ABSTRACT
When beginning a biographical sketch it would be pleasant to be able to start with the simple fact of the year of birth. Alas, establishing such a date in the case of Geoffrey Chaucer is no easy matter. Writing in 1803 William Godwin begins his ‘dissertation upon the Period of the Birth of Chaucer’ with the statement that ‘the dates assigned to the birth and death of Chaucer … have never been questioned or disturbed’ (Godwin 1803: xxi). He continues, ‘it is undoubtedly pleasing, in a subject which in many particulars is involved in obscurity, to be able to seize some points which are free from the shadow of doubt.’ The tone of certainty introduces what was the first suggestion that the hitherto received date for Chaucer’s birth of 1328 was in fact open to question. The trouble arose from a disposition made by Chaucer on 15th October 1386 in which he is described as ‘Geffray Chaucere esquier del age de xl ans et plus armeez par xxvii ans’ (Crow 1966: 370). As Godwin realised, regarding 58 as forty years and more, while technically correct, nevertheless admits the possibility of a rather later date of birth. Despite this admission, and despite his own acknowledgement that the phrase ‘forty years and more’ was often (though not inevitably, see Pearsall 1992: 315n1) used as a formula to indicate that the witness was of respectable years and could be regarded as reliable, Godwin himself did not relinquish ‘the old chronology’ as he terms it (Godwin 1803: xxvii) preferring to retain the erroneous 1328 as the best guess.
