The Chaucer Ancestors

This is a school assignment I had. I thought maybe people would be interested.

4/22/08

The Chaucer Ancestors

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great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather John Chaucer was born in either 1312 or1313. His father made a living as a vintner and eventually taught him the same trade. Before his father, there had been a long line on merchants in the family.

John Chaucer’s childhood would likely have been completely unknown, were it not for one unique adventure. John’s aunt, keen on keeping some property in Ipswich, kidnapped her twelve year old nephew and tried to wed him to her daughter. It is likely that this was an attempt to keep the property from being entailed away.

This plan was foiled however. The aunt was caught and imprisoned. She was also fined a large fee of £250. The enormity of this sum suggests that the family was either fairly financially secure, middle class, or even part of the elite.

In his early to mid twenty’s John Chaucer married Agnes Copton. Their son Geoffrey was born in 1343 in London. Six years later, Ages inherited a large amount of property from her uncle, Hamo de Copton. He had been a moneyer at the Tower of London. This property did not merely consist of, but included twenty-four London shops.

When he was fifteen, Geoffrey Chaucer secured a place as a page boy in the home of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster. This was largely due to his father’s vast connections. Young Geoffrey also did many other jobs. He worked as a courtier, a diplomat, a civil servant, and also collected, and inventoried scrap metal for the king.

At the beginning stages of the Hundred Years War in 1359, Geoffrey marched into battle along side Elizabeth de Burgh’s husband, Lionel of Antwerp, the first Duke of Clarence. One year into the war, he was captured during the siege at Rheims. A prisoner of war, Geoffrey Chaucer was imprisoned by the French until King Edward III himself offered them £16 for his release. Free as he was from the French, he nevertheless wasknown from then on as the prisoner.

The window looking into his life is somewhat blurred after this point. It seems that he traveled France and Spain, as well as Flanders. Although the reason for such adventures is not known for sure, it is possible that he could have been acting as a messenger or had simply been embarking on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

In 1366, Geoffrey Chaucer pops back into focus with his marriage to Phillipa de Roet. Phillipa de Roet was lady-in-waiting to Queen Phillipa of Hainault, and was the sister of Katherine Swynford who later married Geoffrey Chaucer’s friend and patron John of Gaunt as his third wife.

It is unclear just how many children Geoffrey and Agnes Chaucer had, although Wikipedia states that the most likely number is three or four. Other sources however, reveal that the number should be changed to four or five. Besides his daughter Alice Chaucer, there are four other Chaucers who could have been his children. These are Thomas Chaucer, Elizabeth Chaucy, Agnes, and Lewis Chaucer.

Alice Chaucer married a man with the name of Manning, while Elizabeth became a nun and Agnes served as an attendant at King Henry IV’s coronation. Sources were regrettably unable to shed any light on the life of Lewis Chaucer. However, Thomas, it seems, had a very colorful life. He served as head butler to four kings, he was an envoy for France, and became Speaker of the House of Commons. Thomas’s great-grandson, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was designated by Richard III as heir to the throne. However, he was deposed and never became king.

In 1367, Geoffrey Chaucer is recorded to have become a member of the royal court of Edward III as a valet, yeoman, or esquire. This could have a wide range of jobs and responsibilities. It is evident that he traveled abroad several times. At least some of these trips were made while he was a valet.

It is possible that he attended a wedding in Milan, Italy. The wedding was between Lionel of Antwerp and Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti. It is around this time that his book, “The Book of the Duchess” is believed to have been written. He wrote this book in honor of Blanche of Lancaster, John Gaunt’s late wife.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote several other works during his life. These works include “Anelida and Arcite”, “The House of Fame”, “Troilus and Criseyde”, “The Legend of Good Women”, “Parlement of Fouls”, and of course, “The Canterbury Tales”. He mysteriously disappeared from historical record in 1399 soon after his patron Richard II was overthrown. It is believed that he died of unknown causes October 25, 1400. This information recovered from his tomb is not reliable however because the tomb itself was built a hundred years after his death.

Sources:

Wikipidia, ancestry.com