ABSTRACT
The outlines o f Chaucer’s career after 1386 can be clearly traced. Much the same pattern o f courtiership and public service as before is repeated.
Having lived in Kent since 1385 and been free from office since 1386, he presumably devoted himself to his writing and to his duties as Justice o f the Peace. Doubtless the exercise o f such duties fur ther enriched his knowledge o f men. He did not enjoy or endure a stationary tranquillity for long, for in July 1387 he was granted protection for a year to go to Calais in the retinue o f Sir William Beauchamp, although as his name does not appear on the list o f Sir William’s Controller it is not certain that Chaucer went, or if he went, how long he stayed. Also in 1387 the payments to his wife ceased, and it is probable that she died in that year. Perhaps the loss of her annuity caused Chaucer to live beyond his income, for he began to be sued for debt in April 1388, and sold his crown pension for a lump sum about the same time. Other matters made the first half o f 1388 unpleasant. The ‘Merciless Parliament’, controlled by the barons hostile to the court and Lancastrian factions, sat from 3 February to 4 June 1388, and pursued the leaders o f the court party with relentless hostility. Sir Nicholas Brembre, formerly Lord Mayor and one o f Chaucer’s colleagues as a Collector o f Customs, who was leader o f the Victualling guilds and the most important leader of the court party in the City, was tried, found guilty and executed in February in a barefaced travesty o f justice not to be condoned by his own violent and unscrupulous character. Thomas Usk, Chaucer’s admirer and also a member o f the court party, was executed early in March. After a long and bitter struggle, Sir Simon Burley, the prin cipal leader of the court party and one of Richard’s tutors, was condemned and executed on 5 May. Richard risked his very throne in his opposition to Burley’s fate; his queen is said to have gone on her knees to Richard’s uncle, the surly and quarrelsome Duke o f Gloucester, to save him; but to no avail. W ith him perished three
other knights o f his party. Truly, ‘the wrastling for this world axeth a fal’, as Chaucer writes in the poem Trouthe, with its envoy to his friend, Philip Vache.
