ABSTRACT
From this time on his life is a record of employment in one form or another of public service, rewarded by pensions, grants, and special payments. He is sent abroad frequently on the King’s business, sometimes on “secret negotiations,” once as a member of the group which tried in 1381 to arrange a marriage between Richard II and the daughter of the King of France. Most of these journeys were to France and the Low Countries, but at least two were to Italy. These are of special importance since they gave him an opportunity to become acquainted with Italian literature, especially with the work of Dante and Boccaccio. The first Italian journey which we can be sure of was in 1372, when he went to Genoa to negotiate a commercial treaty. His business also took him to Florence and from an allusion in the Clerk’s Tale it is conjectured that he may have been in Padua and met Petrarch.5 He was gone about six months. The second Italian mission was in 1378. This time he was gone only four months and his business brought him in contact with Barnabo Visconti, lord of Milan, whose death is the subject of a stanza in the Monk’s Tale.
