ADDENDA.
Note: to vol. i. p. ix. I am informed that it appears, from a charter in the British Museum, that one Galfridus de Chaucere is a witness to a grant of land to Hatfield Broad Oak Priory, co. Essex, about A.D. 1300. This shews that the poet was not the first of his surname to bear the name of Geoffrey.
Rom. Rose, 923. Turke bowes, Turkish bows. The form Turke can hardly be right, as the adjective is required. The original copy probably had 'Turkis,' with the is written as a contraction; this would easily be misread as 'Turke,' i. e. as if the contraction stood for e. The French text has ars turquois, as the reader can see.
Cotgrave gives: 'Arc turquois, the Turkish long-bow.' But the Turkish long-bow was short, as compared with the English. Strutt speaks of his seeing the Turkish ambassador shoot; this was in the year 1800. 'The bow he used was much shorter than those belonging to the English archers; and his arrows were of the bolt kind, with round heads made of wood'; Sports and Pastimes, bk. ii. c. i. § 17. Cf. 'with bowes turkoys,' Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, ii. 458.
III. (Book of the Duchesse), 1318, 1319. The lines are:—
A LONG CASTEL with walles WHYTE,
By seynt Iohan! on a RICHE HIL.
There can be no doubt that (as has been suggested by the Bishop of Oxford) these apparently otiose lines contain punning allusions to the whole subject of the poem. Long-castell (put for Lon-castell, or the castle on the Lune) was another name for Lancaster; compare the modern Lonsdale as a name for the valley of the Lune, and see Barbour's Bruce, xvii. 285, 582. Whyte alludes to Blanche. Thus the former line expresses Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.
In the second line, the RICHE HIL refers to Richmond in Yorkshire; and the whole line expresses John, Earl of Richmond. John of Gaunt had been created Earl of Richmond (vol. i. p. xviii).