the internal evidence incontestably shews.
[264] I leave the remarks upon this poem as I first wrote them in 1888. Very soon afterwards, Dr. Furnivall actually found the ascription of the poem to Chaucer in MS. Phillipps 9053. I think this proves that I know how to estimate internal evidence aright. MS. Phillips 9053 also completes the poem, by contributing an additional stanza, which, in MS. Harl. 78, has been torn away.
[265] mix.