POETS Day! Talkin’ Chaucer at the Godsibbing Fense

Illustration by Rene Sears

I’m listening to a book about free speech and the necessity of, and the author went on for a few minutes about punishments meted out for violations of English law in Colonial America. It was amazing stuff. They’d cut off your ears for offending the Crown’s reputation, even for questioning it. Lucky loudmouths might get off with a cropping where they’d just trim off the ear tops. Tongues were bored, ears were nailed to pillories, many whippings of designated number and severity were prescribed.

One sorry SOB had his tongue bored, his arms broken, and then with his arms “dangling,” according to the author Jonathan Turley, was forced to run a gauntlet as men beat him with rifle butts.

What the hell did he say?

I hope he said it loudly. Clearly and from a high place on a stark, windy day. I hope his wind aided preferably bass voice carried across the land and turned the head of every man, woman, and child. I don’t know the content, but I hope he got the most from it.

This isn’t a segue to slippery slopes and non-crime hate incidents. It’s POETS Day. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Get out of work and read a book. There are a lot of them out there. I’m enjoying Against the Country, by Ben Metcalf. Listening to a book, as I’m doing in the car with Jonathan Turley’s The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, doesn’t count. That’s not really reading, even if it is fun. Maybe read the Turley book, though. I’ve heard good things.

In any case, take time for a little verse first.

***

ITEM:

On May 4, 1380, Cecelia Chaumpaigne signed a quitclaim releasing Geoffrey Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus.” That’s a translation. The entire statement was recorded in Latin, as was customary. The word “raptus” is left untranslated and italicized as no one was quite sure exactly which of its uses common as legal terms at the time was intended in this case.

The most damning meaning is felony rape. The court records were discovered by Frederick J. Furnivall in 1873. Five years earlier he’d founded the Chaucer Society and couldn’t have been happy about his find. I’m assuming he wanted us to like Geoffrey and was in the Chaucer reputation building business. I wonder if for a moment he thought about unfinding the writ. To his credit, if he did, he didn’t.

Raptus didn’t have to mean rape. It could also mean kidnapping. Not good, from Furnivall’s point of view, but considerably easier to deflect for poetry focusing purposes. “Oh, those emotional poets and their hijinx!” John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester kidnapped Elizabeth Malet twice, married her and killed her with syphilis, the same syphilis that circuitously killed Charles II (He was an inadvertant regicide and I’ll die on this hill.) We still read him.

Finally, raptus could signal assault. I don’t think there’s a hijinx explanation for hitting a girl, though. I suspect Furnivall stressed that Chaumpaigne released Chaucer from the claim.

In 1379, Chaucer registered with the court that he was represented by an attorney in a suit brought by Thomas Stondon. Abert C. Baugh writes in an introductory chapter, “The Life of Chaucer,” to Chaucer’s Major Poetry (1963) that the suit was brought for “contempt and trespass.” Trespass was another catch-many word. An offender could trespass on property, rights, and even be mean and trespass on peace of mind. There’s not much clarity to be gained from the charge. Two months after her quitclaim, Chaumpaigne releases two other guys, Richard Goodchild and John Grover – theirs was a general release with no raptus mentioned – and those two do the same, releasing Chaucer. Grove is recorded as paying Chaumpaigne £10 and Baugh suspects Goodchild did the same. It would seem all these records stem from the same incident, but there was no evidence one way or the other.

Writes Baugh,

“The word raptus meant not only the felony of rape, but was also used in charges and indictment for abduction and what we would call assault and battery. An article in the Law Quarterly Review (October, 1947), arguing that the offense involved was actually rape, must be pronounced inconclusive. Until more evidence is found the question remains open, and in the meantime, it is best to suspend judgement.”

People kept digging, at least I think they as plural did. Christopher Cannon definitely kept digging, and in 1993 came forward with the discovery of a second quitclaim dated three days after Chaumpaigne’s first. This too, was a recording of her release of Chaucer, but this time without the phrase “de raptu meo.” Debate was reinvigorated. Was this an attempt to clarify, to protect a reputation, or whitewash a crime? Was it a clerical correction? Nobody knew.

Jump to 2022. Euan Roger and Sebastian Sobecki publish “Geoffrey Chaucer, Cecily Chaumpaigne, and the Statute of Laborers: New Records and Old Evidence Reconsidered” in The Chaucer Review, Vol 57 Issue 4. They found several new documents and give us a decent picture of what happened.

First, Chaumpaigne was not accusing Chaucer of anything. The two were codefendants in the suit brought by Staundon, who the authors note appears variously as Stondon, Standoun, Standon, and Staunton. According to their evidence, l’affair du Chaumpaigne was a labor dispute.

In 14^th century England, terms of household service were rarely in writing, but verbal contracts often held up in court. Chaumpaigne worked for Standon/Staundon in some capacity. The two would have agreed on the length of a period of not-quite-indenture and, barring permission for early leave, he would be her sole employer for the duration. Chaucer took her into his employment. The question was whether he did so after or during her obligations to Staundondounton.

It was illegal to poach servants. Though prohibited and frowned upon, not just enticements but  abductions weren’t unheard of if a gentleman were in need of a domestic and a well kept garden in a neighboring town caught his eye. It was not as illegal and possibly just fine to steal your maid back, but very illegal to attack the master of the initially poaching house in the process. The quitclaims start to make sense.

In the scenario Roger and Sobecki’s new evidence suggests, Chaumpaigne releases Chaucer from charges of abduction to protect him from poaching charges, essentially stating that she left of her own volition. We don’t know if Staundon was wronged or if Chaumpainge was able to show that her term of service ended before taking a job with Chaucer, but we can infer. Chaumpaigne releases Grove and Goodchild and they release Chaucer. It looks like Grove and Goodchild, in the employ of Staundon, or at least on his behalf, tried to grab Chaumpaigne and got into a scuffle with Chaucer or someone in his house. Everybody drops charges and Grove and Goodchild settle with Chaumpaigne for £10 for attempting to wrest her from her legal, or hard to prove illegal, arrangement with Chaucer. This only makes sense if Stoundon was in the wrong, or couldn’t prove he was in the right, regarding the contract, but we only have records of money flowing from the Stoundon side to Chaucer’s if not directly to him.

I can’t stress how interesting the Roger and Sobecki article is, though there’s this at the end:

“The new records will not undo the countless advances feminist colleagues have made in our field. On the contrary, the history of the recovery of these documents is part and parcel of the fabric of modern Chaucer scholarship: the incompleteness of our knowledge of this case thus far was a fortuitous circumstance because it has given our field the opportunity for the last thirty years, since the publication of Cannon’s milestone article, to imagine Chaucer’s guilt and therefore to tease out its countless ramifications for reading late medieval literature, English or otherwise.”

Think of all the scholarship we’re missing out on by our failure to imagine Jane Austen as a cannibal, Faulkner running Ponzi schemes, or Dante not using a turn signal. I don’t think anybody is suggesting that we throw out papers driven by mistaken assumptions. Maybe something was considered that wasn’t, but let’s not pretend the basis for those works wasn’t wrong and that doesn’t make the conclusions suspect or taint scholarship that relied on it as other authors branched out into an afield subject. What if Ovid was D.B. Cooper?

ITEM:

We have no idea how many children Chaucer had. Church record would seem the obvious source of information, but people, or Cannon, haven’t dug deeply enough yet. There are named children; Thomas and Lewis for certain and several others for maybe, but there could be a dozen more. There isn’t a certain count, but of those we know about…

In 1381, Elizabeth “Chaucy” joined a cloister at Barking. She is believed to have been Geoffrey Chaucer’s daughter. John of Gaunt, father of the man who would become Henry IV, paid her expenses up front, to the tune of over £50.

Thomas Chaucer, son of Geoffrey Chaucer, married well and was one of the council of twenty three men who ruled during the infancy of Henry VI. He was well placed and received a great many favors and payments from John of Gaunt.

John of Gaunt’s second wife Katherine was the sister of Chaucer’s wife Philippa. Was John simply a doting uncle showering gifts on his niece and nephew? Or was 19^th century Chaucer scholar Mary Eliza Haweis right in her assertion that John was the true father of the Chaucer children (an assertion she did not include in Chaucer for Children: a Golden Key (1877)). Philippa and Geoffrey’s – both creatures of court – marriage was arranged by Queen Philippa (too many Philippas). Was it to save courtly scandal because already married John of Gaunt put the non-Queenly Philippa in a family way? Katherine was his mistress before his first wife died, so he wasn’t one to keep chaste.

If it were known that Katherine was his mistress and that he impregnated her sister, the scandal would have been court rollicking. Having sex with women related to each other was considered incest. Such was the 14^th century understanding of cooties.

ITEM:

John of Gaunt, head of the House of Lancaster, was clever and ambitious, but on good terms with Richard II until Richard’s ouster. It wouldn’t have been unseemly or disloyal to work for the crown and Lancaster, as Chaucer did.

It’s recorded that Chaucer worked for House Lancaster beginning in at least 1395, but Richard had for years prior made use of his talents and kept him comfortable. He was sent to the continent multiple times on King’s business. He surveyed and oversaw repairs of retaining walls on the Thames, was in charge of upkeeping multiple structures, and spent times as a customs official.

When John’s son,  Henry Bolingbroke, stormed England and became Henry IV, Chaucer sent him “The Complaynt of Chaucer to His Purse.” It was a shameless plea for cash. There’s speculation that he’d written the first three stanzas some time before and, per Baugh, “Without much delay, he dusted off “Complaint to His Purse,” added an envoy, and sent it off.” The envoy he speaks of is a tacked on five lines addressed to “O conquerour of Brutes Albyoun.”

It worked. Henry was coronated on September 30^th, 1399. He received a response on October, 13 (Bough specifies “not Oct. 3, as usually stated). In addition to the £20 annuity already allotted him by Richard, Henry gave 40 marks, just over £27 more. Whether that was to be an additional annuity I can’t say. Chaucer is assumed to have died in 1400, before any second installment. I say assumed, because there were no dates on his grave at Westminster until someone added them in 1566. Sources agree that he’s almost definitely dead now.

A quick point of interest about the poem. Standard spelling was a long way off, but it strikes me that the same word in a poem may have multiple spellings. The following is more striking in that the last line of the first three stanzas is the same, but “mot” is later “moot” and “ageyn” later “agen.” The poem was doubtlessly transcribed by several hands before its delivery to us in the current form. This could be exactly as Chaucer penned it to the letter, but there were hands that didn’t care if they were handes. I want to say that it’s clear someone in the process and everyone that followed was not an OCD sufferer, but it may be just the someone, and everyone downhill meticulously copied the errors that wouldn’t have been considered errors, with clinical meticulousness.

I should note that there is a hierarchy even in today’s standard spelling. People bow to the OED, consult Webster, and there’s probably and American Heritage around so why not. There are American and British spellings of some words, so we have “-ise” v “-ize” and “-or” v “-our” endings. We have “installment” and “instalment.” Auto-correct programs have their orthodoxies. Earlier in this article I wrote “hijinx” twice, which Microsoft insists be “hijinks.” There’s always room for debate, but I defer to the higher power of Archie Comics and consider the matter closed.

The Complaynt of Chaucer to His Purse
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400 thereabouts)

To yow, my purse, and to noon other wight
Complayne I, for ye be my lady dere!
I am so sory, now that ye been lyght;
For certes, but ye make me hevy chere,
Me were as leef be layd upon my bere;
For which unto your mercy thus I crye:
Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I dye!

Now voucheth sauf this day, or hyt be nyght,
That I of yow the blissful soun may here,
Or see your colour lyk the sonne bright,
That of yelownesse hadde never pere.
Ye be my lyf, ye be myn hertes stere,
Quene of comfort and of goos companye:
Beth hevy ageyn, or elles moot I dye!

Now purse, that ben to me my lyves lyght
And saveour, as doun in this worlde here,
Out of this toune helpe me thurgh your might,
Syn that ye wole nat ben my tresorere;
For I am shave as nye as any frere.
But yet I pray unto your curtesye:
Beth hevy agen, or elles moot I dye!

Lenvoy de Chaucer

O conquerour of Brutes Albyoun,
Which that by lyne and free eleccioun
Been verray kyng, this song to yow I sende;
And ye, that mowen alle oure harmes amende,
Have mynde upon my supplicacioun!