To take our wey, there as I yow devyse.


It is in these verses lies all the fame of the Tabard, which it might
seem was not a century old when Chaucer lay there. In the year 1304 the
Abbot of Hyde, near Winchester, bought two houses here held of the
Archbishop of Canterbury by William de Lategareshall. The abbot bought
these houses in order to have room to build himself a town house, and
it is said that at the same time he built a hostelry for travellers; at
any rate three years later we find him applying to the Bishop of
Winchester for leave to build a chapel "near the inn." In a later deed
we are told that "the abbots lodgeinge was wyninge to the backside of
the inn called the Tabarde and had a garden attached." Stow, however,
tells us: "Within this inn was also the lodging of the Abbot of Hide
(by the city of Winchester), a fair house for him and his train when he
came from that city to Parliament."

Here then from the Inn of the Abbot of Hyde Chaucer set out for
Canterbury with those pilgrims, many of whose portraits he has given us
with so matchless a power. The host of the inn at that time was Harry
Bailey, member of Parliament for Southwark in 1376 and 1379. He was the
wise and jocund leader of the pilgrimage as we know, and though Chaucer
speaks of him last, not one of the pilgrims is drawn with a livelier
touch than he:

Greet chere made our hoste us everichon
And to the soper sette us anon;
And served us with vitaille at the beste,
Strong was the wyn, and wel to drinke us leste.
A semely man our hoste was with alle