'We see then that Chaucer was justified in asserting that Du Guesclin and Sir Oliver Mauny "brew this cursednesse"; and his assertion has some historical importance; for as his patron and friend, John of Gaunt, married one of Pedro's daughters [named Constance] as his second wife [Michaelmas, 1371], Chaucer almost certainly had the account of Pedro's death from his daughter, or one of her attendants, and is thus a witness for the truth of the narrative of the Spanish chronicler Ayala, given above, against the French writers, Froissart, Cuvelier, &c., who make the Bégue de Villaines the man who inveigled Pedro. This connexion of Chaucer with John of Gaunt and his second wife must excuse the poet in our eyes for calling so bad a king as Pedro the Cruel "worthy" and "the glorie of Spayne, whom Fortune heeld so hy in magestee."
'In the Corpus MS. these knights are called in a side-note Bertheun Claykyn (which was one of the many curious ways in which Du Guesclin's name was spelt) and Olyuer Mawny; in MS. Harl. 1758 they are called Barthilmewe Claykeynne and Olyuer Mawyn; and in MS. Lansdowne 851 they are called Betelmewe Claykyn and Oliuer Mawnye. Mauni or Mauny was a well-known Armorican or Breton family. Chaucer's epithet of "Genilon" for Oliver de Mauny is specially happy, because Genelon was the Breton knight who betrayed to their death the great Roland and the flower of Charlemagne's knights to the Moors at Roncesvalles. Charles's or Charlemagne's great paladin, Oliver, is too well known to need more than a bare mention.'—F. J. Furnivall, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, viii. 449.
Peter, King of Cyprus.
3581. In a note to Chaucer's Prologue, A. 51, Tyrwhitt says—'Alexandria in Egypt was won, and immediately afterwards abandoned, in 1365, by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. The same Prince, soon after his accession to the throne in 1352, had taken Satalie, the antient Attalia; and in another expedition about 1367 he made himself master of the town of Layas in Armenia. Compare 11 Mémoire sur les Ouvrages de Guillaume de Machaut, Acad. des Ins. tom. xx. pp. 426, 432, 439; and Mémoire sur la Vie de Philippe de Maizières, tom. xvii. p. 493.' He was assassinated in 1369. Cf. note to A. 51.
Barnabo of Lombardy.
3589. 'Bernabo Visconti, duke of Milan, was deposed by his nephew and thrown into prison, where he died in 1385.'—Tyrwhitt. This date of Dec. 18, 1385 is that of the latest circumstance incidentally referred to in the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer had been sent to treat with Visconti
in 1378, so that he knew him personally. See Froissart, bk. ii. ch. 158; Engl. Cyclopaedia, s. v. Visconti; Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 109. And see vol. i. p. xxxii.
Ugolino of Pisa.
3597. 'Chaucer himself has referred us to Dante for the original of this tragedy: see Inferno, canto xxxiii.'—Tyrwhitt. An account of Count Ugolino is given in a note to Cary's Dante, from Villani, lib. vii. capp. 120-127. This account is different from Dante's, and represents him as very treacherous. He made himself master of Pisa in July 1288, but in the following March was seized by the Pisans, who threw him, with his two sons, and two of his grandsons, into a prison, where they perished of hunger in a few days. Chaucer says three sons, the eldest being five years of age. Dante says four sons.
3606. Roger; i. e. the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, who was Ugolino's enemy.